This, therefore, is not an a-historical, neutral situation. In actuality, it is dire. This changes the moral analysis from any traditional moral footing (deontological, teleological, aretaic, or casuistic). We simply do not have time nor luxury of “niceties” to engage in leisurely dialogue. This is why I just wrote my new book on responsibility–we are in a crisis, and if we don’t disengage from master signifier that revolves around my thesis of semio-capitalism – – – we push ourselves and many other species to the brink of disaster. This is not sci-fi, nor hysteria. This is cold, hard truth. Yet, so many of us continue to directly or indirectly exploit non-humans, exploit clean water, exploit the ground, and exploit other humans. This is no time for exploring a “complexity of issues” in the same way we might if we were not in crisis. We need to change our behavior now. Unfortunately, the research shows a trend toward evolutionary DE-selection for empathy, and DE-selection for deeper moral reflection. Hardly anyone outside of some university disciplines understands basic moral principles and basic moral reasoning, which is catalytic for moral subjectivism, dangerous forms of hysteria (not Zizek’s), and capacities for violence. For another group–usually the rich and fat bourgeoisie–this situation causes neuro-overload, which leads to subjective constellations of obfuscation, complacence, and bitter cynicism.

As you know, several of us are grinding away day and night to solve the problem of moral motivation– its lack–and the Reality is stark. Most humans are not motivated internally by “good” reasons. Most are motivated only when their own interests are threatened, which shifts game strategy from positive to negative, and win-lose social dynamics (that are supported by psycho-pathological discourse about capitalism). Moreover, being responsible for one’s self, or one’s kin, or one’s family is insufficient in this situation. Even Sartre came to realize in the late 50s that moral reasoning was mediated by one’s historical-social circumstance–Zizek agrees with him in their confluence of ideas about Kant’s categorical imperative. We need to find the imperative, from which we derive perfect duties. This does not fall into the either-fallacy but instead is a transcendent knowledge that requires us to act in certain ways no matter what. This is still the brilliant reverberation of Kant’s legacy. This also explains the Levinas’s reversal of Kant’s core requirement of autonomous reasoning. In this reversal, Levinas (and better explained by our mutual friend, Roget Burggraeve), autonomy (and internal moral reasoning) fails as moral motivation precisely because we live in the “age of desire” so well formulated by Foucault’s trenchant attack on Freud). This is the appeal of the Other–the radical Other–the non-human Other, that most humans choose not to see or to recognize.

This hubris is our downfall. It is bitter and disgusting. Childlike. An inversion of the reality of the self–that is, the self is empty in its very nature as conscious transcendence, yet we continuously fill it with those obscure objects of our desires (as Lacan in his genius demonstrates all too easily). When we should be emptying ourselves, instead we fill and fill and fill. This is the anthropological mistake of humanism and of the Western Enlightenment, in my view. It is an ontological problem that cannot be solved by psychotherapy, counseling, or spiritual guidance because they are human artifices that dwell on the addictive arrow of the ontic/optic. The facts are here. Don’t take my word for it. We are literally throwing ourselves over the cliff–and all other sentient beings with us–and still we try to “rationalize” (Freud), obfuscate (Jung), or lose ourselves in structural positions that are effete, and that will not offer us true praxis. More regionally, very few residents of this great state recognize that Montana is becoming the next Colorado, and that Missoula is becoming the next Madison, Wisconsin. But make no mistake – our non-human cousins, our own children, water, land, and the very air that we breathe are already being sold. In time the “university” here will be nothing more than the handmaiden of semi-capitalism– our own fear leading to our very destruction. Look at the evidence. Do the math. Then figure out who YOU really are–what YOU are doing to do about it TODAY. Again, with all due respect, there is no time for political correctness, niceties, and bourgeois etiquette.

This film is a very good example of [Christian] humanistic beliefs about the nature of human beings, and the deep ontological assumption of ontological [dis]parity. In this way of thinking we see hierarchies everywhere, with only the bishops, the Pope, angels and God outstripping the value of humans, and people of some color and gender of greater value than others. Most people cannot see a new Archimedean point of view, in which this “worlding” is replaced by one with a much more justifiable moral construction. In this film, we see dolphin families destroyed, their members vocalizing terror, puzzlement, and and deep grief. Some of the dolphins are hauled to the pier and chopped to pieces as they lie dying. Others are sold to Russian and Chinese aquariums, forever imprisoned until they die. There is nothing about this practice that is morally redeeming and, in the converse, it shows how little evolved humanity is. You should also know that Japanese “scientists” have been regularly capturing Antarctic whales for the purpose of “knowledge” when, in fact, they are taken as food.

This practice is analogous to others, in which we use animals for entertainment, clothing, food, “research,” and sexual gratification in ways that are demeaning, abusive, harmful, torturous, sadistic, and vile. Some people argue that it is our “natural” right but this is another deception by fiat. The truth is that we are a violent species, narcissistic, “speciesist”, egocentric, and capable of generating outlandish arguments that purport to serve our best interests–that our best interests always outweigh the interests of the Other. We have this way of thinking within the human population as well, as I mentioned before: power underwrites knowledge, truth and morality. Yet, we colonize other races, and colonize other species in exactly the same way with the same kind of thinking.

When we truly excavate our thinking, we always find the hidden treasure – the deep assumption – that we believe we are of greater ontological worth and value than individuals of other species. We do it with lions and tigers, wolves and bears, domestic dogs and cats, marine life, and the rest of them. “Tolerance”, moral relativism, and moral subjectivism were the worst–and least plausible philosophical positions ever proffered, for they operated as defenses against some of the most atrocious behavior we have seen. Unfortunately, tolerance is the sign of a weak person and a weak culture. It is one of the greatest deceptions ever. We must not be tolerant. Instead, we must use our reason to think–critically–about our behavior, and someone else’s. This does not mean we ought to opt for vicious objectivisms either, for they are on the other wrong side, and have as their bulwark the psychopathology of capitalism, complacence, the dangers of [Zizekian] hysteria, and claims to truth that are always underwritten by power.

Thus, this film can enlighten us to our savage Japanese cousins, but hopefully wake us up to our own “peccadilloes.” Shooting coyotes to make fancy runway Canada Goose jackets for the rich; shooting grizzly bears from fear; setting bait for wolves [near Stevensville] laced with broken glass and strychnine]; injecting primates with Ebola viruses in the lab at Hamilton; forcing elephants to give you a a circus ride, or tigers to jump through fire or be beaten; fucking dogs that have been forced into prostitution; setting cats on fire; engaging in absolutely irrational animal-model research then often usually killing and throwing the subjects into the garbage; imprisoning cows, raping them, preventing their young from suckling, then selling cheese, milk, and ice cream cones to the hoi polloi while we murder males for veal and start raping the females all over again; racing horses then herding them into the Killbox for their “meat; finding “humane” ways of raising cattle and slaughtering them to the tune of decades of poisoned water, noxious carbon and methane, and workers who suffer almost 100% PTSD for being the agents of violence.

The Anthropocene. What gets me is that some folks who are hailed as brilliant geniuses in this ontological order show up as as imbeciles in another. Moreover, even though the fallacy of the false dichotomy, the fallacy of oversimplification, and the either-or fallacy ought to be avoided, we must also avoid their dark cousin, the fallacy of obfuscation, in which we intellectuals hide inside words without fully participating in our “god-given” interrelational self, which requires us to overcome the false belief that we are at the center of anything, the masters of anything including discourse, and that from universities spring truth and goodness.

The most difficult task for any of us to is to see the Other – the radical Other – outside of our own mental categories to which we cling like children. And thus, without poiesis we will continue to be lost at sea, just like these dolphins who are slaughtered because they “belong” to us – another fallacy. The only enjoyment I get is knowing that humans will “get theirs.” This is natural justice, a deep algorithm that underwrites true natural rights.

The Cove: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1313104/

Let’s imagine that humans meet a superior species – stronger, smarter, and more vile than we are. They chain us, train us, experiment on us. They force us to entertain them, and they hold us captive for rape. They hunt us, trap us, and take pictures of us when we have been “harvested.” They cut us into pieces, tear our skin from us, throw us into boiling water, and make words about ecosystems, wildlife management, and the “natural” way of things. Then we will finally ponder ontological parity, virtue, empathy – making all sorts of “moral” claims about justice and fairness. In response, some won’t care, some will cut with greater precision, some will ignore us, and others will laugh, sadistically. Our bourgeois universities will “smoke” their books with more intensity until they, too, perish in the Great Annhilation – the New Holocaust. Then, there will be others who awake to the truth of things and realize that our dream of fertility, Western expansion, colonialisms, violence, and eugenics is truly what we have known all alone – a National Socialist nightmare that is coming to your door.

Ohio has joined a number of states who have made the shelter pet the state’s official animal. This is designed to raise awareness of how to do pet adoption in a way that is better for animals. The untold misery caused by puppy mills is something that is at odds with the image of a cute, new puppy. The animals packed into overcrowded shelters and euthanized before they can find a home are the hidden tragedies behind the choice to buy within the pet industry.

Many people don’t realize that the pet they buy from the store is the substitute for an animal in a shelter that loses their life. Many pets are euthanized at animal shelters as the shelters can’t cope with the numbers of abandoned pets. This is a move that shines a public light on the problem of shelter animals. After the publicity fades people need to remind friends and neighbors that there is only one responsible way to get a pet – adopt from an animal shelter.

Puppy mills are a particularly cruel alternative to shelter adoption. Adult dogs are kept purely for breeding at puppy mills and often killed when they are no longer viable. Puppies are treated as “farmed” animals and are kept in poor conditions. You can read more about puppy mills on The Humane Society’s website, and also about how to support the WOOF Act, a law that would defend against cruel puppy mills renewing their USDA license. https://www.humanesociety.org/all-our-fights/stopping-puppy-mills

One of the saddest things about animal captivity is how it leaves animals alone and isolated. An elephant named Flavia who was called “the saddest elephant in the world” has just died at age 47, after collapsing in her enclosure. Flavia was suffering from depression before her death and spent most of her life alone. What the public sees as merely a viewing enclosure where humans passively watch animals, the media have rightly called “solitary confinement.” Elephants are social animals who form strong bonds within their families, just as humans do. This kind of living situation for a human would rightly be branded as a form of torture. Why is it OK for animals to be abandoned in isolation? Laws that prevent harm to animals don’t yet accommodate for the kind of harm we assume is only relevant for humans – that is psychological harm. Animals are not merely automatons, they are social creatures. Read more about Flavia the elephant and sign the petition to ask Cordoba zoo not to place an elephant in the same situation as Flavia:

https://ladyfreethinker.org/sign-justice-for-saddest-elephant-in-the-world-who-died-in-solitary-confinement/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elephant-worlds-saddest-dead-zoo-spain-a8809071.html

When humans hunt animals, animals learn to fear them. They hide, they move their dwelling places, change their feeding patterns. In our limited view of animals, this might seem obvious – that animals change their behavior outwardly, as if they are automatic, soulless creatures. But the real wake-up call is that animals change internally in response to us (see this recent blog on whales’ stress response). Whole populations of animals change – they breed differently, they lay down different patterns, sometimes within a generation. The classic example that is often cited is of the moths that changed their color due to industrialization. Now it seems, elephants in Mozambique are evolving to lose their tusks. According to this article, a third of female elephants in Mozambique have no tusks, and in Gorongosa, by the 2000s, 98% of the female population had no tusks.

The threat of humans from poachers can’t be underestimated. Human poachers often target elephants from small planes or helicopters. They literally pick off elephants with tusks from above, annihilating them in front of groups of their family and friends. Elephants, like humans, are animals with strong family structures. Like a war torn human population, elephants become refugees from their own territory. They are forced to adapt, survive and live a fugitive life. There is no way to fully express the damage done to the elephant population by poachers, but it’s instructive to think of it in terms that humans would understand – war. The damage is experienced on many levels, emotional, physical and physiological. The loss of something essential to an elephant like tusks is a sign of how deep the damage can reach. Please help support African Elephants by donating to the AWF, among others.

Read More:

https://www.businessinsider.com/african-elephants-are-evolving-to-not-grow-tusks-because-of-poachers-2018-11?fbclid=IwAR2mxf0FgehljjqSAtnmoNIfhCTqRzsqKW1SIYD7UNiPvRYVY35c_EOxauA

“Those who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity will deal likewise with their fellow man.”

St. Francis of Assisi – Quote from The Animal Clock homepage

By the time I’d left the animal clock website, after just a few minutes browsing the page for the first time, 891,990 animals in the US had been killed. It’s an important lesson about how animals are condemned to death and violence in the idle moments we take for granted. The “animal clock” was launched to highlight the awful and tragic reality of animal deaths. When you visit the animal clock website you cannot escape the reality that animals are being violently killed now — in realtime and space.

At time of writing, around 6 million animals have already been killed this year in the US. Not only are animals killed but they experience confinement and suffering before death. 8 by 10 inches (20 × 25 cm) is the amount of space in which battery caged egg-laying hens spend their entire lives, not even able to spread their wings. And chickens are the most killed of animals. The website has other numbers: the deaths of animals by type of animal, and the horrifying figure of 825,000, which is the number of chickens accidentally boiled and drowned alive during slaughter every year in the U.S. The animal clock has only been launched in a few countries.

A number is perhaps one of the most dehumanizing ways to refer to a being, and yet with the animal clock, it is the only thing commemorating these animal deaths. Hopefully the animal clock can do more than shock – it can be used to educate about the loss of animal lives, the suffering animals experience and the environmental damage industrialized farming causes.

Please visit the animal clock and share its message: https://animalclock.org/

Last summer, PETA’s videos of Australian sheep-shearing revealed the true colors of the wool industry. The rustic image of sheep shearing couldn’t be further from the terrible truth. The videos show sheep being flayed of their skin as they’re sheared – and not only accidentally hurt – sheep are also shown being kicked, beaten and stomped on. It’s a no brainer that the industry would encourage abuse: the wool industry, driven by profit, pays sheep shearers by the number of sheep that are sheared. Sheep are roughly handled, treated as objects by these workers. Their bodies are lined up for the abuse, hurried through a production line. Sheep aren’t anesthetized or treated with any kind of care and as well as excessive pain and abuse, the whole experience is traumatic by its rough nature.

Forever 21 have been targeted as supporters of this industry, though they claim they don’t source wool from Australia. In the past Forever 21 have been pioneers of cruelty-free campaigns, like their no-fur campaign, but since they have made no effort to respond to the cruelty of wool, perhaps this is just marketing. The good news is that a couple of fashion retailers, like Alternative Apparel and Boohoo, have banned wool. Every time one of these retailers caves to pressure, public awareness is raised and a choice is made not to harm animals.

What you can do: You can support Vegan fashion brands, and keep boycotting brands like Forever 21 and asking retailers to do better.

See More Info:

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/boohoo-wool-ban-peta-animal-cruelty-fashion-a8780801.html

https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/vegan-forever-21gruesome-wool-exposehttps://www.peta.org/blog/alternative-apparel-wool/

https://investigations.peta.org/lambs-wool-australia-mulesing/#action?utm_source=PETA::E-Mail&utm_medium=Alert&utm_campaign=0219::skn::PETA::E-Mail::PE%20We%20are%20SO%20done%20with%20Forever%2021::::aa%20em

Finally, a step in the right direction. Iowa’s infamous “Ag Gag” law has been struck down as unconstitutional. This is a law that could fine and send animal activists to prison. It prevented free speech about animal mistreatment — even worker mistreatment on industrial farms. So many atrocities went unnoticed, so much cruelty was hidden behind a wall of silence.

Ag Gag laws are a way of protecting big agriculture at the expense of animals. Industrial farming is one of the most open atrocities of our times. Terrible conditions are allowed to persist, to protect profits. Many other states have ag gag laws, so this battle is not over. Now is a good time to get educated about ag gag laws and donate to further the efforts of organizations who fight these laws and support activists who are struggling with unfair charges.

A story of stress and upheaval from the violent twentieth century recorded in stress hormones and tracked by scientists… This isn’t the tale of a war-torn human population, it’s the story of whales harassed and hunted by humans over a period of 150 years. Scientists have gathered earwax plugs from between 1870 and 2016 to study the stress hormones in whales. Stress hormones dramatically increased during times of intensive whaling and decreased when moratoriums were put on whaling in the 70s. However, now factors like pollution, climate change and noise pollution seem to have been causing a slow rise in stress for whales over the last 40 years. The oceans have become a boiling soup of pollution, human activity and higher temperatures, and whales, like many creatures are being turned into refugees of violent industrial human activity. Not only this but whales were shown to have survivor stress because of whaling, meaning that whales who were exposed to the indirect effects of whaling and its constant harassment experienced stress spanning vast distances. This research spells out another chapter in the saga of humans waking up all too slowly to the reality that we share our planet with other beings, who experience a rich range of emotions and can suffer terribly at our hands. Read more about this research here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ear-wax-tells-story-humans-and-whales-over-last-century-180970840/