Hirsute

\HUR-soot; HIR-soot; hur-SOOT; hir-SOOT\, adjective:

Covered with hair; set with bristles; shaggy; hairy.

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The concept of “souls” is one that I think could be left out of the moral rights debate concerning animals.

In the video today, one woman mentioned that she thought all animals not only deserved rights but possessed valuable (implicitly equally valuable) souls. I found myself wondering why the moderator did not ask her to expatiate nor bring up any contention to this point, and realized immediately that had he done so, the argument would have folded into another one completely—into a realm of somewhat arbitrary debate.

Plenty of times in the history of our country has the concept of having a soul tried to infiltrate legislation and moral philosophy to cull worth from things, and time and time again the argument has been proved inadequate. As much as people would like to call themselves faith-based beings, we are all very aware that souls don’t hold up in moral debate. They simply carry no punch, they get proven flimsy and fold under pressure—even by those who believe in them. Especially concerning the moral debate about animals, where arbitrary reasons for their separation from humans abound, the concept of soul flourishes a similarly arbitrary agenda for the other side (sometimes, as in the video).

It is best to argue about things we know, and match it with our intuitions, moral or otherwise. All moral debates will eventually scroll themselves back to macrocosms of personal ethics and moral considerations—even to the point of questioning what morals are all about. We’re all humans, and we often have diverse ideas about things, extending backwards to the cores of our belief systems. But upon engaging in moral debate, we often rely on reason, not because it’s necessarily more correct than faith/spirituality, but because all of us have faculties of reason that are inherently accessible, and that through reasoned information, we can communicate in debates.

This might sound rather harsh in opposition to souls or faith-based reasoning, but I don’t mean it to be. There is certainly a time and place for discussion of the soul, and it does indeed deserve moral attention in any debate after having its tenets laid down. But I do not claim that souls should be for the most part exempt from rights debates for atheist or secular reasons, or that I think reason only flourishes in a lieu of spirituality, but rather that any well-reasoned argument will not rely on faith-based evidence to prove its positions. It’s simple not a good way to argue.

(Also, I don’t mean this to be an attack on that woman or her points. She simply got me thinking. I do, however, disagree that all things have rights, as she did not specify distinctions between living things and lifeless (as far as we know) matter, but I’m not quite prepared to give a few paragraphs on that yet.)

Somniferous

/sɒmˈnɪfərəs, səm-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[som-nif-er-uhs, suhm-] - Show IPA Pronunciation adjective

bringing or inducing sleep, as drugs or influences.

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It occurred to me some time ago that the only way to find a fulfilling life is to introspectively identify the intellectual stimulants that inspire, engage and spur oneself into action. I have seen more than many fall into the Gordian knot sometimes encouraged by society, that personal goals for stimulation can be set with indicators of success like grades or money allotting one consistent report cards. This has always mystified me, as almost everyone I’ve ever met lucidly understands that money or a career is not in the least the node in life that will bring them the most satisfaction. Why are we so addicted to work?

It’s a rhetorical question, but one I ask incredulously in the face of so many superficial engagements. It may be too bold to say, but personal fulfillment can never be appropriately set by anyone but the self. We are each idiosyncratically disposed toward a certain, but subject to change, set of inspirations and engagements that allots us the mental and emotional energy to pursue stimulating ends. That’s a rather overcomplicated way of saying we’re creative, and that’s cool.

But certain specters have always traditionally loomed over the considerable personal crusade of leading a fulfilling life, most notably, money. If we were to care about survival alone, i.e. eating, shelter, etc, then we could complete our toilsome work in a couple of hours and spend the rest of the day engaging ourselves in other activities, like many of the so-called ‘underdeveloped’ tribes do. However, with the new specter of survival, the societal survival, we are pressed to engage our lives almost wholesale in the pursuit of non-fulfilling means in the hope of eventual fulfillment, and almost everyone knows it’s bullshit!

There’s much to be said about courageous and relentless introspection. But most of all, I think its benefits are greatest in this: no matter what goals may be (without contention, on my part) possibly fulfilling in our lives, be it love, raising a family or working hard, it will all (even love) be for naught if we do not engage it seeking intellectual stimulation. It’s interesting that love is the easiest, because we’re allowed freedom from societal constructions for at least some of love—we engage our hopes and vulnerable fears in the pursuit of true human connection. But when it comes to work we are too often detoured.

Humans are intellectually voracious. Given correct encouragement and stimuli, they produce fascinating things—almost every one of them. While it may be rather more difficult to change what the specter of society may or may not demand, it is much easier to engage the simple principle of being self-fulfilling persons. In the face of detours it requires courage, but there is no work, no goal, and no life more fulfilling than a personal achievement met.

Deipnosophist

\dyp-NOS-uh-fist\, noun:

Someone who is skilled in table talk.

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I've noted before that the internet is the last true democratic forum, but I've begun to think lately that maybe it's the only successful one. Ever.

Consider this: even newspapers, film, television and radio reach a certain audience. And if they do manage to be proliferated across the globe, it's through mediums that more than likely have some say in what they are proliferating. So whether the range is too small, or the censorship too big, the common person has, in some way or another, their voice restricted.

The internet does away with these boundaries completely (so long as the person can access it). Sure, it does not offer each and every person instant fame, nor worldwide viewership--but it does exactly what a democratic system should: give each and every person a place where their voice can be heard. People is Japan may not care about my opinion. But if they want to, it's available to them.

Democracy thrives not only on information, but free opinion. Only in perusing the opinions of others can we evolve our own, and truly communicate with one another. One of the great things about the internet is that, save the language barrier, it is not locally exclusive. It connects the entire world in a democratic forum, even if the country is not a democracy! (This is, of course, exempting those countries that have already recognized the power of the internet and are stifling it).

This is why I say the internet is the only successful democratic forum ever (but hopefully only the first). It is a chance for not only the opinions, but the personalities, lives and true interpersonal communication between people to suffer no filters. Once the internet is so cheap it is readily accessible to a large majority of the globe, we have found a place where democracy thrives for the first time, and perhaps it will actually teach us how democracy is supposed to function in the first place.

Now, there are several corporations who want a hand in censoring the internet. Allowing internet providers to put blockers on our information would ruin this so incredibly perfectly free-form system that we have now. It would undo all of the things I just said, and reduce the internet to the effectiveness of the rest of media. This cannot be allowed to happen. Even if one doesn't like the opinions on the internet, stifling them will crush the gift the internet brings: true mental human autonomy. And without that, we have nothing.

Restive

\RES-tiv\, adjective:
1. Impatient under restriction, delay, coercion, or opposition; resisting control.
2. Unwilling to go on; obstinate in refusing to move forward; stubborn.

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More on the alienating functions of society, the religious one catches me rather intriguingly. Religion retains a certain amount of comfort, in that it settles some of the more profound difficulties in living a balanced life. But by doing so with the weapon of faith (which is, in several circumstances, employed specifically to defend an un-provable/false claim), religion has the tendency and ability to alienate us from a meaningful human experience.

Most religions carry with them a set of identifiable, divinely-backed morals. This alone is as much a comfort as it is abstruse. The way I figure it (and surely, others will differ) is that god (or gods) does not update his rule book very often. The morality of the people was set several thousand years ago, and often is found insufficient (though surprisingly malleable and applicable, due to their vague and overarching principles) to guide our emerging (rather than legendary, but those too) moral concerns. Thus, god’s law or not, we end up determining morals for ourselves, but with the added burden of trying to fit the deity’s (infallible) concerns into the mix. Comfort in religion’s morality is an often times obdurate affair.

Similarly effectual is our knowledge of an afterlife. This a question no human faculty is designed to expatiate. If there is an afterlife, we won’t likely know for certain until we’re dead. Religion often offers exactly what our hopes might dictate—that there most definitely is an afterlife, and that, should we follow the rules set above (even though the criteria is constantly mutable), it will be a happy afterlife. In the niche where the human mind cannot reach, religion preys (and I use that word not intending a negative connotation, as I do not think religion so malicious) on our greatest fear—that this life is all we have. Being persistently assured otherwise robs of us autonomous investigation of the scenario, demanding, rather than careful thought, evidence-less belief in which our hopes are likely (and rightfully so) to side with the more appealing thought of life after death.

This is not to say that just because we hope it’s true, it’s not, but rather that it is interesting to note religion’s comfortable space between what we fear and what we cannot know—in order to alienate us from what emotional difficulties we may have to face: morally, as humans or even as sentient biological creatures.

The list goes on, of that which religion supposedly frees us from fearing. But in that freedom, I think, we are alienated from the reality of our situation by constantly (but never empirically) being ensured of an afterlife, by persistently escaping from experiencing our own, internal, more powerful self-judgment by leaving that up to an infallible entity, and even, in some cases, the pursuit of knowledge—as sooner or later we’ll meet every single human’s greatest dream: an entity that not only loves us, but knows everything. What greater gift could we hope for than an eternally reappearing and prolific father character with all the answers. When we were children, we wanted to know everything about the world. Becoming an adult, for me at least, was learning that your parents don’t know as much as you thought, and neither does any adult. We’re all in the same boat, seeking the same answers. Being alienated in that search by religion is just about the last thing we should do.

But I could not envision the world any different—after all, religion is just another one of those opinion matters that separate humans from one another, albeit in a peculiar way. It would be wondrous if there was an infallible pillar of truth that would take all of this difficult soul searching from us, but from all I have learned, each of these pillars have crumbled under our investigation. Perhaps if there were error bars in religion (as faith itself exists against a sliding scale against evidence rather than toward), then perhaps it would not be so alienating to believe that an entity in the sky is setting one’s prerogatives. But as, by most meanings of the word, god/gods are alien, this is a difficult concept to defend.

Parse

\PAHRS\, transitive verb:
1. To resolve (as a sentence) into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part.
2. To describe grammatically by stating its part of speech, form, and syntactical relationships in a sentence.
3. To examine closely or analyze critically, especially by breaking up into components.
4. To make sense of; to comprehend.
5. (Computer Science) To analyze or separate (input, for example) into more easily processed components.

intransitive verb:
1. To admit of being parsed.

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Society can be conducive to creativity or suppressive of it. Certainly freedom (from conventions, prescriptions, unnecessary traditions/predilections) is at its peak without society, but the benefits of mutual inspiration gleaned from having many humans instead of a few are more than enough evidence to claim a social environment more fulfilling. Therefore, society has the ability, through sheer abundance of people, to provide meaningful connections, illuminating epiphanies, and all-around inspiration from any possible sentient outlet. So why’s it so often suppressive?

We all heard Marx in class, so I won’t reiterate too much, but those alienation principles ring very profoundly, I think. Especially felt in our own, more capitalist society, there is a noticeable, constructed tendency toward looking forward to a more fulfilling life, be it after high school, after college, in the summer, on vacation or on the weekends. This is not constructed by a society wishing to profit off of us alone—it also takes advantage of a natural human penchant for being auspicious about what might come next. It’s natural to dream.

It’s also natural to believe that if we want something, we have to work for it. Elaborated, embellished, and combined with the above principles, this becomes the very ethic driving the work force into unfulfilling jobs and lives. An engaged and manipulated human penchant for hope.

Perhaps it’s in part due to the goals in our minds. Upon reaching this next tier, I will be happier. If I give up a little more happiness now, I will be happier later. These things are certainly not always false, but the problem with them is that they’re most often prescribed by outside influences. The difficulty with the affair of hope, perhaps, can be divided in two. One, in being quixotic without an appropriate, realistic (critical/skeptical) referent. The other, having our tiers of proposed happiness set by anyone but ourselves.

A human peculiarity is to be in control of his/her condition. Removing ourselves from nature and evolution occurred, whereupon we considered our instincts and situations and chose to act in such a matter that would delegate us more benefits than would natural selection. This alienates us, first, from nature. Then, upon the construction of societies, two extremes come into view, with neither being entirely embodied, but rather, each society leaning toward one or the other: a society in which personal fulfillment is valued, and a society in which personal fulfillment is sacrificed in the hope of its ascertainment. Put like that (and perhaps I am putting it wrong) the sound choice is clear.

But we cannot depend on society to delegate us better levels of personal fulfillment, even if we can ask of it not to demand us to sacrifice it (and this is where the best social reform can appear). Instead, we must recognize, for our own benefit, that expecting happiness just around the corner will not only never actually materialize, but actually demands our disappointment. As can be said about our approach to aliens, deities, ghosts, the afterlife (not to degenerate these examples, but merely citing some possible fallacies) and any number of interesting but difficult to prove notions, our imagination has the capacity and tendency to run amok, and in the end, disappoint us with our own ability for hope.

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” --Carl Sagan

But we should not cease to hope. Instead, we can cease to rely on our imaginations to form various Arcadias lurking amongst elusive specters like degrees, jobs, vacations and even spouses. True fulfillment, I think, stems not from a goal, but from an approach to the race, so to say. A disposition that, upon its activation every morning and its enactment throughout the day, has the ability for one to feel as if, for all one might hope for in the future, life is good now. We must curb hope in order to feel happy, in some sense of irony. Because true and realistic hope isn’t elusive it all—rather, it waits in every moment and every day (hopefully I’m not sounding too flimsily optimistic/cheesy), under the guise of recognizing obstacles, people, the natural world and seemingly meaningless actions as opportunities.

Vacillate

–verb (used without object), -lat·ed, -lat·ing.

1.	to waver in mind or opinion; be indecisive or irresolute: His tendency to vacillate makes him a poor leader.

2.	to sway unsteadily; waver; totter; stagger.

3.	to oscillate or fluctuate.

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Meat is a clear violation of my ethics concerning animals—at the very least, I have no qualms believing animals deserve the right to life. But where other rights are concerned, I have become uncertain.

Both food choices (vegetarian and vegan) are protests, as I’m not the one performing the injustice, but I am helping it along by being a participant. But I’m sincerely stuck on milk and eggs, since, were these two products taken from these animals in the wild, I would have much less of a problem with it. Like the byproducts of any animal, these, so long as retrieving the items without causing undue harm or detriment to the creature’s existence, would carry with it little immoral benefit--I am somewhat (but not convincingly) leaning toward these not being inherently ill-gotten gains. A case can be made for leaving animals alone altogether, including reaping whatever benefits they might sow—I myself have made such a case in the past. But does it hold up?

Should cows and chickens be unknowing beneficiaries of our enjoyment/satiating? I cannot think of reasons why they should. If we can find alternatives, then where to we get the right to plant our flag in their midst? Yet again, one can refer to the fact that humans have done such flag planting everywhere, from land to agriculture and up to animals, but these animals we’re considering are no automata. I have considered automata, and interference in that only worries me to the extent that we assume too much as ours, but at least the cruelty caused through suffering or even restraint is fairly unknowing to those being taken advantage of (i.e. bugs and the like). But cows and chickens, with cows especially highlighted, are sentient beings. They may be dumber that us, but what rights do they have as lifeforms? Do they have the right to live? Certainly. Do they have the right not to be manipulated? I don’t know.

My sympathies often rest on the side of the animals, due to the unavoidable truth that (most) humans could live completely without the byproducts of milk and eggs. As well, factory farming intuitively tugs at me as wrong, as even should these creatures’ lives be safe (under some other system), their existences would be, primarily, for our benefit, with little gained in return apart from, perhaps, a more pacified and less stressful existence (depending on the conditions under which they are raised). Should we reap what benefits they have to sow, if a compromise can be met, if they can be allowed to live as they will and our exchange for their goods in some way benefits them? Is veganism a protest, or a categorical ethical imperative? I don’t know.

I am vexed.

Polyglot

\POL-ee-glot\, adjective:
1. Containing or made up of several languages.
2. Writing, speaking, or versed in many languages.

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If the class divide is such that a very small percentage of individuals own most of a country’s wealth, we have a capitalist country. If the government panders to the interests and receives monetary sums from the capitalist class, we have a capitalist country. If the rights to information are impinged by the monetary influence of an owning corporation or governmental influence, we have a capitalist country. If the rights to life and liberty become successively undermined by worsening conditions in the class divide, and little is done about it (as higher classes require the manipulation of the lower), we have a capitalist country.

These are some of the most extreme examples—I’m not saying all of them are true in our country, or that, if they are, they’re entirely fulfilled, but certainly all of them will ring bells.

Capitalism and democracy. Can the two coincide? Of course, but on a sliding scale. The more capitalist a country is, the less democratic it becomes. The bigger the class divide, the smaller the equality to rights and free market there actually is. If some votes counts for more because they’re paid for, we’ve lost something democratically essential. I do believe we live in a reasonably definite capitalist country, where democracy is retained but much less potent than it once was or should be.

Sciolism

\SY-uh-liz-uhm\, noun:
Superficial knowledge; a superficial show of learning.

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We need be critical. For a moment, let’s ignore the role of media in our lives. Even in gaining knowledge from scholars, the wise and the learned, we need be critical. Knowledge does not pass from person to person unaffected by personal bias, with bias here meaning “the way in which we perceive”. To perceive in the first place requires that evidence be filtered through our own senses, our own internal logic machines, our own minds. No matter how wise the person who receives information is, in passing it to another human being it will be information altered from its neutral state and filtered through a person’s mind. Thus, though we can judge the reputability of our sources, we need always be critical.

Now, to put information through a sieve that is not only unwillingly biased, but pointedly so, is an even greater danger to a non-critical public. The more prolific the messages through this sieve are, the greater both the need for critical thinking and the ability to perform it become. We end up needing to be cynics just to get through an hour of news! It is such that nowadays there is far more to be skeptical about in common knowledge than there is to be credulous. Far, far more. So much so that, since the advent of postmodernism (and before, but explosively since), it’s been suggested continuously that there is no such thing as truth.

We’ve been lied to enough to doubt truth itself. This is indicative both of a lethargic state of mind (why fix my understandings if I can just deny understanding is possible?) and how bad it’s gotten. Human knowledge is necessarily biased, because nothing can merely perceive. Everything, human, computer, nonhuman animal—everything utilizes sensory perception and subsequent intellectual or emotional processing. This does not undermine the search for truth, I think, only re-institute that we are fallible receptacles for the universe. And as such, to have aggregates of corporate control filtering information as unbiased journalism is unfeasible. We need be critical.

But it’s not all evil—I hold to this fact rigorously. It may be that certain groups of individuals control all of the media. But we live in an age of media and population explosion—where there is more people, more prolific information, and a much more definite basis for the phrase “common knowledge” than ever before. We, as a species, have grown closer due to the proliferation of information, and we’re still grappling with the consequences.

I am almost certain the cure was found in the Age of Reason, hundreds of years ago, and has merely not found its proper application in common society. Rather than try and pick a leader to make the right decisions for all of us, rather than try and pick a media that will give us the right information, we must empower ourselves with the weapons of skepticism, critical thought, and rigorous investigation. These things sound esoteric—they are as natural as deducing from the smell in your room that your roommate has not done laundry, and then checking the closet to confirm. Logic is easy. We just need to use it in response to those things that make us happy—to question their foundations.

We need to want the truth. Democracy falls upon itself without a public that is educated. I posit that a public is only truly educated when its individuals strive to educate themselves. This is a radical and unlikely notion these days, I know, but if periods like the Age of Reason are any indication, the will of the public can flourish toward self-empowerment, and reasonably must (should their government inevitably become unsatisfactory). Science taught us how to ask. Its methods can teach us how to learn. Only we can teach us how to live. We need be critical.

myrmidon

\MUR-muh-don; -duhn\, noun:
1. (Capitalized) A member of a warlike Thessalian people who followed Achilles on the expedition against Troy.
2. A loyal follower, especially one who executes orders without question, protest, or pity.

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Continuing with the inherent problem with journalism in mass media, I think that in essence when filtered through sieves of financial necessity, even attempts at objectivity are undermined by supplying reader (and corporate/political) demands. However, hopeless as it might seem that mass media will never attempt objectivity under these prescriptions, I think there is a possible solution.

Financial motivations can, even at the expense of other motivations, take precedent in selling newspapers or advertising on a television broadcast. If no one buys the newspaper, then no opinion gets out—biased or otherwise. If America were to truly demand objectivity (or its semblance) in their journalism, then the financial motivations driving the journalism would actually be shifted (in part) in favor of more objective reporting. Surely, corporate predilections and governmental bias make quick venality of our journalism, but at the end of the day, as I said before, for mass media to truly be mass media, enough people have to see or read it for it to continue as such.

Journalism in the mass media (and not necessarily elsewhere, as well as exempting, for the most part, the internet) requires patrons to survive. Interference on a higher level is a problem, but I think it might be an even greater problem that, in pandering to our interests, we receive fluff. Were our interests, what make us buy newspapers and watch the news, more in line with objective reporting, media would be forced to change. I think that’s an important distinction to make, because the paradox of journalism (which should attempt objectivity) needing necessarily to be owned by a financially successful company is undermined in its more honorable pursuits only with its audience’s compliance.