Of Course people are animals – get used to it

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, human nature, animal nature

My parents made sure I (and my brothers) knew that humans are animals from a very early age. They led us to understand that animals feel pain, fear and loss, and also joy, pleasure and fulfillment. We were not to be cruel. Of course, the peskiest insects and other vermin had to be expelled or killed, but we were to be humane about it, killing even an insect quickly.

Even as a believer in God, I learned the principles of the facts of evolution and the theory of natural selection when I was young, and from careful searching in the Bible I learned that evolution, specifically descent of humans from animals, does not threaten the reality of God, nor does it either prove or disprove His existence. I choose not to go further into detail here.

As a result of the above, I have always been puzzled by those who make charges of "anthropomorphism" whenever they encounter statements about the feelings or purposes of animals, whether domestic or wild. Nobody who understands evolution should think that only humans have a full range of emotions, or a feeling of purpose, or the ability to plan a course of action or decide between alternatives using reason. We have such faculties because our forebears had them! When any human does something another kind of animal can do, that is "zoomorphism"!! At best, there is a range of skills and competencies that we have developed further than any other animal.

The case for what I would call "advanced zoomorphism" is made by Melanie Challenger in How to be Animal: A New History of What it Means to be Human. Coming on the heels of a book I reviewed just a couple of weeks ago, MetaZoa by Peter Godfrey-Smith, it represents a healthy trend in recent writing.

Ms Challenger points out the hypocrisy of modern culture, which is still based on long-held opinion that humans are either not animals at all, or are categorically different in some way. Even as America, the most Biblically religious nation, turns away from that religion, and from its supposed denigration of animals in favor of Man (not so...stay tuned); even as American culture, and Western culture in general, becomes increasingly eco-centric and claims greater environmental sensitivity, that same culture destroys animals and entire species at an ever-increasing rate.

I must make a diversion here. Prior to the writing of Leviticus, everyone except a few slave-holders worked every day, from sunrise to sunset, and frequently long into the night. Domestic animals were worked to death, as were many slaves. There was a common practice that a domestic meat animal wasn't killed outright, but only partly dismembered, to keep most of it "on the hoof" to preserve the remaining meat; a 3-legged steer can still walk once it recovers. If any foreigners had the temerity to travel abroad, they were systematically exploited or mistreated and frequently enslaved, unless they traveled with a great band of bodyguards. Leviticus made huge social changes in God's name:

• One day in seven was to be a day of rest, not only for the people of Israel, but for their slaves, visiting or sojourning foreigners, and domestic animals. All were to enjoy a weekly Sabbath. That includes the household cook; on the Sabbath, everyone ate leftovers.
• Animals to be eaten (or sacrificed and then partly burned and partly eaten) were to be killed quickly, with a minimum of fuss, and the blood was to be poured out. The words against "eating the flesh with the blood" specifically forbid cutting part of an animal off to eat and leaving the animal alive.
• Visiting and sojourning foreigners had the same rights as all free persons.
• Slaves were to be indentured, not owned, unless a slave who had a particularly kind master volunteered to remain enslaved for life. "Bought with money", a phrase that appears a few times, refers to the work a slave could do in a typical term of six years or less, until the Sabbatical Year. The slaves' time was bought, not his or her body.

A big reason given for the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah was that they didn't do these things. The 70-year captivity was in part so "the land could enjoy her Sabbaths", which had been neglected for hundreds of years.

Back to the book, and I'll cut to the chase. All of the things that have been proposed as specially human gifts are found in animals, just to a lesser degree. Writers touted "Man the tool-using animal" until it was found that all apes make and use tools, as do many monkeys, also certain birds, plus some dolphins and a few species of fish. Only humans have language, others said, until a few apes were taught ASL; later it was found that certain species of parrot can learn our language well enough to hold simple conversations; prairie dogs don't have just one alarm call for "predator", but they distinguish hawk from snake from fox, and can indicate color and size (prairie dogs may have a small dictionary, but it includes a number of nouns, several adjectives, and a few verbs. That's language to me).

How to be Animal has lots of material about our fraught relationship with being animal. What it lacks is anything actionable. I was expecting some sort of manifesto, I suppose. But no, this is a catalog without anywhere to go. Sadly, it took me longer than I expected to read because the writing is rather dull. It doesn't carry one along, neither does it induce reflection as well as it might.

It is left for future writers to show the way to a new attitude, one that piques the conscience more keenly, and induces larger numbers of people to see animals for what they are, and see themselves for what they are.

Oxymoron of the day - Straight-talking Doctor

kw: human nature, human relations, doctors

Doctors see a lot, much of it tragic. And many of their patients do not particularly want to know what is really going on. I imagine this is the reason most of them have lost the ability to speak in clear terms. I have had the misfortune to be a patient of many doctors, and only two, my current G.P. and my gastroenterologist (or GI), seem able to speak frankly, avoiding vagueness or even untruth.

At the time I had cancer surgery, there were four doctors involved: The G.P. I had at the time, the same GI I still have, the surgeon, and an oncologist. I clearly remember when I met the oncologist, two days after the surgery, he said he was optimistic because my cancer was Stage 2. When he left the room, he talked to a nurse right outside the door, and told her, "Late Stage 3." Only weeks later did I get a chance to pin him down, without letting him know what I'd heard, and got him to admit Late Stage 3, and that he was most concerned because 7 lymph nodes had been cancerous; the threshold of worry is 4. Thereafter, he was more forthcoming with genuine information.

During the hospital stay, the surgeon and the GI came by to see me, at different times. I asked each for a prognosis. The surgeon would only say, "Well, the cancer was rather large, and I had to remove a lot of stuff, but I think Dr. [Oncologist] will be able to help you a lot." But the GI said, "It looks pretty bad. Dr. [Surgeon] is excellent, and he thinks he dug out everything." I asked what the percentages were, both with and without chemotherapy (I was still mad at the oncologist for what I'd heard). He looked right at me and said, "Today, you have a 15% chance of one year survival. With chemo, it ought to improve by 25% or 30%, to the 40-50% range."

My G.P. came by a couple times, but he was clearly clueless. I realized he was too young, and afraid to speak in any quantitative way. Hey, I am a quant kind of guy, and I am hardheaded enough to take a frank assessment about the chances of my own demise. My primary desire to avoid death was that my son was only 12 at the time.

Fortunately for me, that G.P. moved his business 30 miles away, so I went looking for a new doctor. The one I have now is a great deal better. He is old enough to know the score, but not so old that he'll retire any time soon. During my physical a few weeks ago, I told him I appreciated how clearly he would say things. He said something about being frank, "perhaps too frank." I said, "Just remember the motto of the Diplomacy Dept.: We say the awfullest things in the nicest way." And I told him I thought there was no such thing as too much information.

I feel very lucky. The stories I hear from others, you'd think their doctors went to school to learn how to be vague. Just today it occurred to me, they are like teenagers who don't want to tell Mom where they were, who was there, or what they did. Their arsenal is every vague term in the book: Some, More-or-less, Kind of, Perhaps. I realize not all medicine is cut-and-dried, quantitative knowledge. But, doc, if you know something, tell it to me clearly. Thank you.

Humanitarian dilemma

kw: local events, human nature

The big "health care" bill was "passed" and has been signed by the President. It faces immediate challenge by a number of attorneys general on various constitutional grounds. One prominent objection is that it forces everyone to obtain health insurance, whether they want it or not. I am not too bothered about such "forcing", and even now a bit sympathetic to the impulse, for this reason:

I reported a few weeks ago about visiting a friend who had attempted suicide. He and his wife had no health insurance. The medical bills are piling up, and his poor wife (who may soon be ex-wife) is being held responsible, because he is, naturally, incompetent (he is in the state psychiatric hospital at the moment). How expensive is family health insurance? How many premium payments would it take to cover a $200,000 bill for a month of intensive care?

I don't know if people "should" be forced to obtain it, but I sure wish my friend and his wife had been required or somehow induced to be insured, months ago.

Dumber than "success"

kw: local events, human nature

I visited a friend today, in the hospital. He'd first been in a coma for three weeks, and at the time nobody knew why for certain; then he began to wake up, but took another couple of weeks to regain some semblance of rationality. I saw him during that period, and he recognized me, but could not say my whole name, just one syllable.

Today he was much more clear, but very depressed. With good reason: he failed to commit suicide. Six weeks ago he went to a hotel, drank a fifth of vodka, then followed up with about 200 Benadryl tablets. That is known to induce coma, but is a very unreliable method of inducing death. Now, having spent a month in intensive care, with more weeks or months of physical therapy and psychological counseling (he is still suicidal), the main thing he has accomplished is saddling himself and his family with about a half million dollars in medical debt. Oh yeah, I didn't mention they don't have medical insurance.

I reckon there is a whole bunch of us that will have to help them out of this financial hole. But even more, we are trying to find ways to convince him that his life is valuable to us, and to his family, even if he doesn't value it so much right now. That is what I told him today. He still has a young child to raise, a kid who needs a father not a grave marker to lay flowers on. Though the grave might be a cheaper commodity, we're glad he is still with us, in spite of the high cost. (This I'm telling you, not him; I didn't mention money to him at all)

Sometimes a body feels pretty helpless. The best I could do at the moment was to sit and talk with him for a while.

Can anyone be evil? - prologue

kw: opinion, human nature

I recently saw a book that intrigued me, but I tabled the notion of getting it for the time being: The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo. Dr. Zimbardo's fame began in the 1970s with the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Briefly, a class of college students was divided into "prisoners" and "guards", and the plan was to observe behavior over several weeks. The experiment was stopped after just a few days. The "guards" had all become sadistic thugs and the "prisoners" were emotionally broken. The author's work and current results are found at www.lucifereffect.com/

I've thought about this phenomenon on and off for more than thirty years, relating it to the "good Germans" of the 1930s and 1940s—and the death camps—; to the killing fields of Cambodia; to the My Lai massacre. Recalling the very many Biblical injunctions to "think not more highly of ourselves than we ought to think", to "seek the lowly", that "pride comes before a fall", that a certain malign church leader "loved pre-eminence", and so forth, I concluded that the very act of thinking oneself better than others inclines one to evil. It fosters all kinds of abuse.

I am sure many know the Bible verse, "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." Note that it is the love not the money that is the problem. But I would say, summarizing not only Biblical exhortations, but similar words in every religion: To desire or attain pre-eminence is the main root of evil.