In my son’s 4th grade classroom – which I happened to visit yesterday – the chalkboard had written upon it the following explanation of the difference between humans and animals:
Birds build nests. Humans build houses.
Birds can fly. Humans build airplanes.
There was more but I don’t remember it all. The point seemed to be that animals’ skills are both narrow and limited while human skills are unbounded, as is their potential.
As an initial matter, the opposition is flawed. For the comparison to work, all humans must be able to build houses and airplanes just as all birds (or the vast majority, anyway) can build nests and fly. Of course, this is simply not so. The majority of humans can build neither a house nor a nest. And most of us certainly couldn’t build an airplane, much less fly one.
So, the comparison should say:
Birds build nests and can fly. Some humans can do some of the following: build houses and build and fly airplanes. Precious few can do all three.
Phrased thus, the human side of the equation appears much less majestic. It rather highlights the fact that most of us lack basic survival and building skills that birds (and other animals) possess in abundance. We compensate for our individual shortcomings by relying on a select few people who possess the skills necessary to create an environment in which the rest of us can survive (as I write this, a contractor is at work on my house, insulating a portion of the house too cold for my family to inhabit).
One wonders, therefore, why we aggrandize humanity. One further wonders why we feel entitled to take credit for the achievements and abilities of others while simultaneously derogating other beings who are individually far more skilled and better adapted for survival than we.
This hubris has cascading consequences. Because we classify nonhumans as “lesser creatures,” they fall beneath our normative notice. Thus, industrial farming, canned hunting, pseudo-scientific experimentation, and other horrific wrongs are routinely perpetrated upon them because they allegedly lack the necessary qualities for membership in the moral community. Our laws memorialize this normative vision, which then gets perpetuated in (among other places) my son’s classroom.
I want to talk to him about all this. But I don’t know what to say.
—David Cassuto
Filed under: animal cruelty, animal ethics, animal rights, animal welfare, canned hunting, factory farms, Uncategorized, vivisection | Tagged: animal ethics, animal rights, animal suffering, education, moral community, vivisection | 4 Comments »