For Bump

Earth: Extra Credit

2009-05-13T06:56:00.000-07:00

EARTH

"Earth" is a compilation of "Planet Earth" footage highlighting relevant connections between climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity. The movie is only 90 minutes in duration but does well at demonstrating our perception of climate change and its effects on specifically the lynx, polar bears, and elephants. The film begins by explaining how plants help establish the planet's rich biodiversity.

The Boreal forest, located in the Arctic circle, forms a ring of trees around the planet in a nearly continuous line. This is the world's largest forest and responsible for producing nearly a third of all its oxygen. But even though it runs around the world, the Boreal forest is almost barren. Most of its trees are conifers, pine trees that few animals can feed on. The conifer needles of pine trees are compact and resistant to the cold; this makes their growth possible from early spring to late autumn. The result is a nearly empty enchanted forest where snow tracks and signs of life are very rare. The narrating voice of Earth, James Earl Jones, tells us about one of planets most endangered species, the lynx, a species so rare that it was previously thought extinct before being spotted in the wild again.

The lynx lives in the nearly uninhabited Boreal forest, and travels constantly in search for food. The movie shows a special glimpse at a male lynx. He is described as a spirit, quiet and mysterious, treading through the Boreal forest in search for mate.

"Earth" then moves on to polar bears, who also inhabit this Arctic part of the world. Even more than the lynx, the polar bear population is under attack by global warming and the melting of the ice caps. Because there are fewer and fewer glaciers, polar bears are finding it more difficult to find food. The movie follows the a male bear through the harsh season of winter, how it travels hundreds of miles in search for dangerous prey that may mortally wound him. And he eventually does find some prey, but it is unfortunately a walrus. In large numbers, walruses can overpower and fatally injure a polar bear. In this case our exhausted polar bear dies after a brief altercation with a family of walruses.

Another fascinating scene shows a unique truce between elephants and lions during the dire drought of summer in the African savanna. Even a large pride of lions would not dare attack a small family of elephants, and on a blazing summer day, both animals gather peacefully around a watering hole. This moment reminded me of the “truce” between animals in Rudyard Kipling's How Fear Came. Like in reality, one day a year, in the famine brought by drought, Kipling wrote that the animals called a truce, a time of no bloodshed. After watching Earth, I had a deeper appreciation for Kipling's work. When I first read How Fear Came, I took it with a grain of salt, but it turns out that Kipling's writing is purposeful, poetic, elegant, and researched. How these stories are considered children's literature is beyond me; Kipling confronts Imperialism in a daring and sensitive way. The advantage to children's literature is that children, whose minds and hearts are impressionable, can still be influenced, something he may have thought impossible for white men.

My favorite segment of the movie was when a cheetah captures a young gazelle (as seen in the picture above). This slow motion section brilliantly showcases the difficult pendulum of survival in the wild. If the cheetah fails to capture his prey, he dies—if the cheetah succeeds, the gazelle dies. Humans are not faced with those dire circumstances anymore; our lives are full of comforts, far, far removed from the cheetah and his grave necessity for speed and cunning; that is why we are no longer “wild.” This is my favorite scene because once the cheetah catches the fleeting gazelle, the hunter appears to have a dutiful sense of business about killing its prey. Instead of hacking away at the gazelle's legs or body, the cheetah pins it down and bits its neck right below the head. The clean death is devoid of unnecessary pain and you never get the feeling that the cheetah has enjoyed itself in the hunt. It is humane as killing can be. And how stupid does “humane” look there, pretending that its definition has anything to do with humans or our actions and nature.

The end of "Earth" is an urge to recognize the wonderful biodiversity the planet has to offer and drive home that we are the ones catastrophically changing the planet into a wasteland.

4-16 Jungle Book I

2009-04-24T06:49:00.000-07:00

"How Fear Came" and "Mowgli's Brothers"

[vi]

"I killed for choice-- not for food," the tiger purred. [i]

Upon reading those words, I suspected that Kipling would use the rest of How Fear Came, to define the important difference between necessary killing and how we're treating animals.

Mowgli, like the reader, is part of the audience in this story... A wise primate retells the story of man's separation from animals, which comes with the consequences of death and fear. According to animal legend, the world was in a static state of paradise until "the First of the Tigers forgot that he was the master and judge of the Jungle, and, leaping upon [a] buck, broke his neck," [iv] giving Death it's first soul.

Graver yet, the smell of the fallen Buck's blood has a negative effect on the animals; it makes them foolish. Instead of communicating effectively amongst one another, the smell of blood seduces and dumbs them. The former master and judge of the Jungle, the first of Tigers, has tarnished animal-kind by introducing the business of Death, awakens selfishness and implants fear. Happy naivety is replaced with sobering mortality.

Shortly after that, as fear of death and shame consume The Tiger, he kills a human, who the Tiger mistakenly takes as Fear himself. But, this second death spreads fear in the hearts of men, igniting their long-lasting imprudence with the beasts.

"...Of all things, [animals] most fear Man," [ii] because "[he] will follow thy trail till thou [all] diest!" [iii]

Consider that animals, unlike humans, kill only for food and fight only when threatened. That is the way killing is fair. By contrast, Man kills animals whenever and wherever he pleases, sometimes for food or the growth of commerce, other times for sheer entertainment and pleasure. Kipling correctly prophesies that we willingly and unwillingly purge the world of its non-human inhabitants for reasons that often don't register. If society continues expanding, farm (food) animals continue to be harvested, and the world's forestation disappears, we will be left with a far less marvelous planet and a far more sinister shame. How can our precious intellect be turning the world into a barren wasteland? That is what the animals fear most--and know only man can deliver.

[v]

A monkey may live up on a tree, but its branches hold bird nests and its base offers an anteater's feeding ground. Similarly, the Lion shares the savanna with a wide range of animals; some he eats, some he competes with, others don't bother him, and many he never sees. These conglomerations of animals, living next to, behind, in front of, above, and below each other, manage to live in a harmony with the world and each other that eludes Man. Kipling is presenting an unspoken communication between all things wild, which ironically contrasts with Man's alleged ability to communicate. (In this blog, and throughout the world) It is important to mention that, unlike Man, an animal's communication never yields tears and is never brought to sorrow. This begs the question: whose language is more effective?

"No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use... now I know thou art a man," said Bagheera. [vii]

In the quote above, Kipling proposes that no male should be considered a "man" until he is moved to tears. By crying, a man proves he has feelings.

Kipling's construction, of a more desirable human and animal experience, in The Jungle Book is anti-Imperialistic because it necessitates, not a display of dominance, but a submission to sympathy and selfless love. In "Mowgli's Brothers", Mowgli cries when he is separated from his wolf-family. "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" depicts a family's appreciation for a fighting mongoose. In "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat", a village is saved by a human to animal conversation. And, even in "How Fear Came",-a unique version of the world's fall from grace- the ancient harmony between Man and animal fosters nostalgia, in the reader, for a perfect love that transcends Fear.

[i] Rudyard Kipling, "How Fear Came",
[ii] Rudyard Kipling, "How Fear Came",
[iii] Rudyard Kipling, "How Fear Came",
[iv] Rudyard Kipling, "How Fear Came",
[v] http://www.orange32.com/design/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/abc_cover.jpg
[vi] http://www.obit-mag.com/media/image/2059_death_MH.jpg
[vii] Rudyard Kipling, "Mowgli's Brothers", http://www.readbookonline.net/read/486/10057/

4-28: The Miracle of Purun Bhagat

2009-04-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

The Miracle of Purun Bhagat, written by Rudyard Kipling, is the story of a man named Purun. The story, set in India, follows Purun Dass (later Purun Bhagat) from his acquisition of wealth and power, through his spiritual rebirth as a holy man, to his death.

At the beginning of the story, Purun is at the height of his social success, holding honorary degrees, acquiring "millions of money," [i] and is as finely Englished as any Indian man could ever be. Those things, however, do not make Purun happy and he sets forth on a personal pilgrimage, on a journey where no paved roads follow, where "position, palace, and power" [ii] mean nothing. He ends his life as "far as the affair's of the world [go]." [iii]

Purun trades his finest clothing for the "ochre-coloured dress of a Sunnyassi (holy man)." [iv] Barefoot and poor, Purun wanders India, living on the generosity of random villagers or other holy men willing to share sustenance, and sleeps on an antelope skin. This is how he humbly becomes Purun Bhagat.

I, reading this story in a physical construction of the church of reason, housed by walls of stone interlaced with electricity and internet, cannot help feeling that Purun has already lived one life, the enviable life of financial and social successes. But Purun willingly renounces his throne; he "let those things go, as a man drops the cloak he no longer needs." [iv] By comparing the dismissal of riches to the perfunctory removal of a cloak or sweater in excess heat, Kipling demonstrates Purun's newly founded and genuine disinterest for society and wealth. In using the word "cloak", Kipling suggests that society, driven by the acquisition of wealth or land or anything which may be categorized as good, acts like a type of cloak and thus may be concealing something or some part of existence. This idea puts to doubt the reader's previously conceived notions of life and purpose. It is a good deal of work filling an imaginary vault with money; one could spend all his life doing it, so it is better to know now, rather than later, if such a struggle is even worth pursuing.

(Purun visiting and connecting with animals) [ix]

Later in the story, Purun finds a semi-permanent residence behind a shrine shouldered on the side of a mountain that overlooks a small village. There, as he has lived since his second, simple life, he relies on the townspeople to feed him. The scene where the "wild things" (animals) come to visit Purun and he is able to communicate with them via a "love that knows but cannot understand," [v] recalls the ancient philosophy of Ahimsa, positive cosmic force of interconnection, which harmoniously binds all life the way Purun and the forest's animals are connected. Purun makes friends with monkeys, deers, and even bears. He shares his food, fire, and bed with them. The animals are more his companions than the rotating round of villagers that silently bring up food.

Many years go by and at the end of the story, it is white-haired Purun's relationship and understanding of animals that saves the village from an impending mud-slide only the animals' "instincts" can detect. The physical effort, to speedily notify the village and help them escape to the other side of the mountain, is, however, too much for Puran to endure. After the townspeople are led to safety, Purun dies in the company of his dear brethren (dear meant both as a "four-legged animal" and "one held in tender esteem"), "sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his armpit, and his face turned to the north-east." [vi] I could not help thinking about Buddha, as he is often depicted, in his respective cross-legged position, and how Purun's physical death could no more kill him than it killed the first Buddha, Siddhartha. Instead, Purun, like Buddha, is immortalized by his connection to animals and man. The harmony he obtained, simply too beautiful to merely end in death, affected too many villagers, through multiple generations, to ever be forgotten.

(a cross-legged Buddha or possibly Purun) [x]

Rudyard Kipling's story displays a fascinating Derrida-like deconstruction of the self, as witnessed in Purun, who must have had philosophical scepticisms about the Church of Reason/Academia before choosing to end his formerly elite life.

Further more, Purun, after questioning himself and the world to the point of distrust, must have used the sympathetic imagination to connect with the animals he later comes to understand. He seems to transcend the physical space between him and the "wild things", gaining understanding of the creatures by isolating their pervasive similarities to humans. Anyone invoking the sympathetic imagination must ask: How am I like this animal? Do we have shared desires? What weaknesses do we share? What comforts both the animal and me? Asking and asking, answering and answering until in that "extraordinary affinity, or sympathy, [no] flavour of grossness" [vii] in life remains, and we discover, and perhaps rediscover, how petty the differences between humans and animals are and how similarly we yearn.

Conclusively, I ask myself, what truth did I get from this fiction?

As sensitive as I am to the notion that the human heart may be corrupted by the kindest dishonesties--and to the possibility that this story, poetic and sympathetic, may appeal only to my feelings and not to what's logical, it does feel real. That is all I know to be true, what I feel.

After writing this though, I feel like Rikki (from Rudyard's Rikki Tikki Tavi) as "he climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing was done." [viii] Curious, but lost and afraid, the practice of proper word choice, sure looks like fun.

[i] Rudyard Kipling, The Miracle of Purun Bhagat, http://www.p-synd.com/wild/purunbhagat.htm
[ii] "" ""
[iii]"" ""
[iv] "" ""
[v] "" ""
[vi] "" ""
[vii] Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, pg. 253
[viii] Rudyard Kipling, Rikki Tikki Tavi, http://www.p-synd.com/wild/rikkitikkitavi.htm
[ix] http://www.p-synd.com/wild/pb3big.jpg
[x] http://www.mysacredfig.com/Images/Buddha%20under%20Tree.jpg

3-10 Hopkins

2009-04-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

I am human. I fawn over the language we’ve developed and the music we have written. Our artistic talent and physical prowess flabbergast me. The great architecture of this world, houses our worldwide society that endures much: through wars and pestilence, ignorance and prejudice, we manage to forge this world with labors and irons. Sometimes society has been dark and gruesome, sometimes enlightened and beautiful. We operate under those precious, shared weaknesses immortalized by Shakespeare’s Shylock (If you prick me, do I not bleed?). And I, being no less a Jew in the American-Christendom than Shylock, understand without brevity the biological similarities between the reader, his or her best friend, their cousins, enemies and distant acquaintances. There is sophisticated elegance to the scientific notion of our commonality: common descent, common susceptibilities and strengths, and shared morality, but this does not stop at our species. The real test of the human spirit may be to realize it is not human at all. Our spirit must be, despite what we see or hear as differences, the same spirit that beams dynamically in all forms of life—human, animal, and plant.

Let us admit something to ourselves: we are a proud race of beings, which have accomplished much, and have grandeur amongst this planet’s other inhabitants. But we are still coarse beings. We are coarse because the tools we develop falter, our vision obscures, and our hearing fails us. Even our minds, capable as they may be, do not know the whole of even one particular field, not in mathematics or science or language. We do not have any perfect truths, or complete facts of how we have arrived, and especially of where we are headed socially, economically, or evolutionarily. We are coarse because we are of little account to this universe, which would function unaffectedly in our absence. Our unique, human history is nothing more than trivial; the universe is less affected by our actions than a single period affects the end of any sentence that I have ever written. I will go so far to say that human history cannot even be represented by the missing cross of a single “t” in all of written literature.

In the wake of such a stupefying suggestion, what are we humans left with? All of earth and its inhabitants. This must be enough for our vanity. This must satiate our materialism. Let it be stated: I live like a King! I travel from castle to castle, feasting at the smallest whims of my culinary desires. I play tennis, like monarchs and royalty before me, whenever the mood strikes or the delightful weather beckons. My studies feel optional; there's no urgency for proficiency. Not even time, the fire in which we all burn, rushes me. This is the spring of a life that has the genetic disposition and nutritional resources to become a centenarian. But even if I live two hundred years of enviable comfort, what will define my existence as a member of this third rock from the sun? What, considering that I have discredited all human achievement as universally insignificant, is worth living for?

[v]

Pictured above: Simple, single- celled bacteria (life) dating back 3.5 billion years

Something is worth living for, or life wouldn't exist, and the elements that assembled and allotted life eons ago would have been bits of shapeless nothings traveling throughout the universe. But life, for reasons that remain quite mysterious, exists. And not only does life exist, but it fights. In what scientists estimate to be close to two billion years, life's complexity intensified, producing the known biodiversity of our planet. Life appears to be continually reinventing itself. The journey from amoebas to Homo sapien is a testament to our life forces' spectacular will, and it is likely that if life on Earth fails, somewhere in the vastness of space, another planet is conceivably on a similarly paved road. There are frozen signs of ancient, microscopic life embedded in the ice sheets of Europa, Jupiter's moon, and on Mars. As a merchant of Venice once said,

“No matter how we catch it, find it, or come by it...Whatever [life] is made of, whereof it is born, we are of it.” [i]

Matter, living and nonliving, is comprised of 92 fundamental and naturally occurring elements. These elements assemble the animal and plant organisms that fight desperately for an infinitesimal crevice of the universe, that change and adapt at the microscopic level to increase their chances of survival, and have evolved into the distinguished, distant relatives of man.

[vi]

Pictured above: The hand with a wheel on the palm symbolizes the Jain Vow of Ahimsa. The word in the middle is "ahimsa". The hand and wheel represent the resolve to halt the cycle of reincarnation through relentless pursuit of truth and non-violence.

That is why the Jain (practitioners of an ancient Indian religion) revere all life, even insects and individual blades of grass. The Jain attempt to annihilate their human and animal-selves, one step farther than Derrida, a French philosopher, asks, and thus connect themselves to the universal, sentient life force. “This sentiment of tenderness, for those of the sentient lower creatures, [is] an element in the spiritual life.” [ii] Without a self, without the hubris of human desires for material things-or even the animalistic inclinations to dominate, acquire territory, and kill for food-the elegance of life, the magnificence, the feeling of love and horripilation and the perfect, wordless poem of the universe become interlaced in your physical and mental self, a stitching of which is all “gash, gold-vermilion.” [iii] Only then will human evil tame and harmony may “father-forth [with a] beauty [that] is past change.” [iv]

I am the world's most poorly executed Jain. This is what I shall do: love the earth, the sun and the animals. That is what I shall do... That is what I shall do.

[i] William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Animal Humanities Anthology, pg. 255.

[ii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, Animal Humanities Anthology, pg. 390.

[iii] Gerard Hopkins, The Windhover, Animal Humanities Anthology, pg. 376.

[iv] Gerard Hopkins, Pied Beauty, Animal Humanities Anthology, pg. 377.

[v] http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/images/bacteria.jpg

[vi] http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Jain_hand.svg/216px-Jain_hand.svg.png

4-9 Hunting

2009-04-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

The motivation, reason, and pleasures of Victorian hunting are encompassed by Gordon Cumming and Frederick Selous, two very successful hunters of the time, both of whom the world could have gone without. Hunting for sport can be divided into two groups, rounding up massive amounts of dead animals, or storing and selling live ones. “Reinforcing the sense of strangeness… animal quarters were arranged for commercial convenience, the result was a confusing and in some cases frightening jumble of animals, with predators and prey closely juxtaposed.”[i] The chapter The Thrill of the Chase opens foreign caged animals. The inconceivable assembly of animals denotes considerable effort and wasted resources to accomplish nothing beneficial for the world. “Young animals were considered referable to older ones as captures because they were more adaptable and easier to transport.” [ii] So from a very young age, the natural course of animal life is disrupted for the brief entertainment purposes of man. Denied any natural course of life, Victorians had the audacity to wonder why some “mothers were apt to fight” – “a lioness with her cubs was characterized as one of the most savage of animals.” [iii] There is nothing more compassionate about sparing the animal for capture and sell; one captured animal usually signified the death of at least one other.

“Dead wild animals symbolized the British suppression of the Afghans… Rows of horns and hides, mounted heads and stuffed bodies, clearly alluded to the violent, heroic underside of imperialism.” [iv] Public appreciation for hunting rested upon the “celebration of naked force.” [v] I agree that animals exhibit an awesome and respectable amount of force, but I can never understand why, revered and impressive, hunters choose to stop it. Victorians believed that “the combination of manual and intellectual skill distinguished the English colonialist from his native charges”, hunting large game then gave this belief physical trophies of reassurance.[vi] Sadly the quality of “trophy” was important. Hunting connoisseurs noticed “the nobler the slain animal, the harder it was to reproduce its living fire.” [vii] Many animal were killed and discarded because of this necessary aesthetic quality.

Hunting is dominating something; dominating something is establishing superiority. This was a fiercely popular and savage Victorian sentient that resulted in crudeness and disrespect of life. “The gratifications of hunting overlapped significantly with those of dominion… and the association of the big game hunter with the march of empire was literal.” [viii] The hunter is a microcosm of military invasion and capture of foreign lands. But unlike when two countries fight man against man, gun versus gun, hunting is much more like exerting physical force over an eight year old girl. The façade defining hunting as “a series of increasingly difficult obstacles to be overcome by superior intelligence, skill, courage, and force” dissipates under any rational consideration.[ix] The speed and range of a rifle’s bullet far exceed any animal’s strengths. Also, hunters often have the element of surprise; killing in cold blood is not simply distasteful but prevents the animal from really rousing its power and brute savagery. Without that primal excitement, which heightens an animal’s senses in the interest of self preservation, hunting is reduced to something safe and dull. More times than not, hunting plays out like this: “he came upon an extremely old and noble black rhinoceros lying fast asleep… I fired from the saddle.” [x]

Ironically, “English sportsmen were full of praise for the extraordinary intuitive knowledge which a few shikaris possess” but could not realize that it was the sympathetic imagination that allowed these men to “know” the animals.[xi] By knowing the animal’s choices, travel patterns, and habits, shikaris exhibited a unique understanding of animals unknown to the white English sportsmen.

George Orwell "Shooting an Elephant" is a plausible, fictional variation of what Ritvo describes as hunting. In that story, a nameless "I", representing the English "gentlemen", recalls his horrific killing of an elephant. An event that "made [him] vaguely uneasy"[xii], though he admits that "in that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant." [xiii] The elephant's life slowly bleed from him, the crude rounds of rifle poking holes in the canister of his life-force, the life seeping out of the elephant in a most horrific manner. The transmogrification from noble beast to limp mass of flesh "seemed dreadful... to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die." [xiv]

[i] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 243
[ii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 246
[iii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 246
[iv] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 248
[v] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 249
[vi] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 252
[vii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 253
[viii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 254
[ix] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 259
[x] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 264
[xi] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 261
[xii] George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant", 440
[xiii] George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant", 442
[xiv] George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant", 443

Beast and Man in India

2008-04-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

If you value your life and the struggle for survival, you must value all life around you. "Be a good [person], be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can."1 Animals are remarkably sentient creatures;their social behaviors “like humans, have their tragedies and mayhap (perhaps) their romances.” 2 The more time one spends pondering animals, observing their behavior, uncovering their human likeness, the sooner it becomes evident “how cowardly it [is] to hurt the weak and the helpless.”3 Hunting, purely for sport, is especially despicable. Even “the wild boar has been known to face and defeat the tiger, and though his first impulse is to fly before British sportsmen, he often makes a gallant stand before the unequal odds of horses, razor-sharp spears, and legions of yelling rustics brought against him.”4 If you look for courage or bravery in the animal kingdom, you will find it. If you wish to discover love between parent and offspring, you will find it; sadness, happiness, boredom, fright, and excitement are all exhibited by animals. Killing sentient animals when unnecessary for survival is meritless and unworthy of our evolutionary position.

1) Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 12
2) John Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India, 71
3) Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, 52
4) John Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India, 180

Victorians in Asia

2008-03-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

"The dominion of humans over nature has led to a devaluing of the natural world and a subsequent destruction of its resources"(Sullivan 922). The world is frightfully coarse and scarcely mannered; life is not only unappreciated, but abused. Most insultingly is how things have been defined by the word "just". It is just a chicken; it is just a tree. To use “just” about a living thing is attempting to strip the mystery of its creation and purpose. "Just" belittles the struggle millions of networked cells endured on the arduous pilgrimage of evolution. And what better way of protecting the damaging actions of man is there than establishing "a dominantly human-focused morality" for the "Western Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam" (Sullivan 922)? In their most sympathetic form, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree to some degree of responsibility and limited "obligation to creation" (Sullivan 922). The lack of significant emphasis in sympathy is evidently seen in our planet's ailing state. The damage exerted on the planet denotes a lack of compassion without measure. Global warming would be forgivable if it was the inevitable residue of an international economy that ended poverty. The cruelty and mass murder of millions of animals could never be appropriate, but the pain would boarder on understandable if the profit-bent food industry annihilated something as offensive as child starvation. The melancholy truth: we have the means to reduce cruelty, protect the environment, and drastically better the world, but our disturbing lack of courage damns us. We do not turn to each other, but blindly, anthropocentrically, delude ourselves with the manifestation of a personal God and a personal heaven that makes Earth seem small and petty. So long as that idea remains fashionable, and that is the way we should talk of it – like a sweater quickly going out of style, "harmony with nature and with other humans" cannot exist (Sullivan 923). Society can continue raping the world for a couple more hundred years; feasting feverishly on all of its natural resources until every life form is threatened. And since my arguments always suggest that no blissful kingdom awaits you, what motivation do you have to change? Do not allow yourself to be defined as an organism that knew how to care and love and wonder but cast it all aside. Realize what the consciousness offers: you are sitting and reading the combination of 26 simple characters that are instruments in "the art of writing... all that mankind has done, thought, gained or been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books" and vast libraries of binary bytes (Carlyle 609). Mankind always mysteriously conceives “a new vehicle and vesture [so] our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live” (Carlyle 608). All of life exhibits this evolution; to go against it is faster and eaiser than slowly sifting through reason, pondering science, and reforming the self. “Each person needs to remake himself or herself in the image of the divine ideal” whose life embodies “friendliness and compassion” (Sullivan 925). Epitomizing ahimsa by foregoing “causing pain to or killing any life out of anger, or from a selfish purpose” Mahatma Gandhi lived nobly.

I know how impossible it sounds to be reborn to any likeness of this man, but do not forget that one, simple man was all he was. My heaven is a world where men are more like Gandhi; my hell is where “the tree should just stop bearing any fruit”; our salvation is sympathy (Shilapi 931).

Holi Festival

2008-03-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

.....I foray into Hindu religion on a glorious Saturday among some of my classmates and the wonderfully bleached and rounded fellow we sometimes call Bump. Mother Nature blows us cool and crisp air while Apollo’s chariot hangs at a comforting and warming distance. I, wary of Holika, the demon sister of Hiranyakashipu, king of demons, came ready to fight! Size matters not! I would use my noble hammer and smite the evil, vanquishing Holika once and for all attempting to burn her brother Prahlad so many moons ago. But karma had Hiranyakashipu’s evil plan turn, and Holika is burned in her brother’s pyre. I’m relieved; I’m a lover, not a fighter. And indeed I had come to the right place then. Why it wasn’t long before the holy people started singing and chanting for Radha and Krishna, and everyone worshiped in the name of love and selflessness.
.....I spiraled down into my sub-consciousness, zooming through a tunneled nothingness filled with high-contrast blotches and rings. When my decent levels off, as there is no bottom or top, Radha and Krishna stare tellingly at me. Inside of myself I cannot hide anything from anyone, and my unsettling heart beat fastens as the beating drums of holy men festively up their tempo. I sit Indian-style in a foreign Hindu temple for a moment as wispy ghosts of love are drawn fancifully in my imagination. My skin horripilates with waves of displeasure and desire to cry. Love conjures from the grave a Glorious phantom to illuminate my tempestuous soul , and from the vision, something mysterious and something serene begins. I recommit myself to love. Fearlessness funnels into the imaginary hammer that trumps Hiranyakashipu and I promise to love more. When I do not love, I will try to, and when I am not trying to, I am thinking about love. And my imperfect life will follow love’s perfect path.
.....Cat taps my shoulder; reality snaps into focus as my eyes open wide; her soft smile is gracious. “It’s time to eat,” she says, her mousy voice sounding full of etiquette. I eat two plates of food; Rooftop’s girlfriend doesn’t eat as much as samples, so I wrap up her plate easily. Bump shares with me a sweet round donut hole; a lawyer and his girlfriend sneak away to “change”. After the scrumptious vegetarian dinner Bump kicks off Dhulhendi, the powder throwing part of the festival. We laugh wildly, playing like children. One innocent coloring leads to another and suddenly we’re covered! The music returns and the crowd mixes dancing, running, and powder dousing. Smiles beam and jokes abound as Blake takes it in the mouth (hahaha). Oh, the Holi festival.

P2: Charles Darwin and Sympathy

2008-03-05T20:13:00.001-08:00

Charles Darwin and Sympathy

We were born with five senses, our initial connections to the world; everyone is connected through these senses. We can share the medium of worldly experience because, for the most part, the quality and function of a sense varies very little between two healthy people. The sky is blue for everyone who can see it. Science is a collection of these confirmable observations. But for all of the understanding science has brought to the world, it is rarely used in establishing a connection to the world around us. We take what is convenient from science and ignore the humbling research that has us governed by the same natural laws that make cockroaches so difficult to exterminate. Our origin as a species, explained by Victorian scientist Charles Darwin, should elicit sympathy to the world and all of its living creatures.

Many people stare off into a sunset and wonder why we are so attracted to the cascading colors in the sky. This curiosity exists because we live and die by the sun. Our star starts the chemical reactions essential to the plants and animals we later consume. The renegade sunflower protruding out of a large crack in the cemented asphalt and all of mankind are equally dependent on the sun. As far as the sun is concerned, humans like flowers, use their time to sustain life and reproduce it. So why can we not stop looking up? Our cells are programmed to recognize the sun’s importance. They remember, even if we do not, that for life on this planet, the sun is critical.

Even with most of society writing it off as cancerous, the sun’s rays continue to permeate our skin, triggering our cells to produce vitamin D, the nutrient whose absence makes it impossible for the body to absorb other nutrients. The effect is the same in plants and other animals, tomatoes as well as chickens. Charles Darwin reasoned that if all life required the sun there must be a similar origin to all life. To Charles Darwin, all life is a deviation or progression from a common ancestor. Before Darwin’s pilgrimage to the Galapagos Islands, paleontology had already highlighted interesting connections between the fossil records of similar animals. And after the brave voyage of the Beagle, the small and poorly funded vessel Charles Darwin sailed on, the Tree of Life, Darwin’s personal analogy for his theory that all life stems from the same origin, was being confirmed. “[On the Tree of Life] the green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species.”

Evolution is denied by conservative Christians that fail to recognize that Darwinian theology could be used to expand Biblical phrases such as “God made the beasts of the earth” and “God created man”. By having animals and plants inhabiting Earth before man, the Bible supports Darwin’s series of events. Rejecting evolution has implications beyond the stupidity of foregoing one or two trivial facts. By refuting the progression from ape to man you cannot sympathize with life as a whole as easily because you have denied your primordial connection to living creatures; that is the implication of denying evolution. Evolution is the foundation of biology, our life science, which we use to treat, cure, and prevent decease. Natural selection describes the inevitable order of organisms based on their effectiveness. The beak variations on the birds of the Galapagos Islands are not accidental, inconsequential, or unnecessary. It is the driving mechanism for survival, prevalent in the gargantuan woolly mammoth and microscopic virus. This is how the universe functions and is what hammers us together. Darwin reveals that this world, differently assembled and dynamically behaved, is bound together. But fear and vanity have corrupted Darwin’s incomparable message. Many people, of varying religions, refuse to acknowledge this biological unity and have missed the source of all beauty in world. “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved”.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, but fails at uniting people as completely and widespread as it should to the animal and plant life around them. The Victorian response to animal cruelty lead to the creation of the longstanding Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824 and expanded to India in 1890, making it a moral priority to treat animals fairly. Moreover, since Darwin, science has expanded our knowledge of life’s similarities by isolating the DNA molecule. Chimpanzees share about 96% of human genetic code while the genetic variability between the author and reader is less than .1%. But compassion cannot be exacted upon mathematically; it is not the chimpanzees’ minute four percent genetic variance that invokes kindliness. If you value your life and the struggle for survival, you must value all life around you. "Be a good [person], be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can." Animals are remarkably sentient creatures. On top of bleeding when Monkeys are pricked, their social behaviors “like humans, have their tragedies and mayhap (perhaps) their romances”. The more time one spends pondering animals, observing their behavior, uncovering their human likeness, the sooner it becomes evident “how cowardly it [is] to hurt the weak and the helpless”. Hunting, purely for sport, is especially despicable. Even “the wild boar has been known to face and defeat the tiger, and though his first impulse is to fly before British sportsmen, he often makes a gallant stand before the unequal odds of horses, razor-sharp spears, and legions of yelling rustics brought against him”. If you look for courage or bravery in the animal kingdom, you will find it. If you wish to discover love between parent and offspring, you will find it; sadness, happiness, boredom, sleepiness, fright, and excitement are also all exhibited by animals. Killing sentient animals when unnecessary for survival is meritless and unworthy of our evolutionary position. Charles Darwin should be remembered for scientifically confirming that the driving force in the fiber of your being, as innately personal as it might feel, is the most common of traits.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species invokes sympathy; the connection of all species and exaltation of Homo sapiens as the highest link in the evolutionary chain demands a moral understanding, a caring for all things around you, a revering acknowledgement for the millions of years of struggle and adaptation that the simple sunflower represents. If we are the distant relatives of all life, the bondage of solitude is broken and we are never alone. Darwin liberates. Freedom from truth is the goal of the Victorian era.

A sunset represents the end of a day to a multitude of organisms on this planet. Even some marine life is aware of when the sun sets. The sun’s light bends differently as it sets, its prismatic effect splashing widely against the darkening blue sky. Life is like that light. White light bends into blue, green, red, yellow, purple, orange, and brown the way life branches into trees, birds, ferns, flowers, lions, elephants, and people. The sun is the center of our solar system much like a nucleus is the center of an atom. The universe has hammered together matter in a meticulously coordinated way. Our origins are in the stars, where heavier elements first came together. Living organisms are connected as syllables from sound, without care for distance, ethnicity, size, shape, or religion. When “things come to be turned inside out and put down for what they are” the sympathy displayed throughout the world to those less fortunate, less capable, and more needing will be the real measure of our evolution. Are we evolving towards selfishness? Or can we overcome materialistic temptation and “annihilate the self” in the pursuit of blessedness? Charles Darwin’s On Origin of Species can be wrongly interpreted as a weapon against sympathy. Some people find Darwin’s book anti-God and regressive; it has spawned social Darwinism among those that refuse to recognize the path evolution must follow if we are to prosper as a whole. Sympathy is the only way to understanding the “knowledge [of animals], which [is] more prompt and perfect in its way, and can help us save the lives [and souls] of men”.

Word Count
Count w/ quotes: 1759
Count w/o quotes: 1564
URL: http://forbump08.blogspot.com/2008/03/p2.html

1)http://www.thespiderawards.com/AwardsPass/WINNERS-NOMINEES/PRO-advertising/images/the-five-senses.jpg

2)http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_1161_217044_rodney-graham.jpg

3)Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2002), 63

4)http://www.detectingdesign.com/images/definingevolution/ape%20to%20man.jpg

5)“God”, Holy Bible: Genesis 1:25-28, (King James Version)

6)Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2002), 67

7)Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2000), 12

8)John Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India, (London: MacMillan and Co., 1891), 71

9)Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, (New York: New American Library, 2002), 52

10)John Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India, (London: MacMillan and Co., 1891), 180

11)http://exploratorium.edu/imagery/stills/prism.jpg

12)Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, (New York: New American Library, 2002), 52

13)Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, (Austin: Jenn’s Copy & Binding, 2008), 607

14)Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, (New York: New American Library, 2002), 48

Sympathetic Imagination

2008-02-21T03:30:00.000-08:00

Sympathetic Imagination is a quality that cannot be obtained without the “annihilation of the self”[i]; to penetrate an object and become the object suggests the termination of your will, dreams, and needs. So is the sympathetic imagination a quality exhibited by the caring, or the understanding? That is, are some people born with imaginations that lend themselves to this metaphysical understanding, or does this sensitivity come from knowing everything about the object or person? Is it something that can be obtained through observation, or can it be studied? Probably both. I think we can ask ourselves what our dog wants. Once we understand his faces and mannerisms, we can come to memorize when they occur. When these two things become automatic, like a simple multiplication fact, and a rhythmic part of our daily routine, our sympathetic imagination for our pets wants is unconscious. It is a sort of love, like when you stare at someone’s eyes and know they want to be kissed. In that "extraordinary affinity, or sympathy [no] flavour of grossness" in life remains; "to share each other's emotions, fancies, and dreams" is something "super-sensitive, something absurd" – imaginary and obtainable.[IV] But how is this applicable to nature? “Ah, the heir, to his selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn”[ii]. Man is the heir here, and Hopkins suggests that our self-centeredness, our giant cities, sports cars, and monuments are clouding a special “vision” we should have with the universe. After all, mystical or not, we are the residue of an intelligent universe; human beings and our consciousness are a specialty in this vast space. But society is walking away from the “connection” – the sympathy, understanding, linkage to the world that spawned us. “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains”[iii]. Was Jesus’ sympathetic imagination so powerful he was constantly overwhelmed by a total understanding of the people and world around him? What of Gandhi or Buddha? Maybe the sympathetic imagination begins when we realize that we are human for no particular reason. Why wasn’t I simply born a German Sheppard? If God has a plan for all live on earth, you should be thankful you weren’t one of dozen blossoms on the unnoticed shrub against the Victorian-inspired building. And if you have no trust in God, then it is purely luck and coincidence that the universe bore you human. Either way, while you stop to smell the roses, or observe the birds, or laugh at gay bounce of an energetic French poodle, you must force yourself to imagine the brevity of life, and the constriction of its dynamic, the confines that your human brain does not possess. If you can imagine yourself flying, imagine yourself not being able to move. If you can imagine yourself not being able to move, imagine yourself not being able to speak. And then imagine yourself speaking to everyone at once, in whispers carried by the wind. Now, imagine trying to do all your living in a week, and you have sympathetically lived as a flower. And it was a life, short and sweet, filled with growth, maturation, consumption, and procreation.

[i] Carlyle, pg. 607
[ii] Hopkins, Tragic Vision, http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/Hopkins's%20Tragic%20Vision.html
[iii] Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

[iv] Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, pg. 243/253

Pattern of Conversion

2008-02-18T18:49:00.000-08:00

Science and faith, the wants of mind and heart, the struggle between physical and mental events, are paradoxes that perplex us. But this is the price of consciousness, of evolving to self-realization. It is a regal quality, for the highest form of life, that yields consequential responsibility? This unique, secular quality creates the juxtaposition: how are we a part of this world and a part above it? The implied disparity with nature can leave us dissatisfied when “all [of nature, animals and plants] save the spirit of man, seem divine”. [i] The unnatural, rotten need for success and pride, the debauchery, temptation, vanity, and maliciousness of human beings is a detriment to this world. It would be a greener, happier place without us. Yet, it contains us. And so, our ultimate goal must be to procure purpose, not of wealth, power, or sex, but of value and worldly continuity. This is the voyage; the pilgrimage taken by the most selfless and fearless of explorers, the rebirth worth being born for.

Several Victorians recognized this baptism, rebirth, or palingenesis. “The soul’s abiding hope lay in its conversion from the tyranny of self to the higher purposes of the eternal process”. [ii] In the Victorian Era, this idea could not be separated from its Christianity, since that was the road of redemption. This caused conversion to have Christian morality infused into it, demanding a certain abandonment of pleasure for cleanliness, “sacrificing the pursuit of pleasure to the love of God”. [iii] This demand is unnecessary. The connection to everything around you, and the genuine desire to help it, does not necessitate the sacrifice of personal pleasures. As long as our actions connect or strengthen a universal connection, they are justified; we cannot afford to forget that “the enjoyments of life are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing” like tennis, laughing, eating amongst good company, and playing more tennis thereafter. [iv] This disassociation of conversion and Christianity I stress only because of the conservative turn, and thus holistic abandonment, that Christianity has on this world. Christ, save me from your followers.
This is not to say, shy away from God! O Contrer! “Art thou [nature] not the living garment of God?”[v] And if God is displaced “at the outside of his universe”[vi], we should, as the most capable beings, take in the stern responsibility of caring and respecting all of it. We are all woven of the same particles, and while we are all differently strung, we are equally deserving of the “infinite love [and] infinite pity” [vii] we want for ourselves. This purpose is the apotheosis of your being, an “annihilation of self”[viii] to produce love and sympathy.

For the selfless: "the grey rain curtain of this world rolls back and all turns to silver glass; and then you see it: white shores. And beyond: a far, green country under a swift sunrise." - Gandalf, The Return of the King

[i] John Henry Newman, page 596
[ii] Buckley, Pattern of Conversion, page 594
[iii] Buckley, Pattern of Conversion, page 599
[iv] John Mill, page 694
[v] Thomas Carlyle, page 608
[vi] Carlyle, page 606
[vii] Carlyle, page 608
[viii] Carlyle, page 607

Earthlings

2008-02-14T11:07:00.001-08:00

For reasons most obvious to Professor Bump, I met up with Cool Cat at around 7:15 pm. I arrived before she did, and I had already acquired the first round of vegetarian handouts. The faces of prominent celebrities garnished the pages; they were being quoted on why they were vegetarian. Although interesting, it did little to persuade me. For me, celebrities are stupid until they prove otherwise. So, I chatted up Cool Cat. We attempted discussing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the conversation couldn’t be torn away from the awesome hold Victorian literature has on us. Before the movie commenced, Cat and I grabbed some bagels. Well, Cat grabbed one; I took two, half a raisin-cranberry loaf, orange juice, and three vegan Oreo cookies. I generously laced the bagels with the tofu/cream cheese.

The documentary started innocently enough, cliché enough. The camera zoomed into the Earth from the majestic view of space; the voice of the capable Joaquin Phoenix introduced the Earth and her inhabitants. Plants, animals, oceans, water, it was all there. But the mood quickly soured. Words like racism, sexism, species-ism, prejudice, and injustice began weaving into his narrative. It was an assault on the senses. Pictures of animal slaughter were paralleled with Holocaust ones, Joaquin Phoenix mourned the explicitly connected actions of our brutally insensitive race. This is the gist of the evening: the human race has proven, yet again, that we are miserable, inconsiderate, pathetic excuses for animals. We are the only part of the animal kingdom that kills for sport; we are the only organisms on this planet whose selfishness far exceeds the natural balance between predator and prey. And we are crudely going about it. We are literally raping animals out of any possible happiness. We bled them to death, beat them to death, stomp on them when they’re in our way, cut their beaks off, and snip their tails off. There was such a cacophony of terrorized animal shrieks that my head is still throbbing from the maddening noises of their agony. They are massed together, killed together, under fed, in some cases over fed, and always mistreated. The cows that milked to exhaustion, living maybe half their projected life expectancy, are sold to fast-food chains. Hens are caged in pens so small they can never stretch their wings. This extreme confinement maddens them, and they bounce into the cages until they start losing their feathers, rubbing their skin raw into sores that get infected, but never addressed medically. And this evil industry makes no exceptions. How can it be someone’s job to fire steel rods into pig’s heads as they struggle to get away? How can women sit, contain a goose with their thighs, and pluck them bare? Why do matadors get something out of killing an animal that has been weakened and is unfairly matched from the start? We’re filth, nasty and rotten.

I’ve given up pork. I know I’ll eat meat again; it is going to be organic, and I will chew it wondering if any of the organic standards were really kept, wondering if my chicken lived at all like a chicken without the curse of man would. But I have given up pork. My audio memory can’t drive their piercing oinks out.