While I don’t disagree with McWilliams, I would say that he doesn’t go far enough. That is, rather than love for others beings a useful starting point toward objective rights, I believe that if not for love, there would be no real sense of justice at all. Love, therefore, isn’t just a useful starting point, as if there are other starting points just as useful. Rather, love is the necessary starting point without which justice has no value at all. Please let me explain.

Few people would argue that how we treat physical objects involves any sense of justice towards those objects in themselves. That is, there is nothing we owe, as a matter of justice, to physical objects; however we might act toward physical objects, it isn’t for their own sake. So, for example, no one ought to be outraged that a person might destroy the Mona Lisa because the Mona Lisa has some right to be left alone; anyone outraged ought to be so because humanity would presumably lose something valuable to humanity were that masterpiece destroyed.

When it comes to other conscious beings however, we do often think that we owe them – in themselves – something as a matter of justice. If we are outraged when someone swings a cat by her tail, we are outraged not because of some harm done to us, but because of the harm done to the cat, herself. Why are we concerned with what the cat feels? Because we have feelings for the cat. That is to say, because we have empathy for what another conscious mind experiences, we consider that other conscious minds ought not to be treated in ways that harm them.

Justice, therefore, isn’t objective in the sense of a cold calculating rationality unconcerned with the emotional lives of those it is meant to apply to. Justice is objective in the sense that it is best judged from a third party perspective, so that it can be applied as equally and fairly as possible. But, justice is fundamentally subjective. Justice only applies to conscious beings who have experiences of their own lives. We only care about those beings when, and because, we can empathize with them.

Whenever we attempt to decouple love from justice, we take away from the concept of justice that which is necessary and fundamental to it. Without love, justice is not only blind, it would be deaf and dumb as well; it wouldn’t be justice at all.

“And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations…” Friedrich Nietzsche, 1885

Why do I distrust theories that purport to explain and predict conscious behavior? Because there is no science of conscious behavior, and there may never be one.

Let us understand what science means in the physical world. To use an analogy (and not to compare anything) – through observation we know that objects always fall to the ground when dropped from some height, assuming that nothing obstructs their path. That is a set of facts about the world – it describes generally (and crudely in this short blog post) how the world IS. However, what we want to know is not just how the world is, we want to know WHY it is the way it is. So, we try to work out an explanation that fits the facts. That is the theory. We get confused when we refer to these theories as Laws, because that seems to imply that things MUST do as these Laws say they shall. But, all that we know is that the “laws” usually give us accurate descriptions of what happens, and they often give us a good way to predict what is most probably going to happen next. When it comes to falling objects, most of the time the theory and the “laws” are quite good enough. However, we also know that under certain circumstances, the theories and laws simply do not apply (at least we do if Einstein is right).

Now,we can see immediately that we have two glaring problems with developing theories that could explain what has happened and predict what will happen next when it comes to conscious behavior.

The first problem is that, in the end, it is impossible to isolate the “facts” that we want to explain. Not only is it the case that one individual will respond differently to the exact same set of circumstances than will another individual (unlike two objects falling in the same place at the same time), each individual may respond differently to the same circumstances at different times (it would be like the same object falling in a different way each time it was dropped in exactly the same way). Therefore, the “facts” about conscious behavior we are trying to describe are elusive. Moreover, when we want to understand something about conscious behavior, from whose perspective should we view the “facts” of the matter?

For example, there is a recent PeTA advertisement that has caused quite a bit of controversy in some circles. Whose perspective of that ad matters? From whose vantage point can we know the “truth”? Is the truth about the PeTA what PeTA takes it to be, what the actors who perform in it take it to be, what one feminist theorist takes it to be, what some other radical queer feminist theorist takes it to be, what young men between the ages of 14 and 20 take it to be, or what some middle-aged white guy blogger takes it to be or is it what “women” (whoever they are, as if they all think alike) take it to be?

When it comes to falling objects, while perspective matters, it doesn’t radically alter what is the case with respect to what is being studied – from a million miles away it may not look like an object is falling, but an object is still falling. In the case of this PeTA ad, what one person sees or does not see is all that matters for that person, regardless of anyone else’s perspective. (Notice, there are facts about the ad – the scenes depicted are what they are, but the translation – what is being said? – and the interpretation – what does it mean? – is entirely subjective, in a way that an object falling can never be.)

The second problem is that we cannot do in the world of conscious behavior what we can do in the world of material non-mental interactions. Let me explain. In the world of material non-mental interactions, we can set up experiments and run them over and over and over again, in more or less well-controlled conditions, in order to isolate just the particular properties and relationships we want to explain. We can drop as many objects from as many different heights as we choose, as often as we want, in order to understand and explain as best we can what is happening. However, we cannot do that in anything like the same way when what we want to explain are the non-physical mental activities of conscious minds. Even if we could design an experiment that would make sense, how could we run it multiple times on the same subjects and expect to get any meaningful results? We cannot. Here’s why.

The reason that we can understand falling objects is that dropping an object 10, or even 10,000 times, does not perceptually change the object. In normal circumstances the object is the same object after the ten-thousandth drop as it was before the first, and each drop itself is the same. A conscious mind, on the other hand, can only experience something once, and for every subsequent experience it may have of the same circumstances (which can never really be the same) the experience itself will be changed simply because the mind has already experienced something akin to it before. It would be like if a falling object knew what was coming next and adjusted its understanding of and behavior in the next fall.

Therefore, even when it comes to the physical non-mental world, all we have by way of explanation are theories that, for the most part, describe the way things are and can predict how things will probably be. But we don’t have “laws” that make it the case that things MUST happen in any certain way, and we have no knowledge that any of our theories are true. All we know is that, so far, the ones we still use are the ones that haven’t yet been shown to be false. When it comes to the world of conscious mental experience, our theories are even less well-grounded and we haven’t anything like “laws” at all.

A science of conscious behavior doesn’t currently exist (it may never), and most of the theories that are used to try to explain human behavior are just guesses, more often than not arising out of what the theorist wants to be the case, what they want to believe, or already believe, not what is the case – not just the “facts”.

I think much of the criticism of “single-issue campaigns” assumes that we (as people involved in any particular advocacy) overestimate our own influence and underestimate the ability of individual people to think on their own. I will try to explain.

Suppose that a person witnesses a SIC and thinks to themselves “Those people were protesting the terrible treatment of dogs at that shelter, but they weren’t saying anything about all the animals people eat. I bet they’re having steak for dinner. Hypocrites!” The logic goes that such a person would be therefore “let off the hook” or somehow “allowed” by the advocates to ignore the issue, and worse, they would be more convinced that they too should eat other animals. This takes for granted that, if only the advocates had presented the campaign within the context of a vegan message, more people would “make the connection” and then go vegan.

Now suppose that a person were to witness a campaign framed in a vegan context protesting the terrible treatment of dogs at a shelter. Isn’t it a real possibility that that person would say something like “Vegans? That’s crazy! How dogs are treated at shelters has nothing to do with what I eat, those people are extremists!” It is a very real possibility. Indeed, in the Ban Live Exports campaigns in Australia, from what I have been told that is exactly what people were saying to the people who wanted to frame that campaign in terms of veganism. So, even though advocates might think it makes sense to frame every issue in terms of anti-speciesism and veganism, it’s quite possible that targeted audience would be less inclined to think favorably about veganism as a result.

But here is where the underestimation of people’s ability to think comes in. Remember the first person I mentioned – who might say “Those people were protesting the terrible treatment of dogs at that shelter…I bet they’re having steak for dinner. Hypocrites!” – isn’t it at least possible that a person thinking this might then also think to themselves, “Wait a second, I think it’s wrong to be cruel to dogs, but I eat steak too, and that means I’m a hypocrite too. I don’t want to be a hypocrite, so I’ve got to do something differently from now on.” Isn’t that at least a possibility? I think it is a very real possibility.

Wait!! you may say, how can people know that they have to go vegan if we don’t tell them? To which I would respond, the vast majority of people don’t go vegan just because we tell them to (obviously) so there must be something more to it than just telling them. If people are going to “make the connection” that we have made, they are going to have to be ready to do it, and they aren’t going to do it just because someone tells them they should. If people just did what they’re told to do, then every person who’s ever heard Gary Yourofsky speak, or who has ever gotten a good leaflet would be vegan. We know that very few people who have heard Yourofsky speak or who have gotten a good leaflet go vegan, so simply telling people what to do, using just the right words, isn’t enough to get most people to go vegan. (Some people will object and say that Yourofsky isn’t using the right words, and that’s why his approach isn’t as good as it good be, but that just points out the problem again – who knows what are the exact right words? I say that no one does.)

I think the whole supposed problem with single-issue campaigns is overstated, based on a misunderstanding of how human beings make decisions, especially about things that are central to their world view, and an overestimation of our ability to influence others. I think advocates for other animals who being doing those animals a better service by spending less time thinking about how other advocates are “getting it wrong” and instead just doing what they think is right.

When it comes to males who think that they must act violently in order to show their control over nature, what they are really showing is that either they do not understand the reality which confronts them, or that they feel afraid and powerless in the face of that reality, or both.

Ample social/psychological research exists to support the conclusion that males generally have been socialized to think of manliness or masculinity in terms of power, control, rationality, material wealth, heterosexuality, lack of emotion (or an unwillingness to show emotion), etc. Boys grow up thinking that in order to be real men they must exhibit all these traits and characteristics and to the extent that they do not, then they are not real men. The problem is that no one can exhibit all these traits and characteristics in the ideal sense, and so boys grow up into men who can’t be who they are supposed to be.

The reality that confronts us is something over which we can have no control. Human beings are not gods, and the universe wasn’t “created” for us. We are just bit players in an infinitely expanding tragicomedy that has no script, no producer and no director. When people think that they can have any kind of meaningful power over this reality, they do not understand reality. Now, some people sense this powerlessness and become scared because of it, and in order to deny their fear, they act violently against others, to “reclaim” the power that they never had. Other people never sense this powerlessness and do little more than sleepwalk through life, thinking that they are “in charge” of what is happening in the world, and that they hold some special place of privilege in it which entitles them to control and subjugate others. They are mistaken (and are part of what Nietzsche calls the “herd”).

Real power comes with the knowledge that all that there is for any one conscious creature is what happens to and through them in the course of their lives, and that the life of any one conscious creature has meaning only in relation to other the other conscious lives it interacts with. Real power comes in recognizing the value of other conscious creatures, as they themselves are. Real power isn’t the control over (or the killing of) others, it is the control over oneself, with respect for all others.

Be a real man, not a poser.

Crossposted at ARZone

You’ll often hear about how (in the US anyway) we’ve had 200 years of animal welfare and still, nothing has changed except that the rate of use and the killing of other animals has increased. Fair enough. I wonder about what that means though as far as what we should do next, or differently.

For example, the US government spends about $15 Billion dollars each year fighting the “war on drugs” and, unless I’m missing something, they are losing that war; at least there are no indications that they are winning it. Drug use fluctuates from year-to-year and, depending on the drug and the age group considered, some recent trends are up, and some are down. It would be very hard, given the relative stability of the overall rate of use, and the apparent lack of a correlation between government action and the rate of use, to claim that the war on drugs has made any positive difference. One response to this failure has been to claim that what is needed is more spending, more enforcement and even harsher penalties for offenders. Considering that the US government has been escalating the war on drugs for decades to no avail, it would seem that such an approach would be futile at best. Another response has been to suggest that the very idea of a war on drugs is fundamentally misguided. That is, there is no amount of money or level of enforcement that will prevent people from doing what they want to do to their own bodies.

Now, the question is this. If it is true that society, by and large, recognizes the dangers of many illicit and illegal drugs, especially when those drugs are abused or over-consumed, and if it is true that a protracted, well-funded, government sanctioned, legally enforced campaign against drug use has been largely ineffective at curbing the use of drugs (even though such campaigns are directed to children beginning at a very young age and are largely supported by parents and community leaders) then is it the fault of that campaign itself that after all this time it has failed? In other words, is it the case that the campaign has failed because the campaign is flawed, or has the campaign failed because the problem is largely unsolvable?

In the case of animal welfare reforms, the animal protection movement and the animal rights movement more broadly, is it the case that, whatever campaigns have been mounted, and however much money has been spent (I suppose that it isn’t more than the money spent on the “war on drugs”), these campaigns have failed because the campaigns themselves are flawed, or is it that the problem of animal use, abuse, misuse and killing is intractable and unsolvable?

“We have to respect freedom only when it is intended for freedom, not when it strays, flees itself, and resigns itself. A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

Once I thought that the videos taken by groups such as Mercy for Animals were videos showing the extreme behavior of certain bad actors, and that, as such, they could be dismissed by the general population as not being representative of the “animal industry” as a whole. However, at that time I was allowing a particular way of looking at the world to cloud my judgment and I now have come to a different conclusion.

These videos show what is, and indeed what must be, the routine behavior in these settings. When people are given absolute authority over the lives of others who are deemed “unworthy”, they will, by and large, abuse that authority and abuse those others, in the most egregious ways. It is not unusual at all, it is the necessary result of the structure of the institution itself (and not the result of “bad people” acting badly – if any one of us were in the same institutional setting, we would more likely than not exhibit the same abusive behaviors). Please read about the Stanford Prison Experiments (here and here) to learn more about the corrupting influence of power and the evils of “othering” if you doubt me.

The value, then, in these videos is that they expose exactly how routine this abuse is, and how such abuse is a necessary outcome of the very systems of exploitation themselves – these videos show that it is impossible for there ever to be any “humane” way of breeding, raising, confining and slaughtering other animals, no matter how we try to reform it. As reforms are instituted, and as Mercy for Animals and others continue to produce these videos, it will become plain – to a public who would rather not see – that any reform is not enough reform and that the only reform of exploitation that will respect and protect other animals is the eradication of exploitation altogether.

We don’t need fewer of these undercover videos, we need more of them.

I used to think that Truth was something I could find “out there” if only I searched long enough, as if Truth was a thing to be discovered, the way one might discover a planet circling some distant star, as if Truth had an eternal form, some non-material substance – a contradiction in terms if ever there was one – some “thing” I could grasp and hold in my heart and head, if not in my hands, I used to think I could find it and then show it to myself and then to others and, seeing Truth, once and for all, therein I could also find meaning, find purpose, find something to believe in. I used to think that but no longer do, but still, I do not despair. Between the moment of birth and the moment of death lay an infinity of moments, like the infinity of points along a line, and in an infinity there are infinite possibilities – I am whatever I choose to be, and there are more choices than I have time to explore, and more time than I can conceive of – what would it be to be without time, to be lost in the nothingness that precedes birth, that comes with death – I am outside of time and trapped within it at once, at the same – time. Camus said it’s absurd, this reckoning with time, this acknowledgment of the boundaries that contain, define, delineate and free us – who could be more free than the man who knows with certainty the space he is in, the effects he can have, the limits of what he can do? The world confronts man because he confronts the world, and where consciousness is absent freedom is absent too.

The truth lies within, not without, but in knowing that Truth is not “out there” still, do not despair – is everything relative? is the truth within you a truth that is different than the truth within him or her or me? what will be the anchor for our lives, if Truth is not and cannot be?

Consciousness has no meaning without something of which to conceive, the subject needs an object which to apprehend – there must be an “other” if there is to be a “me” – I am nothing conscious without something of which I am conscious; without an object of my consciousness, there can be only a feeling mind – a mind that senses but not that senses something else.

This is the only truth, that we are not alone, although we are alone, and within our own consciousness if we seek a Truth that stands apart from you and I, then we are as good as lost in the deep darkness of a timeless space, rattling around in the debris of a big bang still burning. Meaning in life is the meaning we find by looking into the eyes of the other and finding ourselves, not in the imaginary world of universal values that we pretend to exist “out there”.

Live in your life, in this world, surrounded by others who are alive as are you, live the truth of the common experiences of experience itself, become the truth of being.

How many people do you know who were once staunchly conservative in their politics but who are now very liberal? Surely you know people who were once hippies, who said “down with the establishment” and “never trust anyone over 30″, who are now respected elder members of that establishment they once decried.

How many people have you heard of who were once devoutly religious but are now not at all, or how many former atheists, Muslims or Jews have you heard of who now kneel in Christian church pews?

When people say, quite seriously and with the deepest conviction of their hearts in their voices, “I will always love you” and “Till death do us part”, how many of them think that, forget about forever, tomorrow is a long time and who knows what the next sunrise will bring?

And now, what about you, and what about me? What are the things about which each of us has thought so resolutely, “I will never change my mind, it will always be so, I have found the path for my life and forever here I go”? Don’t we all, each one of us, begin some of our journeys fully confident of the new map in our hands, knowing absolutely that we will stay on this road? Yes, that is what we all do, at least some of the time, about some of ways we have chosen to give real meaning to our lives.

But then, doesn’t that mean that some of us must look back one day and wonder, to ourselves if not aloud, “How did I get here? I am not now the person I used to be”? Won’t some of us reflect on some of the resolutions we were once resolved to and think, “But I was a different person then, and I didn’t know then what I know now”? Yes, at least some of us will.

We like to think of ourselves as beings who make progress, who move from mistaken or misguided views to positions based on clarity and sound reasoning. If only that were always true. Alas, we are complex and curious creatures and though we think we are headed forward into a better and brighter future, what we think is progress is often simply constant change. The road we’re on has many shortcuts and detours, many alternate routes, and the map in our hands wasn’t printed using permanent ink. The directions we follow evolve as we grow, and our growth is as unpredictable the wind.

When you hear again of someone you know who once loved Jesus, but who now has left the flock, remember that there but for the grace of god go us all. And when you hear of the scientist, who has abandoned her much loved reason so that she can fall before god and pray, don’t despair at her confusion, you may worship beside her one day.

Almost no one who takes their wedding vows seriously takes those vows expecting or planning for their eventual divorce, just as very few who declare “Never again” (about whatever it was) expect to later reverse course. But that is what we do, more often than we care to admit, and whatever we are now most convicted about one day we will no longer see fit to resolve.

What resolutions did you once make, about such things that are most important in your life, that no longer hold sway? There must be some, or there will be soon enough. As you’ve read this, have you been thinking, “Oh no, not me, not about this anyway. I firmly believe, I am truly convinced”. Yes, indeed, that’s what we all say.