Considering things less important than usual...

So I don't have anything deep to say (surprise, surprise) and so I'll give a general update.

School is good albeit stressful--mostly due to personal expectations for a certain amount of academic success which isn't necessarily being met/validated on a normal day-to-day basis. I mean, I can suppose that I'm doing pretty well and considering the kind of material that I'm working with, I think I'm doing pretty good. I guess my main issue is the consistency of speculation towards performance in that I generally have to just sit around and hope that I'm doing well instead of actually having a quantifiable measure of actual performance.

That being said, I have a short paper to write (which will consist of 40% of my grade) for my philosophy seminar on Animal Considerability. Honestly, I wish I hadn't taken the class... but my main source of stress comes from my total lack of understanding towards cognitive ethology and a general lack of caring towards the idea of whether animals can think. I don't think animals have desires and while I grant that they have feelings and rudimentary/crude reasoning skills, I don't think that we need attribute moral status to them in so much as we only take cares to ensure they never suffer more pain and suffering than is acceptable for any living creature. But then again, that's how I feel about all people I don't really know. I simply wish that all people be granted at a minimum enough moral consideration that they not be egregiously harmed.

Is it so much to ask that I not be forced to believe that animals are so morally considerable that they be granted the right to property and representation in congress? I exaggerate of course because out of all the gargantuan readings we've had for that class, none of them make any sense and I don't understand the point of any of them.

Perhaps you can see the underlying causes of my stress?

I thought this wasn't going to be a deep post...?

Anyways, everything else is going fine. Social life is fine and considering it's infinitely better than the past two years of college, I can't complain. The radio show is going swimmingly. Writing for Broadside has been much, much better than it was last year but still not nearly as wonderful as it was Freshman year when I was able to write more to my style and about more things I cared about.

Note to self: Broadside retrospective in an upcoming blog post?

I'm participating (for the most part) in National Novel Writing Month. Even though, I'm really only doing it in my head and not physically because I still am lacking any extrinsic motivation and pressure for actually doing it. I write my best under pressure and I am not feeling any when it comes to these novels. I guess I could drop out of school and declare to the world that I will make a living writing novels and the only way I can eat is by the fruits (lol) of my imagination. Seems like that would deliver adequate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for finishing one or more of the five projects I've started.

Latest project: Novel! By: Author (by Dylan Hares)

It's the epic story of writing an epic story. The journey of one writer in his quest for his magnum opus. I got the idea from Paul Laudiero (who came up with the title) and from Milan Kundera's Immortality whose first chapter seems much like Kundera is narrating his epiphany on immortality and identity and the human condition. It will be literally brilliant if I can find the voice and pacing and stick to it. Maybe I'll write some more tonight after I study for my Personality exam.

But yeah... I suppose that's it for now.

I mean... considering things less important than usual, that is.

On Animal Welfare and Politics

So Professor Light was (thankfully) absent from class today and we were left with a video on animal welfare to entertain our thoughts for a small portion of the class period. Probably since it would be unthinkable to allow us to go unstimulated for two whole weeks.

Either way, it was an interesting video. But really, it just pissed me off. Not because of animal cruelty, but because of the politics involved behind the whole thing.

Now, it's not that animal cruelty doesn't bother me.... in fact... let's do this. We can accept the following as true:
A) Animals are sentient beings that feel pain and potentially slightly more complex feelings such as fear and being to know if they're separated from family.
B) There is a ton of science to back this up.
C) Good, peer-reviewed science is legitimate grounds for legislation.
D) As moral agents, humans with the knowledge of A and B have, at the very least, the ability to recognize animal suffering in factory farms.

Factory farming is horrible and unnatural and as a meat-eater, I dislike supporting the organization. In fact, I plan to be more conscientious about buying products and plan to look out for animal products market as free-range or humanely raised. In the video we were even shown how in the modern day, traditional animal husbandry can be not only humane, but just as profitable.

Now, if we can accept these things (and please tell me if you can't), we need to look at why we're actually dealing with the issue.

Agribusiness (which is actually a word, surprisingly enough) is huge. Massive. Pervasive. It has the same lobbying power as the tobacco, alcohol, and firearms industry and we can all attest to the power they have. The issue is that because the agribusiness lobby has such intense power to influence senators and congressmen from farming states as well as any other legislators, nothing gets passed. The legislation as it stands is muddy and convoluted in the way that while many common animals are protected under anti-animal abuse laws, animals under the domain of factory farms are not. It's appalling how Europe has already passed dozens of laws for the humane treatment of farmed animals and yet we lag nearly 50 years behind.

The thing is, nothing can get passed because of the greed in the legislative body. In true Orwellian style, we are being subjugated and told what to believe and not say by a totalitarian state. The worse thing is that it's not even the state that's doing this. The corporations are so powerful that they've pushed the government aside and are not only feeding us with their product, but with the power they have over how this country runs. Again, it's not just the agribusinesses. You hear all the time about how perfectly sensible bills that could really help people are stricken down by special interest groups and heavily pressured subcommittees of Congress because the vote of our legislators, the people we vote for, are up for sale.

I know it's a very Mr. Smith Goes to Washington kind of thing in that it's truly idealistic to think that lobbyists, the people who are only supposed to be providing congressmen with legitimate information, should and could never hold real power over our congressmen, but the fact of the matter is that they do.

Animals in factory farms do suffer and that's not really debatable. I know it's tough to watch PETA propaganda and it's even easier to push it out of your mind as isolated cases. But I feel like the fact that every PETA documentary has new footage of animals squeezed into tight cages is enough to say that maybe this stuff is really happening.

I'm not a vegetarian by any sense and I certainly don't plan to be. I don't think we have a moral obligation to be vegetarian, but I don't believe we have to harvest animals in a way that makes them suffer more than necessary just to increase productivity and expand profits. Natural animal husbandry in such a way that is profitable to small farmers would increase competition and drive down the prices of animal products and hopefully alleviate the suffering of farmed animals. While this still means we bring animals into this world to kill them, at least they don't have to suffer along the way.

I just don't think it's possible though until we have someone in the White House that is not afraid to take a stand against Congress. We also need a total flush of Congress while we are at it. Get some young, educated, idealistic Senators and Representatives in there and get some stuff done. Again, I support a totalitarian state as long as it is one that uses ultimate power and subjugation FOR all people instead of against them. I support the state dismantling factory farms and agribusinesses so we can have smaller, more humane farms. It would probably solve a lot of problems as long it was run by a totalitarian dictator that isn't trying to kill a certain kind of people or conquer the world and instead is motivated by a desire to help everyone at the same time. I think it's very possible.

Again, always open to objections.

Animalistic Musings

Three in one day?!

Well... I already told my professor I wasn't going to class (see previous post) and thus I am taking a pity day for myself to think. Plus, he said if I just kept up with the reading, I'll be fine. And thus, I am reading the book and will just go to class from now on (seeing as how there will be zero conflicts in the future).

Anyway, I wouldn't be much of a philosophy student if I didn't posit some questions every now and then.

I would like to go back to something I talk about a while ago concerning human evolution and our place on the earth, in the universe, etc. What with all that's going on with the theater fiasco it makes me think a lot about why we do these things, why I feel the way I do, and about life in general. If you think about how a lion carries out his day, he eats, sleeps, defecates, and that's pretty much the extent of it. Instinctively, lions know how to hunt and how to take care of their young. What intrigues me is how lions perceive their environment. They obviously recognize a particular patch of land as their own and recognize a certain shape of animal that they like to eat. They have some degree of learning. That brings me to an interesting quote we read in Hume about how animals do in fact have some sort of elementary reasoning abilities. Typically, when we say, "What's the difference between animals and humans?" we say, "the ability to reason." Personally, I don't think we have any rational ability to say that's true. Animals certainly reason and biological psychologists and behavioral psychologists can tell you that their behavior can certainly adapt and change.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make thus far is that animals and humans, on the most basic levels, are not so different. We have basic adaptation and reasoning skills and we have a short degree of instinctual skills, what we might otherwise call a "gut reaction." Our brains are not even so different since scientists are able to identify pleasure and pain receptors in the brains of rats, an animal far removed from the primate line. It could certainly be reasoned that humans have some sort of basic relation and similarities to all mammals. In some ways, all animals (but mostly mammals).

Where the differences in humans lie is our ability to utilize our higher brain functions. That is, our ability for abstract reasoning, to make complicated choices, and complicated emotions like love, jealously, remorse, and so on. From a purely biological perspective (which I admit I'm no expert), humans, by reason, must have SOME extra glands or synapses that cause different hormones to flow in our brains, causing these feelings of love and genuine emotion. What else could explain the reason that we can build civilizations and learn and feel complex things? Sure, you could argue that lions can't build things because they don't have thumbs. In fact, you could say that the only reason humans, at whatever point in history, ascended to greatness because of our thumbs--that is, our ability to pick things up. And maybe that's true. But then I must posit the ultimate question: Why? Why do we have thumbs? Accident? You would say "evolution" but now we're just arguing semantics. I do believe in a kind of evolution but I don't believe in astronomical chances. If I did, I would play the lottery more often since you have a better chance of winning that then evolving into a creature with thumbs.

So maybe thumbs is the reason humans evolved to having success in the primitive world and maybe that's the reason human brains have evolved to such a level such as being able to love another human unconditionally. Maybe when the first batch of humans that had thumbs conquered the non-thumbed batch, they were able to flourish and write epic poetry and worship gods. They were able to sing and to love. I suppose that's possible. But then by reason, you would say that all animals should be able to choreograph elaborate dance numbers and solve complicated ethical dilemmas. I mean, there are a lot of species on this planet that are as old as us, that have been evolving with us. If all brains develop at a constant and predictable rate (which I don't know if they do), then theoretically we shouldn't be too much farther ahead of anyone else. Unless someone's ancestor ate the only genius lion.

It can be said that from abstract thinking, all knowledge is born.

We would know nothing unless someone did some exploring or hypothesizing. No math, no reading, no engineering, no nothing. And in this vein, all knowledge started off as PHILOSOPHY.

So there.

Anyways, it still perplexes me to think about the differences between us and the rest of living creatures. Why are we designed the way we are? Through endless mistakes made by mother nature we have two eyes positioned above a nose and a mouth in front of our heads which is settled on a spinal column which runs the length of our back which holds complicated nerve systems that allows us to move our appendages. Again, I don't believe in that kind of luck. That's like throwing a bowling ball into a dark china shop and truly believing you won't break something. I'm not saying I don't think it happened, I'm just saying it stands to my reason that it was guided by someone/something that knows a lot better than we do.

And thus we have the modern human that emerges a long, long time ago. We have the Greeks who posited philosophical theories on math, astronomy, physics, and life. We have the Egyptians that made amazing and complicated structures. There's also the Mesopotamian civilization that contains the earliest recorded religion. (That obviously was NOT in chronological order.) It just amazes me how all of a sudden there is a species on the earth that is flourishing at an exponential rate and all the while developing its knowledge of the known world and most importantly, its self-awareness and even more amazingly, still developing its paradigm of its role in the universe.

Let us think for a minute about how language was born. Obviously language means nothing without more than one person. Even in the most comical fashion, how did one caveman start talking to another caveman in such a way that they both understood? Even for one to draw pictures that made sense to the other involved the first one processing in his primitive mind the idea of a picture being a symbol for something else. And in the second one, he had to associate that picture and connect the symbol and determine the meaning all on his own. Then they both agreed on a sound to make that would tie it all together? We see an apple and we immediately hear the word apple and see in our heads maybe a taste, smell, and a feeling of an apple and we associate all of these things simultaneously and at some point, that had to happen on more than just an individual level. Sure caveman #1 could associate these things in his mind by himself, but he then had to communicate those ideas to his cave-mate. Wow.

And the first lie? Once communication was established in the community, someone came up with the first lie. And this is another amazing feat. Think about it. What goes into a lie? You see a disadvantage to telling someone how something really is because in your mind, you can abstract the consequences of certain communication in your head in an instant. You then decide on a new, equally plausible story and decide to tell that instead, despite knowing its not true.

Then perhaps you feel remorse? Knowing the consequences of the lie and being able to abstract in your head the consequences of someone else believing a falsehood. Or knowing that the consequences of something you did would hurt someone.

And theater? Song? Philosophy? To be able to abstract your feelings and communicate them in a form that is pleasing as well as thoughtful is another amazing human invention. To rationalize in a systematic and convincing fashion? This furthers our understandings of things and allows us to look at things beneath the surface. The lion sees the sun setting in the west, but we can understand it to mean that this side the earth has turned away from the sun. We then associate night with different things, and even feel inspired to communicate those associations. The lion sees his dead prey and all he can think about his food. We see a dead human or something and we feel remorseful or sad. Or we feel alive and happy (if you're psychotic). We associate primal things with ourselves and in the grand scheme of things, beyond what any other creature can do.

Humans are capable of a many great and wonderful things. We are also capable of terrible things. We are the only creature that is self-reflective and able to think outside of itself. So, why us?

Now I understand that someone might read this and say, "Dylan you're retarded." That's great. Thales of Miletus posited in the 5th century BC that everything is, in some way, made of water. Obviously he was wrong but he made an observation based on what was known at the time (at least to him) and made a rational argument for it. If I am similarly at fault, I would be happy to chat. I am always happy to admit not knowing something.

And maybe I can make someone think. Or maybe these are just

Animalistic Musingings.

Attempt #1

Well... interesting day.

Well, it wasn't actually. I got up late after a long, wonderful sleep. I slowly got up to shower and managed to finally get dressed and grab a sub for breakfast. It was decent.

Point is, I found myself at my computer after eating bored and unsure of what to do. On the one hand, I need to start and work on some articles I've been sitting on for a while. On the other, nothing is really due for a while. Suffice it to say, I sat at my computer playing strategy games all day, and to be fair, there are worse things to be playing. At least I was being educated on the conquest of Alexander the Great.

So several hours later I realize I got nothing done and am continuing to do so. I also realize this makes for a boring post, but I humbly believe that my word wouldn't count for anything if the day after I made a promise, I failed to keep it.

Thus, Attempt #1 = finished.

A fresh start

Well, not really. I have decided two things.

A) I need to try and do this daily. Not only can it be used as a live portfolio for my writing but I think it will really help motivate me to work on my larger projects. So every evening I'll update with something I saw today or thought about. I know I said that was what I would do at the beginning of this all... in fact it's the reason I did this in the first place. But I think I'm actually going to do it.

B) This was in many respects, the best summer ever. I didn't have a job for the first time in 4 years and I had all the free time I could ever imagine. I had time to read, write, see people, and take me time. This was, however, hindered of course by my mother constantly bugging me about something and of course, having to do things I didn't like to do (as a direct result of being unemployed). But I can't really say I don't owe them one, right? Anyway, it was nice not to have to work but it was awful not to have any free money. Summer is typically a season of increased spending but it had to be curbed in a big way so I can leave room for books, etc. It was tough and it would have been nice to have some income--at least to increase my nest egg. I saw Shaelyn which is an insurmountable pleasure and without a doubt, the highlight of the summer. I went to the beach and as I said, sat around a whole lot mooching off my parents. As much as I treasure the extra free time, I certainly don't wish that unemployment becomes a trend.

I got a job as the Broadside's Media Beat Writer which basically means I come up with a lot of the content we have for movies, music, and theater. That hopefully not only means a more frequent/bigger paycheck, but means that I will hopefully be doing a lot more reviewing of the aforementioned media. What worries me is that my editor wants to completely reform the newspaper, making all of the pieces more feature related. Despite the massive logistical undertaking that is, it is a vastly different shift from the previous style section which was all but feature-based. Plus, a review is essentially impossible in feature form. I guess this is a sign that I need to practice writing like a legitimate journalist because law school won't work out. But hey, who knows.

With classes starting soon, my new, challenging job, the potentially to be in multiple theatre productions, and a possible radio show on the horizon, I feel like this semester and 2010-2011 school year will be a great opportunity for...

A fresh start.