I read it on the Internet.

Only Joking Mate.

Chris Powell and George Paton argue that humour plays an important sociocultural and ideological role in society, featuring as it does in popular culture, songs and, indeed, the “art of the times.”  Although not entirely neglected by sociologists, the sociology of humour has not traditionally been included as a major or central interest of the discipline.  However, humour can play a substantial role in terms of social control and resistance to such control.  Thus, through a “jokelore,” social and political values can be transmitted within and between societies, groups and individuals and, as Powell and Paton point out, sociologists of all people should appreciate that extracting any human activity from its social context is problematic and unwise.  Christie Davies’ chapter in Powell and Paton’s collection on “stupidity and rationality” is generally supportive of Zygmunt Bauman’s contention about the moral benefits of “insider status” - as well as having something significant to say about human-nonhuman relations.  For instance, Davies writes that people of various nationalities often use humour to poke fun at and, more seriously, denigrate both the social and moral standing of selected others.  Thus, the British have traditionally told jokes about the Irish, North Americans have told jokes about the Polish, the French aim their humour at Belgians and so on.

Davies claims such jokes enjoy an “enormous and universal popularity.”  Moreover, part of their ideological function is to present or construct a group of people who are characterised as “stupid outsiders.”  This is not a small or inconsequential matter, he argues, because people have a “deep-seated” need to manufacture these outsiders.  Davies’ position supports Bauman’s perspective on the social significance of “moral distance” and the corresponding link to notions of moral respect.  For example, he writes:

By telling jokes about the stupidity of a group on the periphery of their society, people can place this despised and feared quality at a distance and gain reassurance that they and the members of their own group are not themselves stupid or irrational.

Davies reproduces a selection of the jokes to reveal the “stupidity” of the victim population.  In one example, the way of suggesting that a targeted human being is an extremely stupid person is to indicate the possession of less intelligence than a nonhuman animal.  This joke concerns a rocket being launched with a crew of one human (a representative of the victim population) and one chimpanzee.  Every so often the chimp is instructed by “mission control” to complete complicated and important flight tasks inside the rocket.  Unemployed throughout, eventually the human gets extremely irritated and restful; but then his orders finally arrive.  They read: “feed the chimpanzee.”

On one level, the human is simply denigrated by being shown to be intellectually and hierarchically inferior to the chimpanzee pilot.  However, when real live chimpanzees have been blasted into space by humans they have been sent there as experimental animals; as “scientific” models.  Thus - in this joke - this human and the nonhuman animal share the same designation of “experimental tool” or “test subject,” even though the chimpanzee is given superior status.  Keeping the focus on the position of the human, and recalling Bauman’s “holocaust thesis,” which involved Nazis subjecting depersonalised humans, that is human-animals-seen-as-nonhuman-animals, to painful and often fatal experimental procedures, it is suggested in the joke that once humans can be said to share the same referent as “animal,” they may be used in potentially stressful, painful or lethal experiments. 

However, as in many jokes, the status of the nonhuman as an exploitable and legitimately “harmable” being, while essential for the internal logic of the joke, is silently assumed as a given reality.

In another example, Davies reproduces a North American joke about a Polish couple who buy chickens and proceed to plant them in the ground like vegetables.  Their stupidity is predicated on their surprise that the birds died.  However, the deaths - and the property status of the chickens - are not important or problematic within the internal logic of the joke.  After all, it is this very lack of importance which leads Bauman, citing Stanley Milgram’s infamous social psychological experiments about “authority,” to warn that any successful “moving away” of people from the status of human being is likely to lead to negative consequences for the individuals involved.  However, processes of dehumanisation can only “work” (function) if the successful transformation of humans to the status of nonhuman is widely understood as an act that is imbued with sociopolitical and hierarchical meaning(s).  In other words, intentionally placing human beings into a category of “animal” in order to subsequently exploit or oppress them would seem to serve little purpose if many other animals were not already constructed as potentially exploitable or, for various reasons, “killable” (ideologically “cullable”) beings; or “human resources,” and so on. 

Start with God.

Richard Ryder argues that early Christian views created a sense of human-nonhuman separation within the assertion that men and women could not be animals since humans were created in the image of "God" who had given only "their kind" an immortal soul.  Such views explain why a good deal of recent animal rights discourse has sought to challenge this absolute separation and remind human beings that "we" too are animals.  However, even long before Darwin, it appears that there was recognition and acknowledgement that humans were indeed "animals," although "developed" ones.  Ryder, in Animal Revolution, states that "classical literature, Epicureans and writers such as Lucretius, Cicero, Diodorus Siculus and Horace had suggested that humankind had only slowly developed from the animal condition." Aristotle, despite his insistence that humans, animals and nature were held in a “natural hierarchy of value,” never claimed that a human being should not be regarded as an animal. 

Later William Shakespeare’s Hamlet would describe humankind as “the paragon of animals.”  Nevertheless, Ryder notes - using an interesting term - that a full awareness of our kinship with other animals was "intermittent."  Moreover, acknowledgement of kinship became “discouraged by the Church.”  Therefore, it was [and remains] common for people to behave as though human beings were altogether different from animals: of a completely different order to them: indeed, “made in the image of God.”  Reacting to this continuing tendency, many modern nonhuman rights advocates began in the 1980s to use the phrase "nonhuman animals" to make it clear that there are such things as human animals (although it is interesting that this term itself is rarely, if ever, heard; and presumably not merely because it would be regarded as a tautology).  However, some campaigners have complained that the term "nonhuman animal" can imply that the standard is the human one, which may further imply that nonhuman individuals may be regarded as much less important in comparison.  Such people often favour phrases such as “animals-other-than-human” or “humans and other animals.”  In what may be regarded as the "shorthand" of emailed text, the majority of contemporary animal advocates tend to not get themselves embroiled too much in language disputes, therefore most often they appear to simply give nonhumans the label "animals" in general discourse.

Dess and Chapman remark that they were struck by jarring taxonomy in a radio broadcast they heard concerning the aftermath of a hurricane: “Not only were humans affected by the storm, birds and animals were affected too,” the report stated.  Since birds, humans and other animals are all animals, why the malapropism, they ask.  They state that they realise that such routine differentiation is simply a version of an established linguistic convention.  However, it is perhaps safe to say that when a linguistic construction exists long enough to become a firmly fixed convention, it is because it continues to hold meaning and/or utility for those (or many of those) who use it.  Moreover, it is probably safe to speculate that very few fellow radio listeners would have registered the problematic taxonomy identified by these authors. 

Perhaps the central meaning of the common separation of human and animal categories may be correctly identified by Dess and Chapman when they note that, “In everyday parlance, animals means not, and less than, human” (emphasis in original).  Thus, “The ‘animals’ in ‘animal hospitals’ are understood not to be human;" furthermore, the negative usage of "animal" is never far away: "the insult is clear in a snarled, ‘You’re an animal!’"  On the origins of these long-standing, firmly-sedimented, and socially-transmitted understandings, Peter Singer argues that Western intellectual roots lie in Ancient Greece (especially when the school of Aristotle became dominant) and in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  “Neither is kind to those not of our species,” he states.  Alexander Cockburn’s advice about addressing the issue of the construction of human attitudes toward other animals is impressively clear: “Start with God,” he says. 

With a lively and belligerent style, Cockburn declares that, “The Bible is a meat-eater’s manifesto,” or at least it is after a mythical event known as "the Fall."  Until then, the story goes, hippie prototypes Adam and Eve were vegetarians, eating grains, nuts and fruit.  But, as though she ran across a trippy Jack Kerouac novel, Eve could not resist eating from the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” and boy, have we all paid for that mistake.  Cockburn explains what is said to have happened next:

Hardly were Adam and Eve out of Eden before God was offering ‘respect’ to the flesh sacrifice of Abel the keeper of sheep and withholding ‘respect’ from Cain the tiller of the ground.  Next thing we know, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, slew him and we were on our way.

Thus began "Man’s" "dominionism" over and above creation.  Genesis I: 26-28 reports the edict of the Almighty: "Man" was given dominion over the earth and was told to be “fruitful and multiply” in order to "subdue" the planet.  Cockburn is right: we really were “on our way;” and it has been largely slash and burn ever since.  Some Christian writers, such as Tony Sargent, seek to provide a far more animal-friendly account of common Biblical events, and “animal rights theologian,” Andrew Linzey, is unflagging in pointing out that "dominion" really means "stewardship" rather than "despotism."  Yet it has to be admitted, Cockburn’s account seems to be the popular version, commonly reproduced in accounts of the development of human attitudes towards the other animals. 

Moreover, "stewardship" sounds a great deal like animal welfarism which has rationalised rather than halted the human exploitation of nonhuman animals.  Since it tends to organise the exploitation of other animals, Jim Mason speaks of the “stewardship apology” in Christian cosmology.  That anyone actually believes in the existence of “trees of knowledge” and “gardens of Eden” is quite bizarre and, of course, sociologically fascinating; but believe it, and live and die by such teachings, many do.  Several modern religious wars seem to testify to the fact that people earnestly hold such religious beliefs.  Thomas Luckmann suggests in The Invisible Religion that religious belief go beyond church going.  He suggests that religious teaching may remain influential in the creation of culturally-transmitted meanings, even in an increasingly secular world.  Of course, people also believe in Captain Kirk and the Enterprise, Gandalf and Middle Earth, and Aslan the Lion and the Old Narnians, but less real blood has flowed from these fables.  God-stories, on the other hand, have been instrumental in the creation of entire belief systems which people will kill and be killed for. 

Apart from a remarkable increase in human-to-human violence, Cockburn states that “the Biblical God” launched humans on the exploitation of the rest of the natural world, a world newly conceptualised as seriously "un-Christian" and “theirs for the using.”

Even here, they cannot resist the use of "it."

A story breaks about an annual wildebeest migration and the "awe" people felt as they witnessed a hippopotamus rescuing a young gnu and then a zebra from the "raging Mara river."

Animal behaviourist, Marc Bekoff, and others, such as Gregory Peterson, argue that nonhuman animals possess at least a sort of "proto-morality," and Bekoff says that, "I'm convinced that many animals can distinguish right from wrong."

It it pretty clear that now we are looking with some intensity, that we are finding out some remarkable things about nonhuman animals.

It is not noteworthy, therefore, that this report of the putative moral behaviour of the "helpful hippo" is nevertheless replete with "its" to refer to the nonhuman animals involved.

It seems that if we are to give an inch to nonhuman animals, it will be a begrudged inch at best.

Remembering Dungeon Lane.

I attended a Vegan Ireland film show last night. About 25 people watched The Emotional Life of Farm Animals and there was a lively discussion afterwards about the meaning of "free range," vegetarianism and veganism, and whether it would be ethical to eat eggs laid by rescued hens living at an animal sanctuary.

One scene in the film brought back strong memories of my time in Liverpool in the 1980s. This was a time when my kids were young, when I was involved in all sorts of activism, and in "this and that." The film showed a cow who had escaped from a slaughterhouse and who ended up at an animal sanctuary. What was remarkable about the animals in the film was the difference in the individual's demeanors as they were filmed arriving after being saved from some dreadful ordeal or other, all deflated, defeated, and down, and then when we see them six months later having slowly come to understand that not every human in the world is going to try to exploit and abuse them.

Cows, for example, on feedlots and other places of exploitation, are in the main huddled, jumpy, and obviously scared. Once at a sanctuary, after extended periods of loving care and attention, they seem calm, peaceful, and serene, and for the first time in their lives they seem confident in themselves. It is quite a transformation and a wonder to see.

Gary Francione has spoken at times about the impact that John Bryant's 1982 book, Fettered Kingdoms, had on him. This book also made an impression on me, and I remember being particularly struck by Bryant's vision of nonhuman animals, such as foxes, joining humans for a few steps on a pleasant walk in the countryside because they had lost their fear of these previously aggressive apes and now saw them as posing no threat.

How wonderful would that be?

The film threw me back in two senses. First, I had witnessed first hand the sight of nonhuman animals experiencing their first hours of liberation. During the time when I was the Northern spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Groups, I met with activists who took me to one of their "safe houses" somewhere in Merseyside, and in a manner in which I did not know where I was.

I was led into a basement which itself led out into a walled garden. I was present when newly rescued rabbits arrived after being "stolen" (after all, they are property) from a farm that supplied the fur and vivisection businesses. They were removed from the boxes in which they were liberated and placed on the grass in the garden. This was the first time in their lives that they had contact with the earth - until then, they had "lived" in wire cages suspended in the air.

When they were placed on the ground, these small animals pressed their bellies down and reached out with their arms, their paws expanding and contracting as they felt the earth beneath them. It is no exaggeration to say that this was a magical moment. In their eyes was a look that can only can be described as pure joy.

Returning to the scene in the film of the cow escaping from the abattoir, this reminded me of when a pregnant cow broke free from a slaughterhouse in Berkenhead, Merseyside, England, and became something of a celebrity in the weird way that speciesists seem to revel in stories of animals who escape slaughter. A tacky tabloid newspaper made much of the story over a few days and them proposed to sell the cow back to the very farmer who had initially taken her to be killed.

At this point Freshfield Animal Rescue Centre contacted the paper and demanded to be given custody of the cow, and this arrangement was agreed to.

I was living in Dungeon Lane, Speke, Liverpool, at the time and we were renting three connected cottages for next to nothing near what is now John Lennon International Airport. We made one of the cottages into stables for the cow and she and her child lived there after the newspaper gave her up. What reminded me of the Liverpool experience in the film was, once again, the transformation in an animal who knows nothing but being bullied and exploited to one who comes to realise that some human mean her no harm.

The film is a bit twee in places but worthy of a viewing for sure.