Gender Agenda

Julia Langdon comments on what she calls 'the gay movement'.

It started with "outing," which was an unforgivable intrusion on the private lives of homosexual persons; it labels gays who live by a moral code and prefer to live quietly as "self-haters." It insists on separateness -- gay neighborhoods, gay pride days, gay rites, gay clubs, gay cruises -- while demanding "full inclusion and acceptance." It shouts down as "homophobic" anyone who respectfully disagrees.

Not many women I knew bought into the feminists' agenda; no homosexuals I know want much to do with the activists' agenda, either. They are church members, business owners, and employees whose homosexuality is a small part of their makeup and not their reason for being. They resent all of the attention and don't see taking on churches and church leaders as particularly helpful.

Julia is, I think, an honest and decent enough journalist, but how many feminists and homosexuals does she really speak for?

In praise of email

I can't pretend to be as switched-on technologically as Fat Man but I would like to associate myself with his little eulogy.

Nature pink and fluffy

A pair of Sumatran
tiger
cubs
and a set
of young
orang-
utans,
all abandoned at birth,
have become inseparable after sharing a room at an Indonesian zoo.
Not quite the lion with the lamb
- but close.

You don't have to be depressed - but it helps.

During a televised interview the novelist John Updike was asked why his books contained so many parsons, and why they appeared in such a bad light. Updike replied that most clergymen he had met were not particularly deep human beings, and that he was fascinated by people in bonds. Parsons, he added, are men in very visible social bonds.

I retired from stipendiary ministry as an Anglican priest in the year 2000, ostensibly disabled by anxiety and depression. I have since come to see that depression had become a condition of my ministry. It was the treatment for depression, initially in my case a course of Prozac, which led to my resignation. As, with help of medication, I came to identify and admit the misery I had long felt, the possibility of a return to my clerical office receded.

I had for some time resisted the conclusion that there is necessarily a conflict between the claims of professional ministry and personal integrity. Now I found myself wondering aloud, not least to clerical friends and colleagues, whether it is possible to be entirely honest, as a Christian and a priest, about what I think, feel, believe, do not believe, about who I am, and how, as we grow, that changes. The demands of clerical office (e.g. performing church services, giving comfort and assurance) seemed to require ever more feats of mental and emotional gymnastics. I was beginning to feel that the arts of pretending, condescending, posturing, play-acting, more pertinent to show business, had subverted the Church's more serious agenda.

My doctor, concerned about my mental state, asked whether I ever had thoughts of suicide or self-harm. I never did. It occurred to me however that accepting early retirement, which by now I had begun to consider, might be described as 'professional' suicide. His advice I found helpful. He suggested that leaving a job that threatened to destroy me as a person was the very opposite of suicide. It could be necessary for my survival!

As I understand it, and have experienced it, depression is, among other things, a means of self-protection from the sometimes-painful intensity of feeling fully alive in a fragile, fleeting, complex and morally ambiguous world. It is, in particular, a defense against uncertainty. Thus in this sense the opposite of being depressed is, I suppose, to be honest, open, out and free. It is also to be uncertain.

At an early stage of my troubles I had sought the support and understanding of my professional colleagues. I figured, naively, that the project of liberated life would be meat and drink to the Church in which I had been an ordained priest for thirty years. I seem to remember a time (in the seventies?) when this would have been true. So I set out to find, first among my brother priests, the kind of open, honest, adult, serious, and generous human beings I had in mind.

Whether their embarrassed reaction to my difficulties is better described as a failure of friendship or of pastoral care, I am still not clear. Those senior members of the diocese, with whom I was emboldened to share my religious doubts and sense of vocational crisis, often betrayed an alarming cynicism.

One excused himself with "Sorry, I don't do deep." (this from a priest who hears, presumably only shallow, confessions.) He was busily promoting a daily parish mass whilst confiding to me that he looked forward in retirement to never having to go to church again. I was urged repeatedly not to take religion so seriously. Another priest, with responsibility for training the junior clergy wrote, "I can't make any useful comments about your tension between faith and the Church. I suppose that having lived with being selective with the truth for most of my life, I find it quite natural - even if constricting - to juggle hypocrisies. The Church as an institution claims almost none of my allegiance and I simply plough my own furrow, as far as possible."

Cynicism Rules - OK! But what is at the root of it. For one thing, I believe, perhaps surprisingly, that it is somewhat connected to the Church's policy of discrimination against gay and lesbian clergy, a large minority, and the enforced celibacy it imposes. The concealment and deceit that is a necessary part of maintaining this fiction, for more often than not it is a fiction, about one's personal life sustains a culture of fear, evasion and denial which undermines the essential integrity of office. What is no less damaging to morale, is that those who choose to conform to the celibate ideal and live the single life may, unless it is a choice they are comfortable with, suffer great loneliness. We should not underestimate how injurious this is to the soul of the Church, and how corrupting of its internal politics.

A few years ago Elizabeth Templeton highlighted some of these issues when she wrote, 'We live (in the churches), if not with an active conspiracy, at least with a terrifying collusion of public silence about questions that need to be asked', which in turn leads to 'the isolation and furtiveness which people feel about their own wonderings, doubts and alternative understandings.'

And what is true of the churches is true a posteriori, and with knobs on, of its clergy. There must be no public inkling that they have any such unfinished agenda; that for them the search for an honest and credible faith is still on. Those who persist in their search are likely to find their distress compounded by the addition of guilt, and with guilt the fear of disclosure, stigma and opprobrium.

Templeton continues, 'We are learning from the courage of minorities who come out of their closets that fear is a sapping and festering overload on anyone's system." Should we not accept that "everyone wrestles with major questions about faith, unless they are brain-dead or bullied into concealment."

The conclusion I came to was that, although you do not have to be depressed, cynical or homophobic to be a clergyman, it can improve your chances of success!

Go Gaily

I'm taking a holiday. Back in a couple of weeks.

Early Retirement

This might cause a sigh in all book lovers.

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public enjoyments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat, and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.

It's not so easy when you're the son of a workaholic. Love you Dad.

Attack on Giant Pakistan Buddha

Further evidence that it isn't just support for the Iraq war, or even publication of those cartoons, that upsets our Muslim neighbours.

Now the Buddhists are being attacked for having 'non-Islamic' statues. Where will it end?

Obfuscation

Tariq Ramadan is one of those apologists for Islam who uses long words to obscure the obvious truth.

Thus, he tells Egyptian television that the destruction of the Israeli state is for the moment "impossible" and he describes the idea of stoning adulterous women as "unimplementable." This is something less than a full condemnation, but he is quick to say that simple condemnation of such things would reduce his own "credibility" in the eyes of a Muslim audience that, or so he claims, he wants to modernize by stealth.

He would fit well into the modern Church of England if it wasn't that the shariah penalty for conversion is death.

Feel Good or Do Good

Researchers led by Robert Davis, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, have concluded that the number of heat-related deaths in New York in the 1990s was only a third as high as in the 1960s. The main reason is simple: air-conditioning.

On the basis of such evidence, Dr Bjorn Lomborg argues that the best strategy in the face of climate change is to make the rest of the world as rich as New York, so that people elsewhere can afford to do things like shore up their coastlines and buy air conditioners. He calls Kyoto-style treaties to cut greenhouse-gas emissions a mistake because they cost too much and do too little too late.

Dr. Lomborg, who’s best known (and most reviled in some circles) for an earlier book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” runs the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which gathers economists to set priorities in tackling global problems. In his new book, he dismisses the Kyoto emissions cuts as a “feel-good” strategy because it sounds virtuous and lets politicians make promises they don’t have to keep. He outlines an alternative “do-good” strategy that would cost less but accomplish more in dealing with climate change as well as more pressing threats like malaria, AIDS, polluted drinking water and malnutrition.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

Islamic Fanaticism

Merrick at My Telegraph is afraid we are heading into deep trouble.

"A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War 2 owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. "Very few people were true Nazis", he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. and I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of the shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously approve the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority', the 'silent majority' is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet
the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population - it was peaceful as well; but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a war-mongering sadist. Yet Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving"?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts - the fanatics who threaten our way of life."

Waiting for the Barbarians

This poem I came across today is about what happens when an external threat is removed. Religion has historically been used as just such an external threat. But what happens when God is no more?

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?


The barbarians are to arrive today.


Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?


Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.


Why did our emperor wake up so early,
and sits at the greatest gate of the city,
on the throne, solemn, wearing the crown?


Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
And the emperor waits to receive
their chief. Indeed he has prepared
to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed
many titles and names of honor.


Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out
today in their red, embroidered togas;
why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets,
and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
why are they carrying costly canes today,
wonderfully carved with silver and gold?


Because the barbarians are to arrive today,
and such things dazzle the barbarians.


Why don't the worthy orators come as always
to make their speeches, to have their say?


Because the barbarians are to arrive today;
and they get bored with eloquence and orations.


Why all of a sudden this unrest
and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become).
Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
and all return to their homes, so deep in thought?


Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.


And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1904)

And another thing

A few further thoughts about ourselves and other animals.

First let me emphasise my belief that in all our doings ‘human beings come first’. My only worry is that often when those words are used it is in part an excuse for doing nothing about either human or non-human animal suffering, rather than about making a genuine choice between incompatible alternatives.

Next, we need to remember that humans are sometimes inhumane, towards other humans, and that non-human animals are not always savage. What seems often to be overlooked is that animals are able to form complex social relationships and experience grief in times of separation and loss. I have heard it argued that because other animals kill for food, we may do so too. I say that doesn’t follow but in any case there is a certain irony in the fact that the very animals we choose to kill and eat are mostly themselves vegetarian.

May I also add that whilst I uphold animal liberation, I am a bit of a separatist. That’s to say; I feel that other animals should be given scope to live their own lives, as much as possible on their own. We should leave them alone as much as we possibly can. I am no longer a keeper or even a lover of pets of any kind. I find pet lovers rather sentimental and often indifferent to the cruel treatment of animals they don’t own and who, or whose products, finish up on their table. What’s more I am appalled by the way pet owners permit their charges to foul the pavements, our pathways and parks. Think of how they would react if children were permitted by their parents to do the same. In the same way I am astonished that elderly men, who have never and would never have changed a baby’s nappy, not even their own baby’s, should follow their pet dogs, clearing up their mess with such selfless devotion.

I’ve heard it said that if abattoirs were made of glass, we would all be vegetarians. So why is it that the mass media, who cover the most shocking events in war, and include scenes of the most bloody violence in film drama, steer so clear of the everyday scenes of life and work in the abattoirs of our own country? I for one cannot remember a single interview with a slaughter man, exploring what he does and what affect it has on him, let alone on the animals.

Another question: In an age of ever ‘greener’ politics, why is it that we hear so little about the sheer wastefulness of meat eating? We have to use fertile land to grow protein crops, which we then feed to animals. Animals turn out to be a very inefficient converter of protein in that the yield of protein in their meat is only a fraction of the protein they are fed. This is not only wasteful of animal life, but also of good land, and even more critically, of water.

I must say I also get a little irritated by the frequent complaint that children these days have lost touch with agriculture and need to be re-educated in order to understand the connection between animals, food and farming. Attempts to do this are usually so sanitized that the children are left ignorant of the process by means of which a whole, live sheep, pig or cow, gets to be a neatly and bloodlessly packaged tray of meat at the supermarket. To describe the use of animals in the processing of human food without mentioning slaughter is, I think, like giving an account of war and soldiering without reference to guns, weapons, fighting and killing.

Finally, may I assure you that giving up meat eating does not necessarily entail the sacrifice of all your traditional pleasures. The synthetic meat business is booming. Sausages, burgers and, yes, even ‘bacon-butties’ are all available in meatless form. You probably won’t be able to tell the difference – but the animal will. It’ll still be alive!

Stop the War - or at least slow down a bit!

Norm draws our attention to what can only be described as an overwhelming tide of public opinion.

[The Stop the War Coalition] has organised more than a dozen national demonstrations since [February 2003]. None has been attended by fewer than 50,000 people.

Population of the UK: 60,587,300.

Dare to be . . .

After a night disturbed by the crying of one of our little ones, my wife announced that she was going downstairs to open the front gate for our window-cleaner. It sounded like some kind of euphemism. Then again perhaps I've been listening to too many 'Janet and John' stories. Well our window-cleaner is quite handsome, but not her type. In fact she constantly assures me that nobody is her type - except me. Do I believe her? Abjectly so.

The little one who kept us awake for much of the night has what you might call a winning personality. He has quite won our hearts and minds. Like the other children who stay with us he has a severe disability and not much capacity to express clearly what his needs are or how urgent. And yet he is subtle in his manipulation of us. His gift is to be objectionable in a perfectly adorable way. We never lose patience with him. Maybe this is what 'in love' means.

UN believable

Thanks again to Norm,

" . . . here's a passage from Gordon Brown's letter to the Liberal Democrat leader, on Britain's continuing obligations in Iraq:

We are there at the express invitation of the Iraqi Government, implementing a UN mandate renewed last November in UNSCR 1723.

We, together with the rest of the international community, have undertaken to support the country's political and economic development through the UN-led International Compact for Iraq.

Remember when lack of UN authorization was given as amongst the reasons pulling thousands of people on to the streets in protest against the military intervention in Iraq? Me too."

Context

Norm comments on words out of context.

"I have in mind the time Winnie Mandela said 'with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country [South Africa]'. The endorsement of the barbaric practice of necklacing that the remark appeared to be didn't show her in an especially good light, but she came back by saying her words had been taken out of context. It's the best example I can remember of people using this defence without going on to explain how the context would give the offending words a more benign meaning."

Andrew Anthony cites another example in today's Observer:

"No one loves the kuffaar! Not a single person here from the Muslims loves the kuffaar. Whether those kuffaar are from the UK or from the US. We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kuffaar. We hate the kuffaar!"

What context, he asks, could make these words 'acceptable or reasonable'? They're taken from Channel 4's documentary Undercover Mosque where a radical Muslim preacher includes them in his sermon and later accuses the programme makers of quoting them out of context. He was reading someone else's words.

But was not the Pope accused of bigotry and racism when quoting a fourteenth century Byzantine emperor's unfavourable remarks about Mohammed? And were not Muslims infuriated by the publication of 'The Satanic Verses'? Would they not have been even more incensed if it had been quoted 'in context' by a Christian preacher?

Is sex dirty?

Andrew Brown defends Augustine.

"I am always surprised that people misunderstand — for example — original sin as being a doctrine that sex is dirty. But when Augustine thought it was transmitted at the moment of conception, I don’t think he meant that we wouldn’t get it if our parents didn’t fuck; or, if he did, he shouldn’t have. He meant, surely, something much more like one of the central insights of Darwinism: that individual life necessarily involves differential survival, failure, great pain, and injustice. Conception in that sense is important as the moment of individuation, not the one connected to fucking. Otherwise, identical twins would have identical sins."

Global Warming

When Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton thinks this, whatever is the man on the Clapham omnibus to make of it?

Here are a few excerpts from his recent contribution to Edge.

. . . all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am
opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded
citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.

There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the
warming is not global.
. . . the problems are grossly exaggerated.

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by
the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the
superficiality of our theories. Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology
are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an
accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet. When we are trying to
take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient,
diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured. We need to observe and
measure what is going on in the biosphere, rather than relying on computer
models.

Mr Eugenides

In his Normblog profile Mr Eugenides makes a serious comment about the UN.

What would you do with the UN? > I'd specify minimum entry criteria; if you hang homosexuals, perform chemical experiments on dissidents, or attempt to wipe out chunks of your citizenry based on their religion or ethnic background, you'd be out. How this organization retains the confidence of so many people is an utter mystery to me.

He then makes two of the funniest replies to these questions I have read.

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > If Angelina Jolie handcuffed me to a bed and started listing the merits of a national ID database, I would listen. I'm a fundamentally fair-minded person.

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I'd buy a private island in international waters, construct a giant arena inside a hollowed-out volcano, and make Patricia Hewitt and Polly Toynbee fight to the death with rusty tridents and rolled-up copies of The Guardian. This is not a joke.

Worried about Irving

From normblog:

Morty visits Dr Saul, the veterinarian, and says, 'My dog has a problem.'

Dr Saul says, 'So tell me about the dog and the problem.'

'It's a Jewish dog. His name is Irving and he can talk,' says Morty.

'He can talk?' the doubting doctor asks.

'Watch this.' Morty points to the dog and commands: 'Irving - Fetch!'

Irving, the dog, begins to walk toward the door, then turns around and says...

'So why are you talking to me like that? You always order me around like I'm nothing. And you only call me when you want something. And then you make me sleep on the floor, with my arthritis. You give me this fahkahkta food with all the salt and fat, and you tell me it's a special diet. It tastes like dreck! YOU should eat it yourself! And do you ever take me for a decent walk? NO, it's out of the house, a short pish, and right back home. Maybe if I could stretch out a little, the sciatica wouldn't kill me so much! I should roll over and play dead for real for all you care!'

Dr Saul is amazed, 'This is remarkable! What could be the problem?'

Morty says, 'He has a hearing problem! I said "Fetch", not "Kvetch"'.

A Heated Debate

For over ten years I was prescribed one of the infamous benzodiazepines (Ativan) as treatment for serious anxiety and panic attacks. It always seemed to me that I had freely agreed to the treatment, and that I chose to continue with it. I myself ordered the repeat prescriptions. Although I was warned that I might become dangerously addicted, I never exceeded the specified dose, and, before coming off them, I had voluntarily reduced my intake by gradual withdrawal. When the time came to stop the medication I was again warned that my symptoms would probably be as severe as those associated with withdrawal from heroin. I ceased treatment with no obvious adverse side-effects whatsoever.

Although I am naturally more sympathetic to registered addicts than Policeman's Blog seems to be, I do think he has a point.

I’ve long suspected that heroin addiction may not be as bad as all that. Probably because all the heroin addicts I meet are pathetic losers who would be just as pathetic if they weren’t addicted to drugs. It all strikes me as something of a winge, “Oh, the thing is officer, I just want the help.” “I started taking heroin when a close family friend died.” “I’m not on heroin any more, I’m on a ‘scrip, so I don’t know why I stole the DVD.”

When you compare the worries a heroin addict has (getting a fix, are there any more hot chocolate maxpacks in custody) to the concerns of non-addicted taxpayers (can I pay the mortgage this month, where are my kids, has the wife crashed the car, will I get the sack from work) there doesn’t seem to be any comparison.

The crime argument is even less compelling, “Heroin is so addictive, I have to mug old ladies.” Nonsense. As I look at the addicts coming into custody from the local shopping centre, I cannot believe that the absence of heroin would magically turn them into productive (or failing that, honest) people.

I’ve always had a nagging doubt that everything we get told about addiction is a lie and that heroin addicts get a free ride from honest people who’ve been conned into being sympathetic by the legal and medical establishment.

But pets can wreck relationships

A warning to all love-sick pet owners from Ian Sample.

Over-indulging pets can spell disaster for singletons hoping to attract a new partner, according to a nationwide survey of attitudes to pet ownership.

Questionnaires completed online by more than 200,000 people revealed that the type of pet a person owned, the way they treated it and the number they owned had a dramatic impact on how appealing they were as a future partner.

Women were particularly unimpressed with men who owned spiders, with 48% admitting to being repelled at the prospect. Men were turned off by partners who pampered pets, spending more than £100 a week on accessories and upkeep. One in four men said they would not date a woman with two or more cats and a third of women said they would avoid men who let cats sleep on their pillows.

One quarter of men and women questioned said that if push came to shove, for example if a new partner was unbearably allergic to their pet, they would still choose to keep the pet.

The survey was conducted between YouGov and a dating agency, Parship, to investigate the potential pitfalls of having pets as surrogate partners. Victoria Lukats, a psychiatrist at Sussex Partnership NHS trust in Brighton, who was involved in the survey, said: "The image of Paris Hilton and her pampered pets is one that seems to send most men running for the hills."

Speciesism

The philosopher Peter Singer has coined the word ‘speciesism’ to describe a prejudice or attitude of bias towards the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species. The fundamental objections to speciesism apply equally to racism and sexism.

Now many philosophers have proposed the principle of equal consideration of interests, in some form or other, as a basic moral principle; but not many of them have recognized that this principle applies to members of other species as well as to our own. Jeremy Bentham was one of the few who did realize this. In a forward-looking passage, written at a time when black slaves in the British dominions were still being treated much as we now treat nonhuman animals, Bentham wrote:

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights, which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason, nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

Here Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration. The capacity for suffering—or more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness—is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language, or for higher mathematics. The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having any interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because it will suffer if it is.

The point is, if a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering seriously. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering—in so far as rough comparisons can be made—of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. This is why the limit of sentience (using the term as shorthand for the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others.

The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race, when there is a clash between such interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is the same in each case.

Except that most human beings are speciesists

For the great majority of human beings, especially in urban, industrialized societies, the most direct form of contact with members of other species is at mealtimes: we eat them. In doing so we treat them purely as means to our ends. We regard their life and well-being as subordinate to our taste for a particular kind of dish. I say "taste" deliberately because it is purely a matter of pleasing our palate. There can be no defense of eating flesh in terms of satisfying nutritional needs, since it has been established beyond doubt that we could satisfy our need for protein and other essential nutrients far more efficiently with a diet that replaced animal flesh by soy beans, or products derived from soy beans, and other high-protein vegetable products.

It is not merely the act of killing that indicates what we are ready to do to other species in order to gratify our tastes. The suffering we inflict on the animals while they are alive is perhaps an even clearer indication of our speciesism than the fact that we are prepared to kill them. In order to have meat on the table at a price that people can afford, our society tolerates methods of meat production that confine sentient animals in cramped, unsuitable conditions for the entire durations of their lives. Animals are treated like machines that convert fodder into flesh, and any innovation that results in a higher "conversion ratio" is liable to be adopted. As one authority on the subject has said, "cruelty is acknowledged only when profitability ceases."

Since, as l have said, none of these practices cater for anything more than our pleasures of taste, our practice of rearing and killing other animals in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own. I do not myself think there is any other way to avoid speciesism but to stop this practice. It may be difficult, but it is no more difficult than it would have been say for a white slaveholder to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves: if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure those slaveholders who would not change their own way of living? There is a related but not identical argument to be had about animal experiments, another major form of speciesism in our society.

Special Needs

Here are four little people that my wife and I help to look after every week. They come to us from their homes or straight from school to give their hard-pressed parents, mostly single mums, a much needed break. We are put in touch and supported by our local Children's Services. They are variously diagnosed as having neurological and/or autistic spectrum disorders.

One of the differences between these and so-called normal kids is that it's harder to take them or their development for granted. They are always surprising us. Getting to know them calls for a bit more patience and effort, but, believe me, they're worth it. Aren't we all?

Untimely harvest

A transplant surgeon in California had been accused of hastening the death of a severely disabled 25 year old patient in order to harvest his organs. He is said to have ordered far above the normal doses of pain-killing and sedative drugs, and even performed a sterilisation procedure normally carried out after death. In spite of this the patient survived for more than seven hours after being removed from life support when the time limit for organs to remain viable is only 30 minutes. He was returned to intensive care, where he died the next morning.



The case raises so many serious issues. Apart from the apparent illegality of a transplant surgeon being involved in the treatment of a potential organ donor, it also highlights the extraordinary pressure under which such work is done. Clearly the most stringent rules must be enforced to protect the vital needs of patients, especially where, as in this case, the donor's quality of life may be doubted. It also suggests to me that the clamour for a change in the law which would require that a person opt-out of organ donation rather than, as presently, opt-in, might not be in the best interests of the most vulnerable.

Equal Rights

I have been outlining a history of the animal liberation movement; I’d like now to turn to the idea of equal rights that underpins it.

The idea that animals could be said to have rights at all was once used to parody the case for women’s rights. When in 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft published her ‘Vindication of the Rights of Woman’, her views were widely regarded as absurd. They were ridiculed in an anonymous publication entitled 'A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes'. The author of this satire, Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher, challenged Wollstonecraft's arguments by showing that they could be carried one stage further. If they could be applied to women, why should they not also be applied to dogs, cats, and horses? And given that the idea that such creatures should have rights was obviously ridiculous, the idea of women’s rights must plainly be just as silly.

Now on the face of it the case for equality between men and women cannot validly be extended to nonhuman animals. Take, for instance, the right to vote. It obviously applies to women, because, it can be argued, women are just as capable of making rational decisions as men are. Dogs, on the other hand, are incapable of making sense of voting, so they cannot have the right to vote. There are many other obvious ways in which men and women resemble each other closely, while humans and other animals differ greatly. So, it might be said, men and women are similar beings and should have equal rights, while humans and non humans are different and should not have equal rights.

But, as well as similarities, their are differences between men and women that are equally undeniable, and the most strident supporters of Women's Liberation are prepared to admit that these differences may give rise to different rights. Many feminists, for example, hold that women have the right to an abortion on request. It does not follow that since these same people are campaigning for equality between men and women they must support the right of men to have abortions too. Since a man cannot have an abortion, it is meaningless to talk of his right to have one. Since a pig can't vote, it is meaningless to talk of its right to vote. There is no reason why either Women's Liberation or Animal Liberation should get involved in such nonsense. The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups

When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what then is it that we are asserting? Those who wish to defend an unequal society have often pointed out that by whatever test we choose, it simply is not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not, we must face the fact that humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with differing moral capacities, differing intellectual abilities, differing amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, differing abilities to communicate effectively, and differing capacities to experience pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand for equal treatment were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality. It would be an unjustifiable demand.

The claim to equality that I am making here does not depend on intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or any such factual matters. Equality is not an assertion of fact, but a moral ideal. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat people.

Jeremy Bentham incorporated the essential basis of moral equality into his utilitarian system of ethics in the formula: "Each to count for one and none for more than one." In other words, the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being. A later utilitarian, Henry Sidgwick, put the point in this way: "The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other.'' More recently, the leading figures in contemporary moral philosophy have shown a great deal of agreement in specifying as a fundamental presupposition of their moral theories some similar requirement which operates so as to give everyone's interests equal consideration—although they can’t seem to agree on how this requirement is best formulated.

It is an implication of this principle of equality that our concern for others ought not to depend on what they are like, or what abilities they possess—although precisely what this concern requires us to do may vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we do. It is on this basis that the case against racism and the case against sexism must both ultimately rest; and it is in accordance with this principle that discrimination against non-humans is also to be condemned. If we agree that possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, should we not also agree that the superior intelligence of humans does not entitle them to exploit non humans?

Mother Love

As someone whose mother didn't possess a phone, I have never been in this position.

A man calls his mother in Florida. 'Mom, how are you?'

'Not too good,' says the mother. 'I've been very weak.'

The son says, 'Why are you so weak?'

She says, 'Because I haven't eaten in 38 days.'

The man says, 'That's terrible. Why haven't you eaten in 38 days?'

The mother answers, 'Because I didn't want my mouth filled with food if you called.'

Double Standards

I loved my Dad dearly, but I grew up thinking that anti-semitism was much more widespread than it turned out to be. He was deeply suspicious, to put it mildly, of Jewish influence, which he saw in every corner of the business, media, and political worlds. Quite where he got this prejudice from, and what fuelled it, I don't know, but other members of his family that I've since spoken to are as puzzled by this as I am. Seemingly he didn't get it from them.

Although one of my first girlfriends at primary school was Jewish, as was my best (boy)friend at grammar school, and in spite of the known semitic background of JC himself, I've always thought that there must be something kind of 'wrong' about Jews and Israel. This and my staunchly Labour politics, and the generally soft left liberal position I've taken on most things, have led to my fairly half-baked view that Israel is mainly to blame for the suffering of the largely innocent and passive Palestinians.

Lately I have come to a very different conclusion, and everywhere I look I am beset by double standards.

Judeosphere offers us a list.

(1) Christian fundamentalists who support Israel are religious fanatics; Jewish fundamentalists who oppose Zionism are individuals of deep religious and moral conviction.

(2) Comparing Israelis to Nazis is a poignant political statement; comparing Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler is a gross distortion of history with the intent of demonizing foreign leaders and justifying imperialist military campaigns.

(3) Palestinian nationalism reflects the inherent right of all people to self-determination; Jewish nationalism is an archaic form of tribalism and racial supremacy.

(4) Criticizing academics that legitimize hateful stereotypes of African-Americans and Arab-Americans is a proper response from minority groups who oppose racism; criticizing academics that legitimize hateful stereotypes of Jewish-Americans is an attempt to stifle free speech.

(5) Iran has the right under international law to pursue nuclear power for peaceful purposes; any other country that pursues nuclear power is endangering the environment and increasing the risk of nuclear proliferation.

(6) Jews who cite the lessons of the Holocaust as a rationale for opposing Israel are moralists; Jews who cite the lessons of the Holocaust as a rationale for opposing authoritarian regimes in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq are neocon warmongers.

(7) Israeli policies are said to be tantamount to “genocide”; accusations of genocide in Darfur are a Zionist plot to divide the Muslim community.

(8) The war on terrorism is driven by Islamophobia; the “new anti-semitism” is a myth created to deflect legitimate criticism of Israel.

(9) Efforts to oppose anti-semitism on college campuses undermine academic freedom; academic boycotts against Israel infringe upon academic freedom but serve a greater good.

(10) Burning flags with Muslim symbols is desecration, burning the Israeli flag and the Star of David is political protest.

Animal Welfare in the 19th Century

The intellectual progress made in the 18th century was followed, in the 19th century, by some practical improvements in the conditions of animals.

A British parliamentary bill was introduced in an attempt to prohibit the ‘sport’ of bull-baiting. It was opposed on the grounds that conduct which injures only an animal cannot possibly be worth legislating about. As the Times editorial thundered, in terms which may remind you of a more recent debate, Tyranny? ‘Whatever meddles with the private personal disposition of man’s time or property is tyranny.’

In 1821 an MP, Richard Martin, proposed a law to prevent the ill-treatment of horses. This too failed, but the following year Martin succeeded with a bill that made it an offence wantonly to mistreat certain domestic animals. For the very first time, cruelty to animals was a punishable offence, though the bill had to be framed so that it resembled a measure to protect private property for the benefit of the owner, rather than to protect the animals themselves. But, however limited the scope of the new law, it was not long before Martin, together with other notable humanitarians, formed the RSPCA in order to gather evidence and bring prosecutions.

Twenty years before the publication of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin wrote these words in his diary: ‘Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble and, I believe, true, to consider him created from animals.’ Twenty years later he published the evidence on which this judgement was based. Even then he was careful not to draw too much attention to the way his findings could be applied to humans for fear that this would add to popular prejudices against him. It was only in The Descent of Man, thirteen years later still, that this aspect of his thought was made explicit.

Human beings now knew that they were not the special creation of God as previously understood, but animals themselves. Moreover the differences between us and other animals were now seen to be not so great, and the similarity not just physical.

The new ideas were winning acceptance, but many more battles lay ahead, and sadly, in spite of these insights, we probably inflict more pain on animals now than at any other time in history.

So why? Why is it that so many people stop short of the point at which they would challenge, let alone change, their deeply ingrained attitudes and their deep attachment to the habit of eating the flesh of other animals? It’s as if, just at the point when change is called for, and the argument seems overwhelming, a qualification is made, or a new consideration is introduced. And for this reason, ours has been called the era of excuses.

A classic excuse is set out by William Paley. It is the Divine Excuse, or the appeal to scripture. ‘Some excuse seems necessary’, he wrote, ‘for the pain and loss which we occasion to brutes . . for our pleasure or convenience. . it would be difficult to defend this right by any argument . . we are beholden for it to the permission recorded in scripture.’

Lord Chesterfield appealed to Nature and the way that the strong must always prey on the weak.

Benjamin Franklin cited the same principle.

Thomas Arnold found the whole subject such a painful mystery that, as he said, ‘I dare not approach it’.

The philosopher, Schopenhauer, knew too much of eastern ways to deny that humans can exist without killing, but, without further explanation, insisted that animal food is necessary for survival ‘in the north’. He did however propose that the death of the animal should be made easier by the use of chloroform. What neither he nor other sympathetic philosophers seems to have considered is that it is one thing to put down a single creature lovingly, gently and painlessly, but a very different and necessarily painful matter to rear and slaughter animals on a commercial basis.

As for Darwin, having demolished the intellectual foundations of earlier attitudes to animals, he continued to maintain those same attitudes, to dine on the flesh of the beings he said were capable of love, memory, curiosity, reason, and sympathy for each other; and he refused to sign a petition urging the RSPCA to press for control of animal experiments. TH Huxley, Darwin’s greatest champion, maintained the seeming contradiction, that to speak of the relation between man and the brutes is to speak of both a vast gulf and an essential oneness.

Bombay Slums

Watching a TV documentary with scenes of extreme poverty in a part of Bombay, set against an India which is surprisingly modern, western and affluent, caused me to reflect on how intractable such conditions are in a single nation, and how vain is the hope that we can make poverty history in the wider world.

Meanwhile, back in the Guardian, social worker Alison Napier explains why she doesn't have to bring the good name of her employers into disrepute, and why need should sometimes trump other considerations:

"I entered social work in 1993 with my eyes open, knowing full well that this is a solid, well-intentioned job rather than a radical one. We try to provide care to vulnerable people, within the constraints of a local authority budget. Straightforward enough thus far. So why have I become so deeply ashamed of my job and of my employer that I am considering leaving a field of work that I have enjoyed for so long?

"Mrs Stewart has a council home-help who comes in for half an hour, seven mornings a week. She is in her 80s, lives alone, and finds it hard to get dressed and washed in the mornings because of stiffness, angina and anxiety, so the carer helps her to have a shower and dress.

"Mrs Stewart rang me last week and left a message saying it was urgent that I phone her. I phoned. "They've said I can't have my home-help at the weekends any more. What will I do? I'll have to stay in bed." I listened. Then she said: "Oh I'll just cancel the whole lot. I'm a bother to everyone. I'll just cancel the lot and stay in bed."

"No don't do that," I replied. "See if the home-help will work privately for you. Then write to your local councillor and your MP."

"For 15 years, Mrs Stewart herself was a carer. She saved the council thousands and thousands of pounds by taking on caring responsibilities. Now she is the one who needs some care. But the UK, the fourth richest country in the world, has told her that her needs are too great - or too unimportant - to be met from the budget......If Britain cannot provide for the most vulnerable people, and we condone the constant shifting of the goalposts, such as the definition of "vulnerable", then we should all be deeply ashamed. I know I am. And if I look around at all the wealth in the UK and can still look someone straight in the eye and tell them that their care package is to be cut back due to lack of funds, then I have betrayed every single one of the principles and ideals that brought me into this job in the first place.

"There is a clause in my contract that states I must not bring the good name of my employers into "disrepute". My employers may consider that I am doing just that. To which I can only reply: "No. You are managing to do that all by yourselves."

The Humanist Perspective

The new humanism that arose at the time of the Renaissance turned out to be just that, humanism, not to be confused with humanitarianism, which is a commitment to acting humanely. The emphasis was now on man’s uniqueness, his free will, human potential and dignity. It is summed up in the phrase, ‘man is the measure of all things’, and it left non-humans as far behind as they had ever been.


Around this time, however, we do notice the first genuine dissenters. Leonardo da Vinci was teased by his friends for being so concerned about the sufferings of animals that he became a vegetarian. The notion was gaining ground that cruelty to animals was wrong in itself, quite apart from its tendency to lead to cruelty to human beings. Intellectual conditions seemed to be in favour of change. Things could only get better. Then along came Descartes.

Descartes taught that all material things are governed by the rules of mechanics, rather like a clock. Human beings are the exception in that they, we, are the only physical beings that also have a soul, a consciousness, specially created by God, which survives the decomposition of the body. Animals do not have a soul; that is, they do not have consciousness. They are mere machines, automata. They experience neither pleasure nor pain, nor anything else. The essential difference between an animal and a clock is that whereas a clock is a machine made by man, animals are infinitely more complex machines, made by God.

This account of what consciousness is neatly resolved two problems for Descartes. On the one hand it maintained belief in life after death which he thought was necessary to discourage immoral conduct. At the same time the belief that animals were without consciousness and feeling eliminated the ancient and vexing puzzle of why a just God would allow animals to suffer at all. The answer was, He wouldn’t, and they don’t.

For Descartes the doctrine had another fortunate result. The practice of experimenting on live animals was becoming widespread in Europe. As there were no anaesthetics, the animals being experimented upon appeared to be in extreme pain and distress. Descartes’ theory, if true, meant that he and other physiologists need have no qualms about dissecting live animals, because, as they were no more than machines, they could have no feelings and therefore could not suffer.

The outlook for non-humans could hardly have been worse. Curiously though it was these same experiments that revealed a remarkable similarity between the inner-workings of our human bodies and the bodies of those animals being experimented on. So alike were they that Voltaire was moved to ask whether Nature or God could possibly have arranged for animals to have all the organs necessary for feeling ‘to the end that they may not feel’? He condemned what he called the ‘barbarous custom of supporting ourselves upon the flesh and blood of beings that are like ourselves’.

Among others who contributed to the debate, were Rousseau who attacked the use of animals for food as unnatural, unnecessary, bloody murder; and the philosopher David Hume who made the more moderate claim that although we are entitled to use animals, we ought to do so gently. Immanuel Kant, on the other hand, considered animals as no more than a means to an end, the end being man. One answer to Kant came in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, of whom more later.

The Other Side

A monk on his journey home comes to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him, he ponders for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier.

Just as he is to give up his journey, he sees a great teacher on the other side of the river. The monk yells over to the teacher, "Oh Master, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river?"

The teacher ponders for a moment, looks up and down the river and yells back, "You are already on the other side."

More Early Christian Thinking

There are just one or two Christian figures, like John Chrysostom and Francis of Assisi, who are known to have shown compassion and concern for non-human creatures. On one occasion a disciple of Francis is said to have cut a trotter off a living pig in order to give it to a sick companion. According to the narrator, Francis rebuked the disciple, not for being cruel to the pig, but for damaging the property of the pig owner! It appears that Francis once begged the emperor to issue an edict prohibiting anyone from catching or imprisoning ‘my sisters the larks’. Legend also tells of how he preached to the birds. But it was not only living creatures that Francis addressed as his sisters: sun, moon, wind, and fire were all brothers and sisters to him, and he delighted in rocks, flowers and trees with a kind of ecstasy. What he doesn’t seem to have appreciated is what we might regard as the essential difference between sentient creatures and others. Neither did Francis’ love for birds lead him or his friars to give up eating them.

If any single writer may be taken as representative of Christian philosophy before the Reformation, and Catholic philosophy to this day, it is Thomas Aquinas. Commenting on Genesis, he wrote, ‘It is lawful both to take life from plants for the use of animals, and from animals for the use of men.’ But granted that man may kill other animals for food, are there perhaps other things that he may not do to them? Would it be wrong to make animals suffer, or at least make them suffer unnecessarily?

Aquinas is not able to answer such questions. He divides sins into those against God, those against oneself, and those against one’s neighbour, that is other human beings. There is simply no category of sins against non-humans. Nor even is it charitable to be kind to them, for charity does not extend to irrational creatures. It follows that we cannot lovingly give food to a turkey because it is hungry, but only if we think of it as someone’s Christmas dinner, so that by feeding it, we are being charitable to them. Aquinas, in his writings, allows only one good reason to condemn cruelty to animals, namely that it may lead to cruelty to human beings.

Aquinas’ influence has never waned, and as late as the 19^th century, Pope Pius IX refused to allow a society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to be established in Rome, on the grounds that to grant permission would imply, wrongly, that human beings have duties to the lower creatures.

Animals in Early Christianity

The Christian contribution to this whole debate is patchy to say the least. Christianity became established under the Roman Empire, and the RE, which was founded and extended by wars of conquest, generally prized the military virtues, which left little room for such sentiments as sympathy for the weak. As we know, there was a time when Christians were thrown to the lions at the so-called games, and the slaughter of humans and other animals was looked upon as an exciting form of entertainment. Later, when they were not themselves persecuted, Christians were forbidden to attend the games, on pain of excommunication, and the gladiator, who survived by killing his opponent, was regarded by the Church as a murderer. Soon after the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, gladiatorial combat came to an end altogether, but killing and torturing non-humans was permitted and apparently only declined with the empire itself as wild animals became more difficult, because too expensive, to obtain. The bullfight is perhaps the last vestige of this kind of entertainment.

Only a very few Romans had objected publicly to the use of sentient creatures for human pleasure, be it pleasure at the table or in the arena, and we have to wait nearly 1600 years before a Christian writer attacks cruelty to animals as wrong in itself.

The New Testament contains no injunctions against cruelty to animals, nor any exhortation to consider their interests. However we interpret the account of Jesus inducing a herd of swine to hurl themselves into the sea, we cannot avoid the impression that he was at best indifferent to their fate. After all, they were swine, and he was a Jew. Augustine used this incident to argue that our behaviour towards animals should not be governed by the same moral rules as our behaviour towards one another, and St Paul asks, Does God care for oxen?, in a context that clearly invites the answer 'No'.

Animals in the O.T.

Judaism is of course the other great root of western thought and attitudes, and in the biblical story of creation we have set out clearly the nature of the relationship between man and animals as the Hebrew people saw it.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

On this account, man alone is made in the image of God. Man alone is given dominion over all the animals and told to subdue the earth. It’s true that in the first chapter of Genesis this dominion does not involve killing animals for food, and Adam lives on herbs and fruits. But after the Fall, for which incidentally two of the lower life-forms, a woman and an animal, are held responsible, killing animals for food and clothing is expressly permitted.

It is at least possible to argue that the Old Testament is against wanton cruelty. But although in Isaiah there is a lovely vision of the time when the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the lion with the ox, for, says the Lord, ‘they shall neither hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain’, this is taken by most commentators to be a vision of a distant utopia rather than a description of how we should or could possibly live now.

Agony at Sea

The Victorian Peeper asks 'Is this the greatest British painting of the nineteenth century?' and in so doing recounts an earlier disturbing manifestation of compensation culture.

Neighbours

A comment from the Brentwood Weekly News.

"We have a huge house in our street.



The extended family is run by a grumpy old woman with a pack of fierce dogs.



Her car isn't taxed or insured, and doesn't even have a number plate, but the police still do nothing.



Her bad tempered old man is famous for upsetting foreigners with racist comments.



A shopkeeper blames him for ordering the murder of his son and
his sons girlfriend, but nothing has been proved yet.



All their kids have broken marriages except the youngest, who everyone thought was gay.



Two grandsons are meant to be in the Army but are always seen out in nightclubs.



The family's odd antics are always in the papers.




They are out of control. ..........




Honestly - who'd live near Windsor Castle ?"

Animal Liberation

MadPriest has kindly directed traffic my way, so I'd like to devote a few postings to this and related subjects.

Concern for animal suffering can be found in the earliest writings of Hinduism, and the ancient Buddhist idea of compassion is a universal one; it embraces animals as well as humans. Our Western traditions are very different. Our intellectual roots lie in Ancient Greece and in the Judeo-Christian traditions. Neither of these is kind to those who are not of our species.

Among the rival schools of thought in Ancient Greece was that of Pythagoras, he of the famous theorem. Pythagoras was a vegetarian because he believed that the souls of dead people migrate to animals, and he didn’t want to end up eating his own grandmother. That’s more or less what it amounted to. Pythagoras however did not have anywhere near so many followers as Plato and Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, and it was the school of Aristotle that eventually became dominant. Aristotle taught that nature is a hierarchy in which those with less reasoning ability exist for the sake of those with more reasoning ability. Thus plants, he said, exist for the sake of animals, and animals for the sake of man, to provide him with food and clothing. An extension of this was that, in human society, the less rational barbarians exist to serve as slaves to their more rational Greek neighbours. Aristotle was, of course, Greek. Nice one, Aristotle.

Because, unlike Aristotle, we really are nice, we no longer follow him in applying the aforesaid logic to human beings, but our attitudes to non-human animals have barely changed at all.

Inkindness to Aminals

It’s hard to tell how I as a teenager came to be interested in animal welfare. Like many of my friends, I had a pet dog. I’d had it for seven years when my dad, let’s say for business reasons, had her put down. I was fourteen, and I remember that this experience of grief and loss was far more painful than when either my maternal grandparents had died ten years earlier, or even when my other grandma passed away about a year later; later, that is, than my dog. My knowledge of animals apart from my canine companion was severely limited. We lived in Ardwick, near the heart of Manchester. We were fortunate to enjoy occasional visits to the nearby Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, but there again I preferred the more human spectacle of Speedway Racing, the famous Belle Vue Aces, and the funfair. The characters in the books I read as a boy were in the main human. My fictional heroes were Biggles, Just William, and Superman: so human if not superhuman. The only animal characters I found at all sympathetic were Rupert Bear and King Kong, though I must say that as a teenage boy I did find mermaids strangely alluring. I was perhaps more familiar than most young people with dead animals, in that my father, a grocer, frequently took delivery of pig carcasses, which he would then bone and cut and sell as bacon, gammon steaks, ribs and pork joints. During my teenage years we lived as a family over my father’s shop. We were as you might say ‘open all hours’.

I know that by my late teens my conscience was troubled. Apart from sex (and mermaids) and the things that trouble most teenagers, I had got religion. I’d presented myself earnestly as a confirmation candidate at the age of seventeen and in so doing had come to know our local Rector who was an ardent. outspoken, and extremely courageous pacifist. For him Christianity meant loving your enemies and not killing them. It made simple sense to me at the time, perhaps not quite such simple sense as I got older, but the thing that really grabbed me was the underlying philosophy of reverence for life. The Rector was fond of quoting Albert Schweitzer, and it might have been this that influenced me more. Schweitzer’s teaching went much further than a prohibition on killing other human beings who happened to be on the wrong side of a war. He taught that Christians should refrain from the killing of any creature, great or small, wondrously fashioned as they all are by God. And this presented me with a conflict that I still struggle to resolve. At mealtimes I began to imagine the messy and possibly painful process that had brought the meat to my plate. And the more I imagined, the less I liked what I imagined. The less I saw on the table a slice of bacon or beef, and the more I saw a bit of dead pig, or dead cow, slaughtered in the prime of it’s life, the less I enjoyed my dinner. The obvious solution was to become vegetarian, which very soon I did, and have so remained for about the last forty of my sixty-two years.

Are you avoiding me?

If I wanted to spend an evening and run no risk whatsoever of bumping into you, where might I go? For me it would be something like a George Galloway book promotion. But here comes an event where you would be in no danger of meeting my wife.

The Wigan pie-eating competition.

What's the most unlikely place you would be found?

Miaow if you believe in maniples

Damian at Holy Smoke makes this unwarranted attack on a fine example of Catholic journalism, though he follows a tortuous path to do it.

"I have joined a Facebook group that goes right to the heart of the debate about the future of contemporary Christianity.

"It’s called: “Every time you celebrate Mass without a maniple, God kills a kitten.”

"The group is for “everyone who truly appreciates the maniple”. And that most definitely includes me. What do you mean, you don’t know what a maniple is? OK, I’ll tell you.

"A maniple is “an embroidered band of silk, or other fabric to match the other vestments the priest is wearing. In the same liturgical colours as the other vestments, it is worn upon the left arm of the priest. Symbolically the maniple refers to the rope whereby Jesus Christ was led, and the chains which bound His sacred hands. It also became known as an emblem of the tears of penance, the fatigue of the priestly office and its joyful reward in heaven.”

"If it is true that God punishes kittens for the abandonment of the maniple, then I’m surprised there are any of the poor creatures left, so widespread and shameless is the celebration of Mass without this glorious accessory.

"Note to priests: a maniple can also be used to wipe away tears of boredom induced by reading the Tablet."

Single Parent

The Word at the Barricades publishes a letter from an imaginary youngster.

"My name is David. I am 9 years of age. I stay in a housing estate near Glasgow. I stay with my Mum. I don't know or see my Dad. My Mum is young. Sometimes she is patient sometimes not. Sometimes lonely, sometimes not. But she is my Mum and I love her. According to a recent report my situation means that I am much more likely than others to do badly at school, to get into trouble, to get involved in drugs and to commit crime. But Mr Cameron, he is also called David, is going to help. He is going to help by giving other families where there is a Mum and a Dad more money. How that will change my life I don't know. But he must know, because he went to a better school than me."

As I understand it Mr Cameron intends to extend his tax break to gay and lesbian couples in civil partnerships with or without children. Should be a vote winner!

Believing and Doing

Norm has a piece on the importance of taking seriously the claims of religious people who have taken great risks on behalf of others, namely that their beliefs were an important part of their motivation for doing so.

Here is an email he received:

"I am Jewish, and a complete atheist. Many years ago, when I was still a student doing my D. Phil. in Oxford, I travelled down to London on a bus. I was reading Nietzsche's 'Antichrist', when the elderly lady next to me asked me, in German, what I thought of the book. She was Polish, but spoke good German.

"When I started to express my admiration for Nietzsche, she listened benignly for a moment and then told me how she, as a fervent Catholic, had fought against the Nazis at the side of the Jews in the Warsaw uprising. She described it all in great detail, no pathos, no false heroism, just a straightforward and honest account of what she had done, what she had seen, and how she had escaped after the failure of the uprising through the tunnels under the city. It was her religion which had kept her going, given her strength, and given her her love of humankind, justice, and of goodness, full stop. I put my Nietzsche away, said not a word, and listened in total silence, and with a humility and admiration I have rarely experienced before or since.

"I've never forgotten the episode, it was some forty years ago, and to this day I've taken the greatest care not to offend people of a religious bent when it is obvious they are sincere in the best way in their beliefs and actions. Religion, it seems to me, is far too complex a phenomenon for one to treat each and every religious person as some kind of idiot bent only, whether they will or not, on evil. That lady, empowered by her religion, had done what I could never have accomplished in a million years, and to claim she would also have done it merely out of the goodness of her heart without her religious belief was, as far as I could tell (and as a religious sceptic), simply not true. She was the living embodiment of what religion at its best can achieve, and even to have suggested she would have done the same without her beliefs would have been to profoundly insult a woman of the greatest courage and moral rectitude.

"This tale is to me too important and still so moving that I felt it right to pass it on..."

Yusuf Islam

Is the Yusuf Islam awarded a degree by Exeter University for his 'humanitarian work and improving understanding between Islamic and western cultures' the one who, upon the publication of 'Satanic Verses', rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author Salman Rushdie, said ''I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing.''?

The one who also said that if Mr. Rushdie turned up at his doorstep looking for help, ''I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like.''?
If so, has he since recanted? If not, on what specific grounds does Exeter University justify the award?

He made lovely records as well.

On not jumping to conclusions

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Sejad Mekic, the imam at the Cambridge mosque which Bilal Abdullah (one of the Glasgow car-bomb suspects) also attended, gave a sermon on Friday condemning all acts of terror. However, he later said he had doubts that the incident at Glasgow airport was a terrorist attack, saying it could have been a car accident. ’I still haven’t made my conclusion,’ he said. When it was pointed out that containers of petrol were reportedly found in the car, he said: ‘Maybe they used to sell petrol.’

Not All Bad

Whatever happens will have good consequences as well as bad consequences.

An example:

"Gore points out that with global warming we’re going to see more heat deaths. That is true; we will see 2,000 more heat deaths in Britain by 2080. But at the same time we will also see 20,000 fewer cold deaths from climate change in 2080. It seems to me that only drawing attention to the 2,000 heat deaths and neglecting to tell us about the 20,000 cold deaths is not a good way to inform the democratic debate."
Bjorn Lomborg

Live Earth

I am what you might call an eco-skeptic; not convinced that global warming is caused by human behaviour. I take the view that the planet is big enough to look after itself and that it will still be here after we've gone for good.

But if I did believe that we could make such a difference, and wanted to convince the world by appearing in Live Earth, I'd be embarrassed to admit, with Katie Melua, Duran Duran, Corrine Bailey Rae, James Blunt and Jon Bon Jovi, in the Radio Times, that flying round the world in pursuit of even greater wealth and success, was the one environmentally unfriendly habit I could not give up.

It does rather take the edge off the message.

Madness

What do a blogger who works for the London Ambulance Service, Perry de Havilland of Samizdata, a Libertarian blog, and Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, according to Normblog, have in common? You wouldn't think much. But they share an extremely worrying view of the present terrorist threat, as illustrated by these three quotes.

"I'm not scared of terrorism, no-one I work with is scared of terrorism. We recognise that the chance of dying in a terrorist attack is much, much smaller than the numerous other causes of death and injury that we face everyday. What makes us more nervous is considering what the British government might do in response to these pitiful attacks."


"Frankly I am more worried about the pervasive threat posed to my civil liberties by Gordon Brown than the more or less random threat to my life posed by Al Qaeda."


"It is nonsense to suggest that al-Qaida or similar movements present an existential danger. Rather, the use of an alleged existential danger to justify extreme policies is where the real threat to world stability lies."

Bored?

Random Acts of Reality is a Blog written by one who works with the London Ambulance Service. In his introduction the writer tells us that his Blog was previously known as "Why I Hate Humanity" but the anti psychotic medication seems to have kicked in.

I'm not so sure. In his latest posting he complains:

"It's tiring sometimes, the grind of going to people who aren't really ill all day, every day.

"I have dark and horrible thoughts sometimes. If it rains after a period of heat I know that the roads are going to be slippery - perhaps there will be a car crash? It's a Friday night - maybe someone will get stabbed? The security level is critical - maybe someone will do something more scary than burn a jeep?

"It worries me that I think like this, it worries me that I'm happy when people injure themselves. I know I'm not alone, I know that the other services also like a good 'shout', but it still seems wrong to want people hurt so I can test myself, so I can have an 'interesting' day.

. . . . .

"I am not mad.

"Just bored."

And in conclusion: "Right now I'm thinking about an idea for a TV series - an ambulance worker who sets up increasingly bizarre 'accidents' in order to sate his desire to actually use the skills that he has."

One of the first comments he receives has contemporary relevance.

"...and aren't we hearing that some of the people connected with the London car bombs are doctors? Fanatical terrorists, or just really, REALLY bored ? - the mind boggles!"

My mind boggles too. Here is someone, upon whom in an emergency I may depend for my life, sharing the darker side of his own mind. The richer the imagination, the blacker and crazier may be the thoughts. But it's one thing to confide them to friends or weave them into a fictional narrative, another to broadcast them as a working professional on the internet. Keeping things to oneself is not now fashionable, but exercising proper self-control in a public forum can sometimes be the responsible thing to do.

Wikigroaning

You know how they have these surveys of the 100 Best This and That in which the popular contemporaries are ranked higher than the established greats, so that in the league table of female vocalists Lily Allen is ahead of Ella Fitzgerald? Well Wikigroaning is a way of enjoying this dissonance.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit, is the basis of a game you can play while awaiting the second oblivion.

"The premise is quite simple. First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created. Are you looking yet? Get a good, long look. Yeah. Yeeaaah, we know, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. (We're calling it Wikigroaning for a reason.) The next step is to find your own article pair and share it with your friends, who will usually look for their own pairs and you end up spending a good hour or two in a groaning arms race. The game ends after that, usually without any clear winners... but hey, it beats doing work."

Among articles hilariously compared are

Gray's Anatomy: Grey's Anatomy

Raphael (archangel): Raphael (ninja turtle)

God: Kevin Smith

Love: Masturbation

Japanese mythology: Japanese toilet

Sports: Chronic fatigue syndrome

Aristotle: Oprah

Ash Wednesday: Ash Kethchum

List of conflicts in the Middle East: List of furry role-playing games

Women's suffrage: List of fictional gynoids and female cyborgs

List of people who have disappeared: Characters of Lost

Go play!

Tony Wilson

Tony's just been on Newsnight. He says that the best way to get people to love you is, like him, to be dying with cancer. People who used to hail him in the street with cries of "Hate you." "Wanker." "Big 'ead." and "F.... off." now tell him how much they love and care for him.

It works like magic!