Earth: Extra Credit

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

"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

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

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

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