The Karma of the Animals

If I can make you give me pleasure, even if it hurts you, why not?

Oppressor and oppressed. A relationship as old as the human race: cannibals and their prey, slave traders and their captives, invaders and the vanquished, lords and serfs, rapists and their victims.

Some are easy to recognize and revile. Others, I think because they are closer to home, are harder to see and more uncomfortable to face: domineering husbands and subservient wives, bullies and victims in the schoolyard and in the workplace, and one of my pet peeves: humans and other animal species.

Oppressors have a sense of entitlement. In some cases, we hardly notice it, but in others it's a cleverly constructed rationalization. I think what is uncomfortable is the disconnect between head and heart. Head says it's OK. Heart knows it's not.

In the latest post over at her terrific blog The Jizo Chronicles, Maia Duerr, a recently ordained Buddhist chaplain (congratulations, Maia!) quoted from her thesis. Introducing the concept of "Protest Chaplains", she refers to Fleet Maull, the founder of the Prison Dharma Network:

Maull observed that we are dealing with an accumulated toxic level of internalized shame and violence that is perpetuated when we violate our own integrity, and any time war and oppression take root in a culture and system.

I think the head/heart disconnect is the violation of our own integrity that Maull is referring to. Although I had intended this post just to be about our presumption of entitlement to oppress other species, it keeps coming back to the violence we do to ourselves in the process. Toxic shame, mostly buried beneath our awareness, I suspect, poisons us and the fruits of our actions in ways beyond imagining.

Mostly, by habit or by design, we don't give it a second thought.

The most damaging phrase in any language is "It has always been done that way".

- Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Hopper (1906 - 1992) Mathematician, First woman Admiral in the US Navy.

Here is one small example.  How much honey do we put in our tea, on our food, or in our cooking? How much effort went into producing that honey? I don't mean by the people putting it into jars. Here are some facts. A worker bee produces only about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her entire life. To produce one pound of honey, bees have to visit approximately two million flowers and fly 55,000 miles - more than two trips around the world. The bees make it and we take it. Because it's tasty ... and because we can.

Some commercial honey thieves suppliers keep the hives alive over the winter by feeding the bees sugar. Others simply kill them and buy new bees in the spring.

This from the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists:

Colonies should be killed during non-flying conditions, such as in cool weather or in the early morning or late evening. Calcium cyanide should be used according to the label directions: 12.5 - 25 g (1-2 tablespoons) of calcium cyanide are sprinkled on a paper plate or sheet of cardboard and slipped into the hive entrance. Once the chemical is applied, entrances are blocked and the hives kicked or jarred to stir up the bees.

And then there is bullfighting. Did you know that proponents sometimes justify it as a culturally important tradition and a fully developed art form on par with painting, dancing and music? About 10,000 bulls endure this ordeal every year. Many horses, blindfolded during the “fight” to keep them from avoiding the enraged bulls, are also gored and killed by the bulls.

And on, and on. Rodeos. Greyhound racing. Silk production. Wool production. We take and take, just because we want to and because we can.

What about the karma part? That's easy - I don't know. If you mean something other than cause and effect, I honestly don't have a clue what you're talking about. Just be kind - really, what else matters?

The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

- Henry Beston, naturalist and author (1888-1968)

Do you get frustrated sometimes by our glacially slow progress and by the seemingly overwhelming resistance to change? I do.

But just because we can't do everything is not a reason not to do anything.

PS - when you're shopping for cosmetics or detergents, don't forget to look for these symbols.