The Melissa Buchman Outcry and Human Trafficking

You might be wondering what the title of this blog post is referring to. I admit it is a sensationalist title. But let me explain....

"I'm happy that people are selectively compassionate instead of just universally careless. At least that gives us a starting point..."

That's a response I got from another facebook user after I suggested on The Oatmeal's facebook page that he (The Oatmeal, an internet figure usually concerned with comedy) should reconsider his support for the 'campaign to ban Melissa Buchman from South Africa'.

What I had suggested is that if you're going to hate hunters, you cannot defend meat eating. In the meat industry, animals are killed every minute of every day. They live cramped, awful lives. With hunting, animals are killed less frequently, live longer, and suffer less. But the quality of the animal's life isn't what is at stake here - they may live traditional farm-animal lives, not the horrific lives of factory farmed animals. Instead, what is of moral concern is the death of an animal - for the dubious purpose of human comfort. People hunt for trophies or for food - or both. Hunting is done for human comfort, yet people think raising animals just to hunt them is somehow different from farming where we use them for comfort (e.g. leather goods) or consumption. At bottom, eating meat and having a hunting trophy are the same thing; recreational. You could do without both. Canned hunting is just as cowardly as not killing the animals you eat yourself, but having them killed 'en masse' at locations far removed from you and then eating them in the comfort of your own home. You are dealing with the mass 'production' of sentient beings.

Killing for fun is disgusting (as is the case with some hunting), but today eating meat is, most often, 'just for fun'. We have all the means to do without it. But the habit remains, because it is fueled by a powerful drive - human taste. We eat meat for fun, because it tastes delicious. Even with serious scientific evidence suggesting that we stop eating meat:

(*) UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet (Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says)
(*) Or this study from medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine: Red Meat Consumption and Mortality (you can download the pdf)

I am aware that these two examples may be too meager for a staunch meat-eater to really take my point seriously. But these are antecedent issues. Let me attend to the real issue.

The anti-Buchman campaign has made this woman the face of evil. It's a case of everyone finding some kind of catharsis by blaming a scapegoat for all the evil we commit against animals. This is the real face of evil:  factory farming (follow link for video)

If the almost universal norm is that animals die for our comfort - be it in appalling conditions on factory farms or in exemplary conditions on traditional farms - how is it that this woman is being called unspeakable names for what she does? People are so ignorant and so cruel. We, the people of South Africa, hunt and kill animals too. Hunting here actually helps fund conservation efforts and helps population control. We have no 'real' wild animals here anyway. They're all protected on game farms or reserves. 

But let me get back to my highly offensive and controversial title, which alludes to the real issue...

Recall the quote: "I'm happy that people are selectively compassionate instead of just universally careless. At least that gives us a starting point..." This was said in response to the problem I raised above, namely that people who hate hunting but don't condemn meat eating hold contradictory beliefs. 

My response is NO.

Being selectively compassionate is what has gotten us to almost every horror that we have ever inflicted on non-human and human animals - patriarchy, slavery, human trafficking,  religious wars, terrorism, factory farming, unnecessary and cruel animal testing. When one sentient being, a woman, a homosexual person, someone from a different race, a different religion, a different nationality, or an animal from a different (but equally able to suffer) species is excluded from moral feeling, humanity has failed. Our inability to reflect upon our responsibilities to other sentient beings is what this Buchman petition is evidence of. Not taking the time to think about a situation gives rise to shameful behaviour. Consider that all that has been achieved here is a hate campaign against one woman, instead of a sober and responsible reflection on human behaviour. Being selectively compassionate IS universally careless.

So let me try to really hit this home: If we are ignorant and cruel enough to deny this woman entry to our country for doing what very many South African nationals do, then we have failed ourselves. We have perpetrated the kind of wanton disregard for knowledge that enables the worst kinds of cruelty. 

The thinking behind this outcry is the kind of thinking that enables horrible practices (such as human trafficking) to remain unattended to. Selective compassion.

*

So, if you have 45mins to spare, watch this really thoughtful man talk to Richard Dawkins:

Peter Singer interview

Mean bitches who don't shave .

Alternative, politically correct title: Ayn Rand in the 21st century. 

So, I'm currently writing my honours thesis in philosophy. This year has seen me become a vegetarian and a feminist. It has also seen me slowly acquire a burning hatred for a previously, if not loved, liked author - Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand dealt extensively with the theme(s) of individualism and independence as norms of personhood. However, her task was not to interrogate these norms, but rather to promote them. I feel that this ends up amounting to irresponsible valorisation or idealisation of independence/individualism. In the free-market capitalist, industrialised, world what we have essentially done is internalize the notion of the autonomous, powerful, self-interested individual as the foundation for our thinking around the person. But I, along with many other cultural critics, philosophers and feminists (what I mean to say is that this is not an original idea of mine, but one informed by extensive reading on ontology and ethics) think that to regard ‘the person’ outside of the relational framework which makes us human is misguided.

The practices we value deeply such as childrearing, friendship, familial relations are so profoundly DEpendent and based on our historically and culturally ‘’situatedness’’ that to make the norms of personhood rely on transcending this relationality is to dehumanise us. Thinking of the fact of birth brings to focus what it means to be human – finitude, vulnerability, relationality. As human beings we are vulnerable subjects, open to the world and to each other. An ethics inspired by a negation or avoidance of how human life is characterised by dependency relations will only serve to alienate us from our responsibilities towards each other and to ourselves. I think it is foolish to make self-interest the spinning centre of civilization. Not to say that self-interest isn’t real. The issue is rather one of taking responsibility for our habits of self-interest. Self-interest is an ever-present temptation – but I think that that is what it should remain.

I think that the way we pay teachers and nurses reflects our disregard for the values of interdependence and of dependency relations. These care-giving professions, so close to what makes us vulnerable and open to others, are rendered marginal in a society which valorises independence. We need each other. We wouldn’t be people without other people. If the symbolic values we attach to personhood ignores this, then we end up creating a cold, consumerist world for ourselves to inhabit. However, I am not saying that there is some real, objective fact about us. We construct all our facts. But this does not de-legitimize them. Constructs give our world meaning. What I am saying is that we need to start building our constructs on a better foundation than that which Ayn Rand suggests. We need a better starting position, one which takes responsibility for much more than just ourselves. We are amongst each other – much more so now in the globalised, cosmopolitan world. 

So, Objectivism....

Ok, here’s the deal with Objectivism as a philosophy:

Academia generally ignored or rejected her philosophy, but it has been a significant influence among libertarians and American conservatives (Wikipedia). So, to start off with, libertarianism could be summed up as the view that we don’t need a state. It begins with a notion of ‘negative freedom’, which entails that we want freedom for freedom’s sake, and furthermore, to be free is to have nothing impeding your actions. This may be better understood in contrast to ‘positive freedom’, which entails that we want freedom with content – meaning that we are free in so far as we are actually enabled to act – meaning that we often need rules or ‘impediments to our freedom’ to actually enable us to act. Think of a place/piece of the globe where people live, but they live as totally free, autonomous individuals. They have nothing to impede their freedom. But they also have nothing else, because we must devise rules or a kind of state to colour in and give meaning to our freedom. Maybe think of the statement 'you'e free to fly'. So what? I can't fly, even if I am free to. This is what happens when people say 'you can opt out or leave the system any time you want to'. Really? No, not really.

A libertarian wants total free trade between autonomous, rationally self-interested individuals. They want everything privatised, funded by individuals who have banded together via a contractual agreement. If you want a road, build it yourself – there is no state to take your money and use it for everyone’s benefit. American conservatives, however, work with the notion of government, but they want it to be as small as possible. No regulation, no interference. Just total freedom.

So, I think libertarianism is bullshit. It’s the basis for free-market capitalism, which I also have some serious misgivings about.

So there you have a better idea of the philosophy Ayn Rand promotes. An ethics based on self-interest. So cold. So lonely. So patriarchal it actually raises my hackles. The basic philosophy underpinning her whole effort is deeply misguided. She promotes the kind of one-dimensional first-wave feminism that gives feminists a bad name. ‘Look, look! We’re all totally rational and autonomous! Please include us in your definition of personhood?! Also, we're mean bitches who don't shave'

Hello again.

So, we are on the far side of 2013. Hello again.

There is a part of me that would prefer to start a new blog, removing this one as a 'signifier of myself'. It's all different now. I should change the colour scheme and rethink my subject matter. Maybe come up with a stronger 'theme' than these diary-esque entries about STUFF. But I won't start a different one. Which is some sort of metaphor - or I would like for it to read as such.

Anyway, so 2013 hey? Huh.

I've been thinking about so very much. Let's see about that.