Global Suicide

In what ways is an animal different than a human being? Because of the ability to think freely? The inability to feel pain?

It is commonly assumed that humans are special, that we posses some ability that should delineates us from the "animal other". Yet as I get deeper into writing about this great psychological divide, mainly for the purpose of understanding it for debate, I am developing the belief that the divide that we all assume is detrimental to our very existence.

Tarik Kochi, a PhD Lecturer in Law and International Security at the University of Sussex, makes the argument that "concern with the preservation of life" allows us to make normative judgements about what "ways of living [are] worthy of living", and that this preservation is grounded upon "the human-animal distinction" as the idea of preservation assumes within it that we only value "the complete preservation of humanity". When we are allowed to make decisions based only concerns for preservation, we justify the worst atrocity in the name of humanity.

This idea may seem odd in the abstract, but when taken in the context of day-to-day interactions, it is as if we assume a slavery of the animal as part of our ever developing society. We process the insides of cows for consumption, we force dogs to maintain a state of constant obedience towards us, and if they should ever lash out we inflict cruel and unusual punishment on them that most of the time ends with the end of their lives.

We have been reading and talking about the enslavement of our fellow man during American Studies for the past couple days, and I have been wondering why the same logic that abolished slavery has not yet been applied to the "animal other".

Thus I propose an alternate way of viewing the domination that we so complacently accept. In an article by Mr. Kochi along with Noam Ordan, a fellow advocate of equality between humans and animals they make the claim that we would be able to have a better understanding for our effect on our world if we were not a participant in it at all.

This project is tag-lined the "global suicide of humanity" and is a thought experiment designed to reject the entailment of human agency and the oppression that is a result of it.

We were talking in class today about thought experiments that would allow us to understand more about the way in which we think and how the human mind works, and as a participant in the thought experiment mentioned above I believe that it is a valuable practice.

Do you have an idea for a thought experiment? Is there something that you think society blatantly accepts without any understanding for why they do it?

Articles Used:
1.“Species War: Law, Violence, and Animals,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 2009; 5: 353–369, Proquest
2. http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol7no3_2008/kochiordan_argument.pdf