This example is not original, yet I think it well illustrates a simple truth: our mind is only conditionally a unified whole; human beliefs and convictions are not coordinated; we think and perceive the world as if on different levels, from different points of view. Moreover, when changing our point of view, we often forget the previous one and frequently fail to notice that there is even a certain contradiction between them. And it is not a matter of people being irrational, but rather that the human mind is only conditionally a unified whole. Sherlock Holmes, as many surely remember, did not know what orbited what, and likened his brain to an attic that should not be cluttered with unnecessary junk. In the end, it seems that we are somehow able to select from the range of different convictions and views what might turn out to be the most practical, most useful, or perhaps the most pleasant and comforting in a given situation.
Cultural animals
In the human mind, there is also a designated place for animals. There dwell pets, pests, livestock, clones, predators, herbivores, beasts, mythical animals, man's best friends, and kings of the beasts. Although in no other era has the number of livestock and pets been as grand as it is today (James Serpell, for example, writes that in 1994 there were 36 million dogs and 35 million cats in the EU, and 54 and 59 million respectively in the US) and although animal lovers currently have access to an unprecedentedly wide range of books, magazines, and television programmes dedicated to animals (for instance, since 1996, when the new television channel Animal Planet appeared on the air, people can, in principle, watch films about animals seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day—needless to say, there is no such animal lover who could watch it all), it could not be said that animals somehow particularly stand out among the many things, texts, and images meant for consumption. After all, laundry detergent is probably also being produced and advertised more than ever before. Therefore, it is easy to miss the special place that the animal occupies in the human world.
It is one thing that Animal and Human have existed side-by-side since time immemorial, and their relationships are so branched and saturated with past experience that it is hardly possible to fully rid oneself of this baggage and see, for example, a rabbit, a bear, or an elephant "as such," freed from the cultural layer. A fox, after all, is "sly." One naturalist even complains that "stories about the fox's cunning and unusual intelligence are so deeply rooted in folklore that objective study of this animal is quite problematic." In the folk tales of many nations, the fox is wily, thieving, and someone who, knowing no sense of honour or justice, is ready to use the situation to their advantage. The sorceress Circe calls Odysseus a fox, and Christ calls Herod one, without explaining what is meant by this comparison. Unlike "cow" or "goat," the Latvian "lapsiņa" (little fox), and especially the English "Foxy Lady," can denote a highly attractive, but at the same time quite inscrutable and independent being. A "Foxy Lady" is "not a streetwalker, but she is not a wife or a mother either."
On the other hand, bears, of course, are very cuddly, because they like honey; one of them is called Winnie-the-Pooh, and a large number of bears are made of plush. As French scientists Lionel Rosan and Valérie Vilmé claim, research has found that, on average, every French child has five plush animals and 86% of all plush toys are bears. One of the explanations for the popularity of teddy bears is that they are similar enough to humans to share feelings and identify with, yet different enough to distance oneself from the real world while playing, which is harder to do, for example, in the case of humanoid dolls. Yes, and elephants "never forget," are afraid of mice, work hard for the benefit of Indians, and go to elephant graveyards to die. The Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder also mentions that they are afraid of mice, and if they cannot handle a task given by their master, they tend to practice independently at night to hone their skills.
Stories about how culture influences perceptions of animals could be continued endlessly. However, I would particularly like to highlight one aspect of human perceptions of animals: the Animal is the criterion of Human humanity. We can, of course, compare ourselves to a brick or to God, but it is the distinction between human and animal that makes us think seriously about what makes us human. It is precisely by observing animals that we try to find the human traits to be proud of—language, mind, culture.
Christians and beasts
Although there is no doubt that I was born, I do not remember my own moment of birth; I also do not remember feelings in my mother's womb, although there surely were some. It is most likely that no one remembers this, and even if someone were to claim that they could recall these sensations, verifying the truth of such a claim would be impossible. At some moment, we simply realize that, well, here we are. Regarding our origins, the collective experience of humanity is equivalent to the personal experience of the individual—our beginning is shrouded in fog. Furthermore, there is no one really to ask how it actually happened, how we appeared. In a sense—what is the difference? However, it turns out that many descriptions of the world or a good life cannot manage without references to the beginning.
In not all stories about human origins do animals occupy a prominent place. In the common tradition of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, animals have no role in human origins, perhaps the only exception being the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Only thanks to the serpent does the human become what they are. Recalling that, unlike a cigar which might just be a cigar, the image of the serpent to Freud was clear and unambiguously interpretable, the words that God addressed to the serpent after the historical event sound interesting: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
Animals are created for humans to use. In the Bible, the only versions that differ are whether animals were created before or after humans. The better-known version is the one where the world is created in six days. On the fifth day, birds and all types of water dwellers, and on the sixth—first, the beasts of the earth and then man and woman. In the second version, animals are created after man because "it is not good that the man should be alone," but since the man "found no help meet for him," that is, the animals could not fully satisfy all his needs, the woman was created. "Green" movement theorist Lynn White saw in Christianity precisely the causes of the modern ecological crisis, because nature, and therefore animals within it, are understood as things meant for use. Of course, there are people who do not agree with this statement, yet it is difficult to deny that in Christianity the human is strictly separated from the animal, and, in principle, the main thing we learn from the Bible about animals is whether they are edible or inedible. To admit to being different does not mean at the same time to admit to being inferior, yet today the distinction between human and animal still serves as the basis for a hierarchy where the task of non-human animals is to serve—to be a meal on the table, to provide wool and milk, to guard the house, to test medicines intended for humans, or simply to look "pretty."
Little brothers and sisters
The "Greens" have often sought an alternative to the supposedly traditional Western view beyond industrial, beyond agrarian, and ultimately beyond civilized society. Probably the best-known attempts to return to the beginnings are the hippie communes of the sixties, which mostly withered away quickly because the young enthusiasts did not really have the skills needed for a "primitive" life. The idea of a harmonious "savage" society was promoted in its time by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but the representatives of the 20th-century ecological movement drew inspiration rather from the research of anthropologists. In the context of "green" ideas, the perceptions of the world by traditional cultures are often perceived as an alternative to Christianity. Totemism, or ideas about a human group's kinship with some animal or plant, occupies a rather significant place in this story about the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. Totemism, or ideas about a human group's kinship with some animal or plant, occupies a rather significant role here. A totem can be almost any living creature; those that have served as such include, for example, yams or sweet potatoes, palms and the breadfruit tree, the turtle, salmon, pike, gull, goose, skunk, and, of course, the eagle, wolf, bear, and others. So we say, look, the Indians perceive animals as brothers and sisters, they know how to tell stories about women who marry a bison or a bear; the killing of an animal in traditional societies is often ritualized, and we want to say that here we can see a respectful attitude towards the animal and animal life.
Interpretations of totemism hide within themselves quite different beliefs and rituals associated with animals, yet it can be said with some certainty that human beliefs about kinship with animals should not be taken too literally. The origins of humans in their perceptions, it seems, at least at a symbolic level, reach into the natural and animalistic. One must immediately add, however, that the myth of the totem is at once a story about connection and about separation—the emergence of the human is a splitting off from the animal world. Kurbads might be born to a mare, but that does not mean he does not see the difference between humans and horses; Lāčplēsis is suckled by a bear-mother, but he marks his eighteenth birthday by killing a bear.
Were the Indians really animal friends? There are anthropologists who question the embellished stories about the ability of ancient people to live in harmony with the environment or the Disney-type version of Indians who spend their days talking to animals, forests, and meadows. Archaeological evidence has remained of wasteful animal massacres. Likewise, there are suspicions that the extinction of several animal species is related to the activities of Stone Age people, especially regarding the earliest inhabitants of America, who arrived on that continent about seventeen thousand years ago and perhaps exploited the local animals' ignorance of what kind of being they were dealing with. Soil depletion was also observable everywhere ancient civilizations developed—whether one is talking about Central America, India, or Europe. Similarly, doubts about the Indians' benevolent attitude towards animals are raised by the fact that, upon the arrival of Europeans, the Indians reacted quickly to the increasing demand for furs and enthusiastically engaged in hunting. If they really considered beavers their brothers and sisters, then their feelings of kinship must have been truly unusual.
Expanding identity
Of course, modern "Greens" are not trying to revive totemism. Rather, it is about tearing down the border that separates human and animal, and ancient cultures are considered proof that the abolition of the distinction is possible. One of the most radical examples is the so-called "deep ecology." The principles of this direction were formulated in the early seventies by the Norwegian philosopher and "green" movement activist Arne Næss. One of the principles of "deep ecology" is the abandonment of human subjectivity and individuality. It might not even really be an abandonment, but an expansion and deepening of oneself. Specifically, I identify not only with my own qualities, desires, things that I own, but with other humans, animals, plants, all of nature. By realizing such an expansion of self, selfishness and a consumer attitude towards nature vanish, because my egoism has encompassed the whole world. Næss describes how he observes a flea that has fallen into chemicals and cannot be saved—the flea's agony arouses empathy in the spectator; he identifies with the animal. "I see myself in this flea," Næss writes. Of course, the flea as an example is chosen deliberately to show that every living being is noteworthy and that empathy is able to overcome prejudices. "Deep ecology" has been much criticized among the "greens" themselves, for example, for an unwillingness to focus on the social causes of the ecological crisis; likewise, it is not at all clear how exactly to reach the experience of the expanded "self."
However, the desire of "deep ecology" to appeal not to our reason, but to the irrational capacity for empathy, is not pointless. In our society, there is no lack of "rituals of cruelty" which the mind does not find all that hard to justify. For example, Bernard Rollin mentions an absurd situation—scientists deny the ability of animals to feel pain because they consider its existence scientifically unproven, yet they are ready to test painkillers intended for humans on animals. Quite contradictory, is it not? Here, however, it must be said that even in the event that this contradiction cannot be resolved, the aforementioned scientists do not at all have to admit the existence of pain; just as rational a solution to the dilemma is the abandonment of testing painkillers; one can, after all, also test various blood transfusion technologies, anti-burn creams, and hair shampoos, as is indeed done. However, the ability to identify with the pain and emotions of another being is a natural rather than supernatural ability; rarely does a person lack it, because without it, communication between humans would be significantly hindered. The strength of "deep ecology" lies in the fact that, in reality, a specially cultivated superficiality, a certain training and self-control are needed so that at least the suspicion that a dying flea or a mouse subjected to an experiment might also suffer does not reach our consciousness.
Human origins
Although elements of mysticism are perceptible in "deep ecology," there is no doubt that at its core is a completely secular and rational doctrine. In principle, one can trace how, from Darwin's theory of the origin of species, an interest in the interaction of animals and humans with the environment develops and, ultimately, an awareness arises of the destruction that the annihilation of the natural environment can bring to all living things, including humans. Darwinism, of course, is another story about the beginning. In the work published in 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, in which Darwin first formulated his theory in detail, he says essentially nothing about humans. In 1871, in the work The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, he was already trying to describe the human place in the natural world, however, discussions about how the theory of evolution could influence human self-understanding began immediately after the publication of On the Origin of Species. The public suddenly and once again realized the shocking possibility that the Human could be related to the Animal. The moment of surprise is easier to understand if we remember the distinction between human and animal in Christianity. To many at that time, it seemed that a choice had to be made between Christianity and Darwinism or the study of nature in general. This, of course, does not mean that everyone made such a choice. In fact, one cannot say that such a choice is necessary, even though there are, of course, issues where religious conviction can come into conflict with the theory of the origin of species. One such problem, it seems, is the distinction between human and animal, because in Darwinism it is quite conditional. A human is an animal and only an animal, that is, it possesses nothing that has not formed naturally and, at least in its beginnings, would not also be possessed by other living beings. Many modern biologists and evolutionists consistently talk about human and non-human animals.
It is interesting that this realization should supposedly be known to anyone who has mastered biology in high school, who has heard about genes and heredity, or at least noticed the extent to which our lives are nevertheless determined by the body. And yet, from time to time, the realization that humans possess the same qualities as animals causes shock and scandal. One such scandal was, and in some sense still is to this day, sociobiology. The concept of sociobiology was introduced by ant behaviour researcher Edward O. Wilson. His book published in 1976, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, was dedicated to the social behaviour of animals—how they communicate, how they choose partners, how they settle relationships, and how they play. In the final chapter, Wilson pointed out that much in human behaviour could be explained by the same natural, inherited mechanisms as those we try to discern in animals. It is hard to say to what extent Wilson considered these claims to be in some sense revolutionary, but he was probably not prepared for intellectuals to publish protest letters in the press, for the American Anthropological Association to try to forbid its members from engaging in sociobiology, and for representatives of an anti-racist activist group to pour water on him at a conference. "It may be said that sociology and other social sciences are the last steps of the branches of biology" or "The time has come to set aside the subject of ethics from philosophers and biologicize it"—if we ignore the cautious "it may be" and "for a time," these words of his sound radical enough, and at least sociologists or ethics experts might take offence. However, those who took offence were those who saw in his theory a defence of the existing political and social order. Sociobiology has nothing to do with racism, but, for example, arguments about the difference between men and women can be found in the works of sociobiologists, and often they are difficult to reconcile with the now politically correct understanding of the nature of men and women. For example, Matt Ridley, in his popular book The Red Queen, tries to biologically substantiate many of the stereotypes about gender differences that we are all well acquainted with and which are rather sexist. Men are by nature (!) polygamous, while women tend at least to ensure male monogamy (and it is not power relations that determine who can and who cannot have multiple partners), which is why, for example, homosexual men much more often have many partners than homosexual women. Men like blondes, because blonde hair is more characteristic specifically of young women. Men unconsciously try to choose women with wider hips, because such women can have children with larger heads and brains, which is why a narrow waist is significant, because it creates a visual illusion of hip width, etc.
Just as challenging have proven to be the attempts by scientists to biologicize not only human behaviour but also intellect. In fact, the beginnings of these efforts can also be found in Darwin's works. Frequently quoted is what he said in the book The Descent of Man about the fact that the differences between the human and animal mind are quantitative and not qualitative and that animals at least in some measure possess both the ability to sense and feel, to love, to remember, to pay attention, to imitate, and to think. Noam Chomsky and the popularizer of his ideas Steven Pinker tried to substantiate the idea of the innateness of the language faculty, the "language instinct." Back in the forties, neurophysiologists Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts came forward with the idea that nerve cells in the brain could function according to the principle of binary logic. And since the fifties, there have been attempts to model human intellectual abilities with the help of a computer, and scientists are working on the creation of so-called artificial reason or intelligence. Richard Dawkins in 1976 in the book The Selfish Gene played with his self-invented concept of the "meme," namely, he put forward the thesis that "tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches," just like genes, try to replicate themselves and end up in as large a number of bodies or, say, minds as possible. There are successful "memes," for example, "wheel," "God," "Mojito cocktail," or "energy," and not so successful ones—"recreation centre in Vērmanes Garden" or "vacuum tube computer."
Paradox
There is no doubt that it is still too early to draw any conclusions about the proportions between the influence of nature and culture on war and the possibilities of peaceful coexistence, crime and altruism, the free market and the planned economy, although some sociobiologists do engage in such arguments. Artificial reason has still not been successfully created, at least if one does not count individual programs with very specialized functions, for example, the ability to play chess. The "meme," in my opinion, is also currently hard to consider as anything more than a metaphor. However, I am surprised by the lack of understanding of many people regarding attempts to explain our behaviour and our mind with the help of biology. The reaction can even be quite hostile. For example, Dawkins, who very often used to appear on television and publish in the press, earned a reputation in England as an almost scandalous scientist. The negative reaction is surprising because everyone should know that humans, just like animals, possess the desire to produce offspring, to show off in front of "objects of desire," to mark territory, to display aggression against competitors, to care for children, to play. Could it really be that the causes for these actions in the case of animals are to be found in heredity, but in the case of humans—in the spirit? Undoubtedly, there are people who believe that the human is fundamentally different from animals, that humans, let us say, possess an immaterial soul that maintains within us the ability for language, reasoning, or creativity. However, what is surprising is that the same people tend to argue that, yes, thinking happens in the brain and, yes, the brain is a natural formation, and, of course, what happens in the brain influences our psyche, and, of course, genes to some extent determine our behaviour, and, yes, species originate and go extinct, there have been dinosaurs, and, of course, humans have originated through evolution. Is this not a case of having to talk again about the remarkable ability to be inconsistent?
Our culture is saturated with images that play with the intermediate state between human and animal; look, for example, at children's animated films; at least at the level of fantasy, we delight in the possibility of a human transforming into an animal (werewolf, human-spider, human-fly). I do not know if human dreams or nightmares manifest in this way, yet I suspect that even upon waking up we might have to see the animal within ourselves. Would that be terrible? Kafka's version of the human-beetle is ironically depressive. Kipling's—sadly optimistic. When Mowgli is driven away by both the Man-Pack and the Wolf-Pack, he spends his days in a small company of wolves. "But he was not lonely, for some years later he became a man and married." But perhaps other versions are also possible? In my opinion, if attention were paid to the conclusions that follow from our assumptions, many would have to admit that they have long considered themselves animals and yet live quite well.
Texts used in the preparation of the study: Boris Cyrulnik Si les lions pouvais parler, Charles Darwin The Descent of Man, Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene, Joseph Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book, Kenan Malik Man, Beast and Zombie, Arne Naess Self realization, James Serpell In the Company of Animals
Article first published in the May 2003 issue of the magazine Rīgas Laiks
Photograph from oir.mobi used