Tag: violence

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The Morality of Cockfighting

Should eaters of chicken decry cockfighting?

Andrew Fiala

Originally published Fresno Bee 2012-07-14

Human relations with animals are complex and laden with cultural significance. Americans dote upon our pets. We also like to eat meat. Many of us enjoy hunting. But public opinion has turned against animal blood sports, which were once forms of popular entertainment.

The most obvious case of our changing view of animals is the crackdown on cockfighting. Last week, for example, in Tulare County, police arrested the people who sell the sharp knives that are attached to the fighting roosters. Later that week, the police busted five people at a cockfight — again in Tulare County. At the beginning of July, the state Assembly unanimously agreed to double the fine for cockfighting and other animal fighting. The U.S. Senate has included an anti-animal fighting provision as part of this year’s national Farm Bill. Even Michael Vick, the former dogfighter, has called for stiffer cockfighting penalties.

So what’s so bad about cockfighting? Well, it can be dangerous to humans. A Bakersfield man bled to death last year after he was cut by a rooster’s knife. Cockfighting is also linked to other illicit activities: gambling, gangs, and drugs.

But defenders of cockfighting argue that the cockfight is an important part of some cultures. Cockfighting is a popular in Asia, some Pacific islands, and in parts of Latin America. On one interpretation, the sport is a celebration of masculine values: courage, fierceness, strength, and pride.

The ancient Greeks trained fighting birds. American Presidents — Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln — were supposedly involved in the sport. Lincoln is supposed to have defended cockfighting by saying, “As long as the Almighty has permitted intelligent men, created in his likeness to fight in public and kill each other while the world looks on approvingly, it’s not for me to deprive the chickens of the same privilege.”

This apocryphal quote makes you wonder whether there is much difference between watching a cockfight and a human fight. It is socially acceptable to cheer at human boxing matches and cage fights. But why then is it not acceptable to cheer on fighting roosters?

Perhaps the problem with cockfighting is that, unlike human fighting, the roosters fight to the death. But chicken killing does not bother most of us. According to the National Chicken Council, Americans consume 9 billion chickens per year — 83 pounds of chicken per capita every year. Hundreds of birds are killed every second to feed our appetite for chicken. So why should we worry about cockfighting?

I talked about these points with Andrew Fenton, an expert on animal ethics who is also my colleague in the Philosophy Department at Fresno State. Professor Fenton reminded me of the need to be sensitive to the values of the communities involved in the sport. Cockfighting is associated with minority and immigrant subcultures living in rural communities. Fenton suggested that there may be ways to help those in animal fighting subcultures see — on their own terms — that animal cruelty is wrong. But at the end of the day, cultural sensitivity is no excuse for cruelty.

Fenton is critical of both cockfighting and intensive animal agriculture. Both practices involve manipulating animals in unnatural ways for human enjoyment. He claims that a more “agrarian ethic” would care for the natural needs of animals.

Fenton pointed out similarities between the way that cockfighters breed and train ferocious roosters and the way that the poultry industry breeds delicious and fast-growing broilers. Fenton concluded, “Intensive animal farming is not any less cruel than cockfighting.”

Fenton further pointed out that while it is appropriate to be outraged by the visible cruelty of the cockfight, there is quite a bit of cruelty that remains invisible to us. Those who will suffer most from the crackdown on cockfighting will be the invisible among us: immigrants and others for whom animal blood sports are culturally significant.

Humans are thrilled by fighting sports and spilled blood. We also like to eat meat. Our food choices and sporting preferences have deep cultural significance for us. Perhaps eliminating cockfighting is a step in the right direction. But we still need more critical insight into our appetite for meat, our fascination with blood sports, and the cultural traditions that influence our thinking about these things.

 

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Mean and Irrational Hatred of Homosexuals

Let’s grow beyond our mean-spirited mocking

   Andrew Fiala

Originally published 2012-06-02

The world would be much better off if we could learn to mind our own business and refrain from mocking others. But we are social animals. We meddle and mock as we vie for status in the herd. Unfortunately, it feels good to laugh together with friends while ridiculing others. We enjoy teaming up against the vulnerable.

This has something to do with our fascination with scandalous gossip about the private lives of other people. There is entertainment value in denunciation and condemnation. Many seem to enjoy outrage and indignation, especially when it is directed at marginalized others. We like to tease and torment the weak. Cruelty helps us feel powerful.

Mean-spirited jokes help “us” display power over “them.” The most famous story of jeering ridicule is found in the Christian tradition. Jesus, the marginalized outsider, is given a crown of thorns and taunted as “king of the Jews.” History is full of cruel stories in which the executioners laugh as they murder their victims, desecrating their bodies and dancing on their graves.

Scornful joking continues to plague us. Last year at this time, comedian Tracy Morgan said that if his son were gay, he would stab him to death. Morgan later apologized, saying he was just joking. Earlier this month, a pastor from North Carolina, Sean Harris, said that if your 4-year-old son behaved effeminately you should squash that behavior “like a cockroach.” Harris continued: “Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. OK? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male.” Harris later claimed he was joking–about the violence; but not about God’s condemnation of homosexuality.

It is difficult to understand why people hate homosexuals enough to joke about stabbing or beating them; or why anyone would think such jokes are funny. There are much more important things to worry about than other people’s sexuality. If anything falls into the “none of your business” category, it is other people’s sex lives.

But people are obsessed with the sex of others. Another North Carolina minister, Charles Worley, recently preached that homosexuals should be rounded up behind electrified fences where they would die out because they can’t reproduce. He went on to say, “It makes me pukin’ sick to think about … can you imagine kissing some man?” The obvious solution is not to imagine it, if you don’t like it. But we can’t seem to keep our imaginations to ourselves.

Some might blame our hypermediated culture and a degeneration of morals. Our culture does promote voyeuristic mockery as a spectator sport. Everywhere we turn there are comedians and pundits judging, condemning and ridiculing. Electronic communication makes it easier for us to deride and jeer each other behind the anonymity of a phony screen name.

But the problem of gossip, mockery and meddling has a long history. Some verses in the Bible condemn “idle talk.” The Stoic philosophers taught that it was wise to learn to hold your tongue. The Buddhists encouraged “right speech” and the virtue of silence.

There is also a virtue in minding your own business. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius explained, in good Stoic fashion, that it is difficult enough to tend to your own affairs. The hard work of ensuring that your own life is honorable leaves little time for gossip and meddling. He wrote, “To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why means a loss of opportunity for some other task.”

Social animals compete for status within the herd. They push the weak specimens around in a game of power. They laugh and bray and howl together. And as anyone who has a dog can confirm, they have a hard time keeping their noses out of each other’s private parts.

Of course, we ought to aspire to be better than animals. We are reasonable beings who can control our imaginations and our laughter. We don’t have to be cruel. We can hold our tongues and keep silent. And we really ought to keep our noses out of other people’s business.

 

 

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It’s difficult to see God in holy sites

It’s difficult to see God in holy sites

Fresno Bee, February 25, 2012

Since Biblical times, Jerusalem has been a place of violence and war.  Romans, Muslims, and Christians have each ruled the city.  In 1967, Israel seized the whole city.  But Palestinians and others still contest the legitimacy of Israeli rule.

One focus of continued conflict is the Temple Mount.  Tradition holds that on this modest hill in the old city, Adam was created, Noah made sacrifices, Abraham bound Isaac, Jacob climbed a ladder to heaven, and Solomon built the first temple.  Some Jews want to rebuild the Temple.  And some Christians support the idea, seeing this as a way to hasten the second coming of Christ.

However, there are two mosques on the Temple Mount: the al-Aqsa mosque and the beautiful Dome of the Rock.  The Dome on the Rock is built on top of the rock where Abraham supposedly bound Isaac.  Muslims believe that Mohammed was transported to the Temple Mount during his night journey—to the al-Aqsa mosque.  He then communed with Moses and Jesus, ascending to heaven from the sacred rock.

Last week, posters were hung in Jerusalem calling for Jews to go to the Temple Mount to “Purify the site from the enemies of Israel who stole the land, and build the Third Temple on the ruins of the mosques.”  Muslims gathered on the Mount to protect the mosques.  The police prevented Jews from entering the site.

This led to cries of outrage by some Jews, who claimed their rights were being violated.  Meanwhile, Muslims continued to fear that Jews were planning to violate their holy sites.  On Sunday February 19, tourists visiting the Temple Mount were stoned by Palestinians defending the place. Eighteen were arrested.

The violence of this week—minor by historical standards—gives me further reason to be skeptical of religion.  I find it difficult to understand how, in a universe that is infinitely vast, a single rock in Jerusalem can be all that important.  Why did God choose that rock as the focal point?  There is something too convenient in the way that all of these stories point to this rock, to this hill, and to Jerusalem itself.  There are surely bigger, more beautiful rocks and more impressive hills in the world.  Why would God come here but not to Half Dome?

This got me thinking about Rousseau’s discussion of religion in Emile.  Rousseau suggested that to discover the truth of religion, you would have to visit all of the world’s holy places.  It is not enough to believe the testimony of others.  You need to go and see for yourself whether the stories are true.  During Rousseau’s time—he died in 1778—it would have been impossible to undertake such a journey.  Rousseau concluded that since we can’t actually do the research, we should learn to tolerate one another.

Rousseau is right: the way forward has to be a path of mutual toleration and an end to religious violence.  But I don’t think he fully imagined what happens when you actually visit the world’s religious sites.  In these places, you see architectural and artistic wonders that human beings have created.  You see pilgrims and street vendors and tour guides.  But God is hard to discern.

I’ve been to the Vatican and the other cathedrals of Europe, to the Lama Temple in Beijing, to Shinto shrines in Japan, and now to Jerusalem. I visited the place of Christ’s crucifixion and the Western Wall, where Jews gather to mourn the loss of the Temple.  In none of these places have I witnessed anything more divine than what I have seen from the top of Half Dome or in the face of my own children.  In none of these places have I witnessed anything that is worth killing for.

Religious people will undoubtedly say that I am just not looking carefully enough.  That God is really there—in the churches and temples and rocks.  But I worry that when people see God in these places, they also see reasons to kill each other.  And I can’t help but think that if God could observe any of this, He would be disappointed to find that we value rocks and buildings more than we value each other.

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Democracy, education diminish our cruelty

Democracy, education diminish our cruelty

Fresno Bee, January 28, 2012

People are becoming less cruel and more humane.  This is the thesis of Steven Pinker’s optimistic new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature.  Pinker, a Harvard Psychologist, provides extensive data to support his conclusion, citing a variety of developments from low homicide rates to the demise of dueling and the abolition of slavery and torture.

He attributes some of our improvement to the fact that people are getting smarter.  He notes that rising IQ scores during the past century bode well for a more peaceful world, since smarter people are less violent.  He notes, for example, that smarter people tend to commit fewer violent crimes. He concludes, “people with more sophisticated reasoning abilities are more cooperative, have larger moral circles, and are less sympathetic to violence.”

There are reasons to be skeptical of any straightforward attempt to link intelligence with virtue.  Individuals with low IQ’s can be compassionate and kind; and some psychopaths are exceedingly clever.  But Pinker does provide some reasons to think that better education produces gentler people.

One causal mechanism for this sort of progress is literature.  Pinker thinks that representations of cruelty can change our attitudes toward violence.  And he argues that reading is a useful tool for developing empathy.  Reading demands that we imagine our way into another person’s point of view.  Widespread literacy—made possible by printing technologies and mandatory schooling—may well be a major cause of moral progress.

One sign of this progress is that fact that warfare has become less cruel.  Pinker thinks it is significant that despite the horrors that are still occasionally unleashed in war, we have self-consciously refrained from using our worst and most deadly weapons.  He suggests that nuclear warfare has become “too dangerous to contemplate, and leaders are scared straight.”

This conclusion hinges on the intelligence of our leaders.  Indeed, Pinker claims that there is a correlation between Presidential IQ and deaths in war.  According to Pinker, smarter presidents wage fewer wars and produce fewer wartime casualties.

Such a blithe conclusion should be taken with a grain of salt, since it assumes that presidents wage war in a vacuum without the input of the military or the cooperation of foreign allies.  And such a conclusion ignores the fact that our representatives in the Congress have some control over how wars are fought.

This points toward a central question: do wise and virtuous leaders cause moral improvement?  The Greek philosopher Plato thought so.  Plato rejected democracy as rule of the uneducated and unvirtuous masses.  He thought we would do better under the watchful eye of a wise and benevolent ruler who would protect us from our own vicious and ignorant ways.

We are no longer sympathetic to this idea.  Instead, we tend to believe that we are smart enough and good enough to govern ourselves. Pinker’s analysis gives us reason to trust this democratic impulse.  It is our modern democratic state and its educational system that has made us smarter and better.  Most of the moral progress that we’ve made during the past millennia has occurred under democratic government and has been facilitated by the expansion of literacy and education.

People are not born smart or good.  We are born with the capacity to learn and with a basic capacity for empathy.  But we must learn all of the specifics, including how to control our own violent impulses.  Education is essential for understanding the complex moral and political problems that confront us in our globalized world.  Intelligence and virtue develop as a result of the sustained effort of parents, teachers, and a supporting social environment.  And our moral and intellectual skills develop further, as we exercise our own capacities for self-government.

It is amazing how much moral progress we have made.  We no longer allow slavery or torturous punishments.  Women have been liberated. And we recognize that our most destructive weapons are immoral.  Good for us for figuring this out!

These moral developments were not imposed upon us by philosopher-kings.  Rather, they resulted from democratic procedures and were produced by our system of education.  The key to future progress is to trust ourselves and to continue to believe that democracy and education can make us both smarter and better.

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Violence Can Move Bodies, But Not the Spirit

Violence Can Move Bodies, But Not the Spirit

Fresno Bee, November 18, 2011

Martin Luther King thought that nonviolent civil protest created a “tension in the mind.”  This tension is the result of seeing good people jailed and brutal power unleashed upon passive resisters.  King’s insights help explain reaction to recent police brutality against Occupy protesters.

Police have used rubber bullets, stun grenades, pepper spray, and clubs to break up Occupy encampments across the country.  An Iraq war veteran was injured in Oakland,  An 84-year old grandmother was pepper sprayed in Seattle.  And at UC Berkeley, cops in riot gear jabbed students with nightsticks.

In the Berkeley case, officials defended police action in public statements that do indicate a certain tension in the mind.  The UC Berkeley police captain explained (in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle), “the individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence.  I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest.”

Robert Birgeneau, The UC Berkeley Chancellor, explained this more fully in a letter to the campus.  “It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience. By contrast, some of the protesters chose to be arrested peacefully… They did not resist arrest or try physically to obstruct the police officers’ efforts to remove the tents. These protesters were acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and we honor them.”

Although the Chancellor invoked our tradition of civil disobedience, he appears to have forgotten the power of the images of police violence from the Civil Rights era.  Police who strike unarmed, nonviolent protestors are usually on the wrong side of history.

Violence is effective in the short term.  Police were able to clear protesters out in Oakland, Seattle, and Berkeley.  The philosopher Hannah Arendt explained, “Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience.”  Violence does move bodies.  But it cannot move the spirit.

Violence does not prove anything about justice or truth.  King explained, “in the long run of history might does not make right and the power of the sword cannot conquer the power of the spirit.”  In fact, violence can provoke a spirit of rebellion in the hearts of those who are bullied.  And thus violence tends to escalate, as those who are harassed begin to push back.

Violence and nonviolence are slippery concepts.  We can use the term “violence” metaphorically to describe storms and emotions.  And some people speak of structural violence—which is the tendency of a system to harm people through racism or oppression.  But violence is usually understood as harmful physical force intentionally applied against the will of some victim.

It seems clear that on this definition, the police have been violent.  When cops strike students with clubs or pepper spray old women, it is obvious that there is intent to cause physical harm.  Protesters who link arms do resist police power.  But linking arms is nonviolent because it does not intend to cause physical harm.

Occupy protesters have invoked the idea of structural violence, claiming that the system is set up in a way that harms the majority.  When the police attack peaceful protesters with batons and pepper spray, one suspects that they may be right.

The protestors at Berkeley, for example, were trying to call attention to the problem of education in our state.  Tuition keeps increasing. Classes are cancelled or jammed to overflowing.  And students graduate with large debts and few opportunities.  Students are beginning to push back against a system that is failing them.  But linking arms in protest is not violence, despite what the Berkeley Chancellor said.

Some people may think that it is better to clear the tents and end the protests quickly, hoping that the structural problems will go away.  But attacking the protesters won’t solve our problems.  And it is wrong to suggest that the police are somehow justified in assaulting those who are directing our attention to these problems.