Animals
by Richard Oxman
> “The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins….” — D.H. Lawrence
Wow. And Lawrence lived so long ago.
When I came across John Berger in 70s New York, he was already asking why we should look at animals. [1] His passionate pleas and insights are caught in the excerpts immediately below (Magritte’s words). Please apply the thrust of Rene Magritte’s injunction as you read Berger…and me; Magritte, painter of “The Human Condition” (and, of course, much more) cried:
> “People who look for symbolic meanings fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the image…The images must be seen *such as they are*.” [2]
He’s talkin’ ’bout his work, but I’d like one and all to put the sentiment to good use ‘cross the board. The spirit of his words can be applied even to works that do not involve *symbols*.
> “The 19th century, in western Europe and North America, saw the beginning of a process, today being completed by 20th century corporate capitalism, by which every tradition which has previously mediated between man and nature was broken. Before this rupture, animals constituted the first circle of what surrounded man. Perhaps that already suggests too great a distance. They were with man at the centre of his world. Such centrality was of course economic and productive. Whatever changes in productive means and social organization, men depended upon animals for food, work transport, clothing.
> Yet to suppose that animals first entered the human imagination as meat or leather or horn is to project a 19th century attitude backwards across the millenia. Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises. For example, the domestication of cattle did not begin as a simple prospect of milk and meat. Cattle had magical functions, sometimes oracular, sometimes sacrificial. And the choice of a given species as magical, tameable *and* alimentary was originally determined by the habits, proximity and “invitation” of the animal in question
White ox good is my mother
And we the people of my sister
The people of Nyariau Bul…
Friend, great ox of the spreading horns,
which ever bellows amid the herd,
Ox of the son of Bul Maloa.
(*The Nuer: a description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic people*, by Evans-Pritchard.)
Animals are born, are sentient and are mortal. In these things they resemble man. In their superficial anatomy — less in their deep anatomy — in their habits, in their time, in their physical capacities, they differ from man. They are both like and unlike.
‘We know what animals do and what beaver and bears and salmon and other creatures need, because once our men were married to them and they acquired this knowledge from their animal wives.’ (Hawaiian Indians quoted by Levi-Strauss in *The Savage Mind*.)
The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal’s look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look.”
I’ve brought in Berger here at length ’cause I want to make sure we don’t give the wrong impression with the Ox to Grind visuals of oxen, for one. And I’d really like people to take notice more of what it means…that mountain lions are being spotted more and more in and around California developments. And much more. See the excerpts below…keeping in mind that my intention is NOT to have you dwell on each and every orthographic crevice.
“The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves…are specifically addressed to man.”
“…its silence, guarantees its distance, its distinctness, its exclusion, from and of man.”
“Only in death do the two parallel lines converge and after death, perhaps, cross over to become parallel again: hence the widespread belief in the transmigration of souls.”
“Animals came from over the horizon. They belonged *there* and *here*….An animal’s blood flowed like human blood, but its species was undying and each…ox was Ox. This — maybe the first existential dualism — was reflected in the treatment of animals. They were subjected *and* worshipped, bred *and* sacrificed.”
“Today the vestiges of this dualism remain among those who live intimately with, and depend upon, animals. A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements in that sentence are connected by an *and* and not by a *but*.”
“…the first metaphor was animal…language itself began with metaphor.”
“If the first metaphor was animal, it was because the essential relation between man and animal was metaphoric.”
“In his book on totemism, Levi-Strauss comments on Rousseau’s reasoning: ‘It is because man orginally felt himself identical to all those like him…animals…that he came to acquire the capacity to distinguish *himself* as he distinguishes *them*…to use the diversity of species for conceptual support for social differentiation.’”
Berger points to the significance of everything from Lascaux to the first colors being from animal blood to eight out of twelve zodiac signs being animals to all the Greeks hours of the day being animals to Hindus’ earth being on the back of an elephant (the *trunkster* itself on the back of tortoise) to…and so on to the nth degree. Endless examples from all angles.
Berger bits continue:
“Everywhere animals offered explanations…lent their name or character to a quality…in its essence mysterious.”
“What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.”
Then he lands on something that chills: “Today we live without them.” He talks about about our consequent solitude. And eventually he gets around to touching on their awful restrictions in circuses, national parks, game reserves, zoos…and the human home.
As *pets*. An interesting word…which –in the 16th century– used to refer only to a lamb raised by hand. This singular practice, on the social scale that it exists on today, of keeping animals regardless of utilitarian purpose…is truly a modern sickness.
As JB puts it, “It is part of that universal but personal withdrawl into the private small family unit, *decorated or furnished with momentoes from the outside world*, which is such a distinguishing feature of consumer societies.” Italics are mine.
First punchline: “The small family living unit lacks space, earth, other animals, seasons, natural temperatures…. The pet is either sterilized or sexually isolated, extremely limited in its exercise, deprived of almost all other animal contact, and fed with artificial foods.” The creatures becoming creatures of their owner’s way of life is what’s behind pets looking like their owners, says Berger.
When he was writing all this down in the 70s…there were about 40 million dogs, the same number of cats, 15 million caged birds, and 10 million other steps; that sound to me like something on the order of what two-fifths of the U.S. population was at the time.
The grave is dug deeper with the observation that too many people feel that their pet *completes* them, destroying the parallelism that should define their separate lives. A very special, sickly form of co-dependence.
When Berger gets into how the physical marginalization of animals is only part of the problem, we begin to see the depths of despair we…must face.
The Beatrix Potter/Disney syndrome is hard for people to confront. For animals have become a spectacle that is invisible. As JB explains, “In the accompanying ideology, animals are always the observed.” But not seen. The more we *know* about them, the further away they become. Berger sees us daydreaming about images of wild animals…from which we turn our backs.
I won’t go into the disgusting origins of zoos. Derrick Jensen will be coming out with something soon that’ll blow you away on that count. But I will point out that the manufacture of realistic animal toys –only begun in the 19th century (before which the proportion of animal toys was small)– coincided with the establishment of public zoos.
Zoos, like all 19th century institutions, had to justify their support of imperialist ideology by claiming independent civic/educational functions. That’s where most people are at this juncture, justifying zoos by citing obsolete, disingenuous 19th century reasoning.
As Berger underscores, “Zoos, realistic animal toys and the widespread commercial diffusion of animal imagery, all began as animals started to be withdrawn from daily life.”
All animals, including man, have fast come to the point where they possess the zoo animal’s flickering gaze, *passing on attitude*. “They look sideways,” observes Berger. So do we.
He concludes, “They look blindly beyond. They scan mechanically. They have been immunised to encounter, because nothing can any more occupy a *central* place in their attention.”
This is true of human beings too, including what may be your self-assigned, self-important *colleagues* on the left.
It’s not just the *look* between animal and man –vital until a century ago, crucial in the development of human society– which has been extinguished. Is being extinguished.
I ask readers to look up Ranier Maria Rilke’s “The Panther” at their earliest convenience. Study it, if you will. And, then, apply the animal’s dilemma therein to the caged human you now know. I’d print it out for you here, but family is visiting…and I’ve opted to ask for your help.
And on that note, I’ll simply close by providing a context for the D.H. Lawrence quote with which I began this article. For it penetrates to the challenge we all face now…which is very far from what the vast majority of activists are focused on. It has zero to do with trying to recapture the lost look between man and animals, and even less to do with acclimating to the present look of man.
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is no smooth road into the future. But we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.” [3]
How familiar that sounds. [4]
Far Out Footnotes:
[1] All Berger references/quotations can be found in the opening “Why Look At Animals?” chapter of his About Looking (New York: Vintage Books, 1980).
[2] From p. 283 of (London’s) Phaidon Press The 20th-Century Art Book of 1996.
[3] A reader recently asked me whether or not we were proceeding on shaky ground by criticizing the likes of Amy Goodman. “Don’t we need her?”, he asked. And he wondered out loud respecting what hay The Right might make of such criticism. Well, for whatever good she does, no…we don’t need her. More importantly, too few people get the fact that The Battle is *over*. That there is no battle. That what’s called “The Opposition” has won. For a long time now. Long before John Muir lamented the same. Certainly long before any Bush entered the picture. The Challenge, if you will, is a very personal one. One that is wrapped up with how you’re going to make a living, and where you’re going to live. And be able to live with yourself. This subject is a primary focus in the new film *The Assassination of Richard Nixon* (which I do NOT recommend). The way in which the Sean Penn character, Sam Bicke, deals with this dilemma is not acceptable. It’s very misleading for the general public too. Much like so-called leaders of the left are in trying to recruit you for their well-paid parade.
[4] If you like, you can look up the root for the word *family*. And play with what it means for a relationship…or anything…to be family-like. Where roles are clear. And where one knows what to expect of another…and vice versa. Or, if you’re not so inclined, why not just tune in to the newly recorded “Familiar” at radiantdarling.com/v2/? Just to relax… with what might be familiar sounds for you. It’s something Scott and his band mates of Radiant Darling just cut, and wanted to share.
Special notes: Please consider that the Animal Liberation Front –for all it’s compassion respecting the unconscionable torture of animals– doesn’t seem to acknowledge the thrust of what I’m offering up above.
I’ve asked Scott to add a few words. He may or… he may not.
—–
Hi, this is Scott, your friendly neighborhood web person. Richard asked me to surprise him and all. Surprising is an *overcoming*. What is it that we must overcome?
The sky *is* falling. Ask Chicken-Licken, or Hen-len, Cock-lock, Duck-luck, Drake-lake, Goose-loose, Gander-lander, and Turkey-lurkey. Well, actually don’t ask them as Fox-lox took them into the fox’s hole and he and his young ones ate them up.
There’s a problem with this fairy-tale. It is just another children’s story that’s been de-clawed.
The story of Chicken-Licken has turned into one of Chicken-Little. The ending has been replaced with an umbrella given to Chicken-Little by the *King* to protect Little from a falling sky. But the sky is still falling and no umbrella, no matter how large, or who gives it to you will stop that.
When the sky is falling it’s always a bad idea to take that information to the *King*. “We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen…”, and taking it to the *King* will only get you gobbled up. It’s time to throw away the umbrella and get *Back to Our Senses* as Derrick Jensen would suggest.
