Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Mouse in the House and Hal Herzog



                                                        (Better than a toilet)

You’re cared for, you have companions, you have activity, you have respect (of a sort). Yet you may have a pinprick (or a thousand pinpricks) of doubt, so you make a leap of faith. You’ve gone from being a sheltered lab-rat to being contaminated vermin that must be eradicated—the difference of being in a cage vs being out. Not that you were that protected by being a test subject: the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 excludes from its definition of “animal” “rats of the genus Rattus and mice of the genus Mus bred for use in research.”

Not that James Dean mice (i.e. wild and free) have it easier. In this very wintery winter, they've been trying to move inside. One took a leap of faith into my toilet and died for his convictions. (Someone did ask me why I was keeping mice in the toilet.) Should I feel sorry for the mouse, set traps for more, dabble in poisons, or merely go eeuuww?

The mental gymnastics and equivocation we employ in “thinking” about animals intrigues psychologist Hal Herzog, who has written on "The Moral Status of Mice". He is also challenges our current assumptions about pets as beneficial to owners' health in a recent New York Times Editorial, "Fido's No Doctor. Neither is Whiskers." And, as noted below, he has a new book on why we think what we think about animals.


Hal Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals   (New York: Harper, 2010)
He mourns the loss of a beloved lab, he eats a little (expensive) meat from free-range animals, he’s visited animal sanctuaries,  he’s interviewed lapsed vegetarians (a much larger group than practicing vegans),  he’s read philosophers Peter Singer and Tom Regan, he’s saved baby loggerhead turtles, and he lives with a cat. Hal Herzog, a psychology professor at Western Carolina University, places himself in the field of anthrozoology, “the new science of human-animal interactions,” but that does not mean he will provide a strict doctrine/ polemics/manifesto for our response to other species in his book, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals  (New York: Harper, 2010).  As the title indicates, Herzog focuses on the “how” and “why” of our responses to animals, for example, how cock fighters can claim to love their birds even as they let them fight to the death, or how some cultures can have pet dogs and dogmeat on the menu.  He presents his arguments conversationally, with a blend of personal anecdotes and research findings explained in lay terms.  Not surprisingly, he finds that humans are an irrational species driven by emotion, genetics, and “mental viruses” passed through culture. Along the way he clarifies some of the inconsistencies in human thinking about the value of pets, the pros and cons of eating “flesh,” the use of animals in research, and the behavior of animal advocates.  His insights and findings can help others prioritize the best way to aid animals.
                To return to the cockfights, for example, Herzog demonstrates that animal misery is far more widespread in the production of supermarket chicken.  He writes, “The living conditions of the animals destined to become chicken nuggets are Dante-esque. The chicks will never see sun nor sky. Because they are so top-heavy, broiler chickens spend most of their day lying down, often in litter contaminated with excrement. As a result, many will develop breast blisters, hock burns, and sores on their feet. [. . .] The broiler houses are humid, the air laced with ammonia produced by the action of microbes on the accumulated urine and the excrement of tens of thousands of birds. The gas burns the lungs, inflames the eyes, and causes chronic respiratory disease” (168). Compared to this animal holocaust, a game rooster, until he reaches the fighting age of two, leads “a life befitting a thoroughbred race horse” (165), and the number of game cocks is a microscopic dot compared to the universe of factory farmed poultry—a universe which includes powerful economic and lobbying organizations. As Herzog points out, “the war on cockfighting is about cruelty, but the subtext is social class”—upperclass pursuits like bird hunting and thoroughbred racing receive less opprobrium. Nonetheless, Herzog believes that cock fighters should shut down the fights and turn to “golf clubs and bass boats.”
The mention of “bass boats” indicates that Herzog is not against all use of animals for sport or food.  Many of his views will disappoint those that Herzog considers “absolutists,” who consider any killing of animals anathema.  One of his prime examples is a woman who turned from a vegan to a raw meat diet for health reasons.  He also makes radical supporters of animal rights extremists a subject of anthropological analysis: they are extremists “caught in the grip of a theory” who sometimes take “speciesism” to the point that “termites have the right to eat your house.”
Herzog underscores the difference between thinking you’re on “the moral high ground” and actually having the moral high ground and the great difficulty of recognizing when you’re on one side or the other.  Rather than portraying himself as the Grand Authority, he talks of himself as a fallible human swayed by an inner “carnivorous yahoo.” That last phrase evokes Jonathan Swift’s uncivilized “yahoos” filtered through  J. M. Coetzee’s fictional animal defender, Elizabeth Costello. For Herzog, resolving logical inconsistences and ending all hypocrisy are not as important as beginning where you are to take action on the behalf of animals. 

And thank you to Beatrix Potter, who drew her sweet animals after prolonged study of real ones.

4 comments:

  1. "He also makes radical supporters of animal rights extremists a subject of anthropological analysis: they are extremists “caught in the grip of a theory” who sometimes take “speciesism” to the point that “termites have the right to eat your house.”" - aka the Straw Man Fallacy.......
    I hadn't realised to what extent the argument against the horrors of factory farming are being conscripted by those who wish to console themselves that THEIR consumption of animals and animal products is OK, either. Sounds like the book is more interesting for its demonstration of dodgy ethical thinking than any real insight into cognitive dissonance: not so much interested in resolving logical inconsistencies, indeed: too busy camouflaging his own, I fear.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey There. I found your blog using msn. This is a very well written article. I’ll be sure to bookmark it and come back to read more of your useful info. Thanks for the post. I’ll definitely return. disinfection service dubai

    ReplyDelete
  3. If more people that write articles really concerned themselves with writing great content like you, more readers would be interested in their writings. Thank you for caring about your content. pest control dubai

    ReplyDelete