Skywritings

No, the fear and ambivalence of Hungarian Jewry was not because of 50 years of communism.

My parents left in 1948, when I was three.
I had been baptized in Budapest,
and I didn’t learn that I was jewish till I was nine,
in Montreal.
Other jews of Hungarian origin in Canada did not learn till they were adults
— and some are still in denial to this day.

Nor did it start with the Shoah.

Bigotry, oppression and  pogroms had been ongoing for centuries.

My father converted when he was 19, in 1919,
because of numerus clausus,
changed his name from Hesslein to “Harnad,”
then my mother‘s from (Jüdin) Süss to “Simoni”.
(Nor did it save them from having to go underground with a false identity in 1944.
And forty members of my family on both sides were exterminated.)

No, the fear and ambivalence of Hungarian Jewry was not because of 50 years of communism.

One lifetime in Hungary will do that for you,
or even just its aftermath.

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Postscript:

Many years ago, in the 1970s, when I lived in Princeton and my brother was visiting, we went to a Hungarian bookstore in nearby New Bunswick (NJ) where there has been a Hungarian emigré community since the early 1900s). We shook hands with the owner, a Mr. Somodi, who immediately began to address us “per du” (tegezés), delighted to hear that Hungarians who had emigrated at a young age so long ago (1949) still spoke Hungarian.

(I remember that in browsing the books that was the first time I came across a book about the Scythian origins of Hungarian…)

Well, we got around to inquiring about Hungarian restaurants in New Brunswick “because there are quite a few Hungarians living in Princeton.”

He asked: “Really? Who are these Hungarians?”

I cited, as an example, Eugene Wigner (Wigner Jenő, a Nobel laureate).

I can still remember Somodi’s words, from 40 years ago (no need to translate them into English):

“Wigner? Hát az nem Magyar, az Zsidó!”

(Enlightened, by inference, about our likely ethnicity, I think he suspended the “per du,” and we suspended our browsing…)

Some interesting features of the “post-truth” time-warp that we’re all finding ourselves in:

1. The web empowers anyone to start rumors.

2. Negative rumors can be started and spread quickly, and can do irreversible damage before they are detected or debunked.

3. Negative rumors (esp. conspiracy theories) are based on simply sowing doubts (like the OJ Simpson dream team’s defence).

4. As nothing is certain other than the provable truths of mathematics and Descartes’ Cogito, everything else is susceptible to negative rumors.

5. Positive evidence takes much more work to adduce.

6. And the general populace is much more susceptible to negative rumors.

It’s a kind of a perverse side-effect of what Karl Popper pointed out about scientific theories: Unlike mathematical theorems, you can never prove they’re true, only that they’re false (with one piece of negative evidence). And evidence is subject to interpretation.

It reminds one also of the malleability and mutability of laws and constitutions: They too depend on interpretation. And interpretation depends on authoritative opinion. And authority is conferred on the basis of… take your pick: popular opinion or authoritarian diktat.

Online-era populism may be the soft underbelly of democracy.

Let’s hope the US labyrinth of checks and balances can weather the post-truth storm. Hungary’s is already a shipwreck.

Reflections (without having read it) on:
Singer, Peter (2017) (ed.) Does Anything Really Matter? Essays on Parfit on Objectivity Oxford.

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“Mattering” is neither a logical nor a scientific matter. In a “zombie” universe — one that is like ours, but in which living organisms do not feel — nothing would matter. What happens to zombies does not matter. (Why would it matter? to whom? to what?)

So it is because organisms feel that things matter in the universe. Let’s simplify what they feel: pleasure and pain.

Suppose there could be a one-sided “pleasure universe”: Organisms do feel, but they only feel pleasure, nothing negative. There can be more pleasure and less pleasure, but feeling less pleasure would not feel “worse.”

In a pleasure-only universe, nothing would matter either. Less versus more pleasure would not matter. It would just be a fact, the way everything in the zombie universe is just a fact, and the way everything that has no effect (now or in future) on feeling organisms in our actual universe is just a fact.

It follows that it is only pain that matters, and the only ethical principle is to minimize pain.

But a complication of “negative utilitarianism” is conflict of interest —in things that matter, hence pain: A benign despot could do the utilitarian calculus and decide mechanically what must live and die in order to minimize overall pain. But individual (sentient) organisms in our world (and perhaps any viable world) — and especially social, altricial mammals — are designed so that their own needs, and the needs of those close to them, usually matter more to them than the overall utilitarian calculus. (There are exceptions.)

Ethics is about that conflict of interest in matters that matter to feeling organisms. A world with only one feeling organism would be a simpler matter.

Harnad, Stevan (2016) My orgasms cannot be traded off against others’ agony. Animal Sentience 7(18)

The parrot rhythm videos all over youtube are funny, sort of, and interesting.

Probably our common origins in big-beat rhythm entrainment (though no idea why: possibly courtship display? some sort of social contagion? doesn’t look like aggressivity).

Interesting that it’s shown by the only other species that can imitate speech. Would they do it with a rhythmic visual stimulus alone?

Reminds me vaguely of the (vaguely repulsive) baby rhythm videos (which put me off partly because of the vulgar adult movements in the toddlers and partly because of the vulgar music)

I wonder if parrots also imitate movement?

(Maybe it’s just me, but something feels non-innocent in videos like these, something reminiscent of circus-display on-cue: the kind of music, the kind of movement, the kind of people. Maybe I’m just post-april-fools-day-pausal today… but I much prefer to see tenderness, empathy, tentativeness, and, yes, respect, toward animals, and especially captive ones. Ditto for babies.)

As a scientist and fellow-vegan, I agree that doctors as individuals should be allowed to opt out of administering euthanasia if it goes against their conscience and that patients should be allowed to choose their doctor. Doctors are not obliged to perform abortions, and patients can choose a doctor who does (or doesn’t). But as surely as doctors should be free to decline to end sentient life if they wish, patients should be free to end their suffering if they wish. Vegans are against causing suffering and against ending life, but life is such that sometimes the two are in opposition. And personal belief in an afterlife is no excuse for imposing one’s hypothesis on others.

Q1
M. Coderre, vous avez répondu à plusieurs reprises qu’il y des différences d’opinion concernant le rodéo.

Et bien oui, il y a l’opinion des experts, des spectateurs et des victimes.

LES EXPERTS

Nous savons tous qu’on peut toujours trouver des « experts » qui témoigneront pour ou contre quoi que ce soit: comme les médecins engagés par l’industrie du tabac qui plaideront que les cigarettes ne posent aucun risque aux poumons. Vous dites qu’il y a des différences d’opinion experte concernant les risques du rodéo: Mais l’Association canadienne des médecins vétérinaires s’oppose officiellement aux rodéos.

LES VICTIMES

Contrairement aux fumeurs qui décident de faire face aux risques du tabagisme, ou aux cowboys qui décident de faire face aux risques du « concours » au rodéo — les animaux n’ont aucun choixIls n’ont pas voulu le « concours ». Ils ne comprennent pas, Ils sont dans un état de terreur le long du « divertissement ».

LES SPECTATEURS

Pour les humains, le rodéo n’est qu’un divertissement. Pour les victimes,
c’est de la souffrance, gratuite, qui leur est infligée pour plaire aux goûts des spectateurs, des cowboys
et de l’industrie du rodéo. C’est un « sport » sanguinaire, comme jadis les combats entre gladiateurs.
Vous dites que les spectateurs qui n’ont pas le goût pour les dégâts peuvent rester chez eux. Est-ce que les victimes involontaires, elles, peuvent aussi rester chez elles?

M. le maire, est-ce que vous croyez vraiment
que tout ça n’est rien qu’une question d’opinion?

Q2

Et si c’est une question d’opinion, qu’en est-il de l’opinion des citoyens de Montréal? Ne faudrait-il pas permettre aux citoyens de signaller dans un référendum s’ils trouvent ça décent et digne d’importer un sport sanguinaire pour fêter le 375-ieme anniversaire de la ville de Montréal plutôt que de la ville de Calgary, avec sa tradition honteuse de sports sanguinaires?

Le point pertinent est que le fait de nuire aux animaux pour le divertissement est contraire à la loi au Québec. Un rodéo est un divertissement, pas même une foire agroalimentaire: *Le rodéo de Montréal doit être contesté en cour, rapidement.* Coderre le fait pour le tourisme. Il cite des opinions biaisées (la société des rodéos ainsi que leurs vétérinaires embauchés); il ignore l’opinion vétérinaire non biaisée, il répète sans cesse qu’il a été “assuré” que les animaux n’ont aucun risque de mal, et que tout est fait avec «respect». Le reste, dit-il, n’est que des différences d’opinion et de goût. Ceux qui ne l’aiment pas ont le choix de ne pas y assister. Cette politiquen est extrêmement biaisée, inclément et même cynique. LES VICTIMES ANIMAUX N’ONT PAS DE CHOIX. ET IL CE N’EST PAS UNE QUESTION DE “OPINION ET GOUT” DE DEMANDER SI ON DOIT POUVOIR LES ENDOMMAGER POUR LE DIVERTISSEMENT. Il doit y avoir (1) une contestation judiciaire (la loi provinciale et fédérale l’emporte sur les décisions municipales) (2) un référendum public, et (3) une pression publique impérieuse et la pression de la presse. La réponse de Coderre/Samson est, à maintes reprises, mécaniquement “Our mind’s mind up; don’t try to confuse us with facts.” Ils peuvent ne pas nous écouter, mais ils vont écouter le public, la presse et les tribunaux.

The relevant point is that harming animals for entertainment is against the law in Quebec. A rodeo is entertainment, not even an Agribusiness Fair: *The Montreal rodeo needs to be challenged in court, quickly.* Coderre is doing it for tourism. He cites biassed opinions (rodeo business and their hired veterinarians), ignores unbiassed veterinary opinion, keeps repeating that he has been “assured” that the animals are at no risk of harm, and that it is all done with “respect.” The rest, he says, is just differences in opinion and taste. Those who don’t like it have the choice not to attend. The position is extremely biassed, heartless and even cynical. THE ANIMAL VICTIMS HAVE NO CHOICE. AND IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF “OPINION AND TASTE” WHETHER IT IS RIGHT TO HARM THEM FOR ENTERTAINMENT. There must be (1) a legal challenge (provincial and federal law supersedes municipal policy decisions) (2) a public referendum, and (3) relentless public and press pressure. Coderre/Samson’s response is, repeatedly, mechanically “Our mind’s mind up; don’t try to confuse us with facts.” They may not heed us, but they will heed the public, the press, and the courts.

(Hommage to Archibald McLeish and Walt Whitman)

Verba Volant

A verse need not mean
But be,

Its song climbing skyward
On sound —

Its symbols allusive,
Not true.

*

Yet its words,
The reverse,

They cannot, too,
Hang there sky-borne
Suspended in time —

No, to mean
Words still need

To touch down
Palpably

On the ground.

Poets may gainsay themselves;
Words may not.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/woman-who-gave-water-to-pig-on-way-to-slaughterhouse-was-like-gandhi-mandela-lawyer

https://www.facebook.com/joeschwarcz/posts/10155863364745744

Dear Joe,

My mother (Zsuzsa Suss/Harnad), who died in 2009, was a great admirer of yours. 

She was also a Holocaust survivor, and the one to whom Gary Grill was referring when he reported that she (a Jew hiding under false papers in Rimaszecs in 1944) was threatened and driven off by the gendarmes of Rimaszecs when she (and others) tried to give water to the Rimaszecs Jews that were being loaded onto the cattle trains to Auschwitz for slaughter (“as if they were ‘just’ cattle”). 

My mother and father survived, but my aunt, Rozsi (her sister) and their child (Anny) did not; nor did 35 other members of my family. When Rozsi and Anny were inspected at Auschwitz, the inspectors decided Anny was too small and weak to work, so they wanted to send her one way, and her mother another way, but Rozsi clung to her child, so they were both sent to be gassed and incinerated. 

That monstrous brutality has been the defining image, for me, of the meaning of life and the meaning of heartless cruelty: anti-life. But I have no illusion that it applies only to my kin, or only to my kind. I recognize, both sides of it, very clearly, very familiarly, in all suffering victims of heartless cruelty and in all dispensers of heartless cruelty. And I find denying the evident, inherent commonality impossible. There are degrees of suffering, to be sure, but both suffering and the battle against those who inflict it are betrayed by exceptionalism.

Substitute for “pig” any innocent, suffering creature, made to suffer, heartlessly, and you have the essence of the evil of the Holocaust. Of course I know what was uniquely particularly heinous about the Holocaust: My kin and kind were being tortured and exterminated because of their race, and on a scale far beyond any genocide before or since. 

That is genocide, and racial hatred. Pigs are not being brutalized and massacred because of racial hatred, but because we like to eat them. Not because we need to eat them: because we like to eat them. Not only is eating them (or any other animal) not necessary for our survival or our health (as you know), but the unspeakable amount of brutality with which we make them live and die is not necessary even for getting the taste we like. 

Yet likening the fate of my kin to the fate of “pigs” is felt reflexively as an offence. I had the same reflexive reaction initially, until I realized that it is not an insult or a betrayal to recognize the commonality in all gratuitous suffering — as well as in all heartless cruelty. The offence is rather to hold it at arm’s length and say that the horrors imposed on others are somehow less unjustified than the horrors imposed on me and my kin and kind. I realized that that arm’s-length treatment of the suffering of “other kinds” puts me, if ever so slightly, in the camp of the dispensers of the suffering rather than its recipients and resistors. It is, in fact, a direct failure of the Golden Rule that Anita rightly invokes.

And the sense of insult in the analogy comes also in no small part from humanity’s shameful tendency to add insult to injury by vilifying its victims, be they “pigs” or “jews,” by turning their very name into a mocking expletive.

Enough said. I don’t know if I am able to do so, but I hope to inspire you to reflect that we are far more faithful to the memory of the suffering of our kin and kind if we do not claim that the suffering of other kinds is incommensurable with our own.

Many other survivors have had the same realization, not the least of them being Isaac Bashevis Singer who wrote of animals’ “Eternal Treblinka.”

Best wishes, Stevan

“What do they know–all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world–about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”
      ― Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Letter Writer”

“Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them…
“There are people who have the capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who have no such capacity (when the lack is extreme, we call them psychopaths), and there are people who have the capacity but choose not to exercise it.”
      ― J.M. Coetzee, “The Lives of Animals“

“I say that that is fiendish cruelty, and nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.”
       ― Bertrand Russell, “Why I am Not a Christian”

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
        ― Jeremy Bentham, “Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation”

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On Mar 14, 2017, at 6:02 PM, Joe Schwarcz wrote:

“I think we will agree to disagree on this subject. I do not claim in any way that pigs do not suffer or that they are not sentient animals. I also agree that it is totally unnecessary to eat meat. But that is not the issue here for me. Animals are not the same as people. They do not have hopes, plans for the future, romantic involvements, spiritual beliefs and attachments to relatives the way people have. While a pig may suffer in various ways at human hands, that can in no way be equated to a mother seeing her baby bayonetted or one twin being put into boiling water and another into ice water to see which one would die first. Any comparison between animal suffering and the Holocaust demeans the suffering that was experienced by the victims of the Nazis. A pig does not suffer the same way as a human. Any comparison to the Holocaust is simply inappropriate.”

Joe, if you have the courage to take a cross-species look at a mother who “do[es] not have hopes, plans for the future, romantic involvements, spiritual beliefs and attachments to relatives the way people have,” please look at this.

The point of comparison is not the quality of suffering, but the quality of brutality — and mercy.

And it involves us all.

Best wishes, Stevan

“I am a “beast.” Hath not a beast eyes? Hath not a beast hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a “man” is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?.… If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.” — The quality of mercy…

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? — Jeremy Bentham

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Anonymous: “I agree with Joe Schwarcz. “Animals are not the same as people.”  I am not sure I would use the arguments he uses, however. Obviously there is a conflict between two world views: you assign a large weight to physical suffering and assume that animal suffering and human suffering are similar (this comes from your empathy towards animals, if you allow me to use this word). People who subscribe to human exceptionalism, however, think that human life has an intrinsic worth that is greater than that of animals. Of course you will claim that the latter point of view is a religious one, and I agree with that assessment, but I can also answer that any world view (Weltanschauung) is somewhat religious (even if it does not coincide with the world view of a so-called great religious tradition).

“I know that you will disagree with this statement, but I think that absolute respect for human life (from conception to natural death, independently from the so-called “quality” of that life), as it springs from the judeo-christian tradition (going back to Moses), is a position that is consistent and good for mankind.”

I am not at all arguing about the relative value of human and nonhuman (sentient) life. 

I am talking about suffering: human-inflicted suffering.  And not about who suffers more or less, but about the infliction of suffering in the absence of vital (life/death/health) necessity, i.e., needless suffering; gratuitous suffering.

In a choice between the welfare of my own kin and others (whether human or nonhuman), when there is a direct conflict of vital needs, I would always favour my kin; so would you; and we would be psychopaths or robots if we said “no, I would toss a coin.” Family, community, sociality would all be gone if we did not favour and help our own in case of vital need.

But to try to set aside the fundamental issue of the infliction of unnecessary suffering  (which is absolutely rampant and ubiquitous when it comes to animals, and almost everyone contributes to it, for example, in eating meat) —  by focusing instead on the non-issue of who suffers more, who is worth more, or whom we would favor in a conflict of vital interests — is simply begging the (moral) question.

I hope this makes it clearer what I am actually talking about. In the analogy with the holocaust I am not saying that the suffering of pigs is identical to the suffering of Jews. I am saying that pigs, too, like the Holocaust victims, have extreme (human-inflicted) suffering: needless suffering, unjustified, unwarranted, unpardonable suffering; and it is inflicted on them with the same heartless cruelty as it was inflicted on the Holocaust victims (and all other victims of human brutality, human and nonhuman).

I will put it another way: Do you think that humans are so superior and exceptional that it is justified for humans to inflict suffering and death on animals, not out of vital necessity, but simply for the taste, or out of habit, or for profit?

This is not a religious question; it is a moral question. And I know of no higher morality. (It’s also Anita Krajnc’s Golden Rule.)

It’s understandable that we focus first on our parents and family in trying to protect animals from their monstrous and needless fate: if our call to justice falls on deaf ears with our own kin, what hope is there for the victims when it comes to trying to persuade the rest of the world to stop hurting them?

No one knows what will work, but I have less faith in the appeal to justice than the appeal to compassion. I believe it is the realization that horrors that we would never support and sustain if they were being committed against our kin, including our family animals, are just as horrible when committed against any feeling being: that all the victims suffer, just as we would suffer, in their place. And that — just as Emilia Leese states — we cause their suffering just “because [we] like how they taste and [we] are used to it,” not because it is necessary for our survival or our health. It is cognitive dissonance about that profound moral contradiction, of which we are all aware, that gives rise to the excuses and the discord.

But just as it is a waste of time arguing with heartless strangers who just want to debate their defence of taste over torment, and better to move on to try to reach the hearts of decent people with hearts (the majority, I believe), we should stop trying to reach the hearts of our next of kin once we see we are not making progress. The victims urgently need wider support than that. If charity fails to begin at home, go out and seek it elsewhere.

Harnad, Stevan (2016) CCTV, web-streaming and crowd-sourcing to sensitize public to animal suffering. Animal Justice UK, 2, Winter Issue

SH: The motivation for not eating, wearing, or using animals or animal products is moral:
     Except in case of vital (i.e., life or death) necessity, never hurt.
I could never follow the laws of a religion that allowed otherwise.

Anon: I don’t think any of the main religions insist on using animals. There are a lot of vegetarians in Israel. There is some suggestion in Judaism that the rules for dealing with animals are a compromise between the desire for meat and the ideal, which would be vegetarian.

Yes, there are religions that prescribe the use of animals (including Judaism — and the other two Mosaic creeds too).

But I was referring to a weaker moral criterion, one whose absence is already immoral enough for me to abjure a religion: the failure to proscribe the use of animals.

“in Judaism… the rules for dealing with animals are a compromise between the desire for meat and the ideal, which would be vegetarian”

Then we may as well have

“rules [that] are a compromise between the desire for [stealing, raping, killing, torturing, enslaving, annihilating]
and the ideal, which would be [to proscribe stealing, raping, killing, torturing, enslaving, annihilating]”

(as both religious and secular laws do when the victims are members of the human species) rather than to “compromise” (as both do in the case of the desire for meat, fur, blood sports, etc. when the victims are members of nonhuman species).

Humanity’s greatest and cruelest double standard, currently well-meaningly mis-labelled “speciesism” [which is incoherent, because plants are species too — almost certainly insentient, as it happens, but even if they were sentient we would have no choice but to eat them or perish], is the double standard between (1) sentient species that we are forbidden to hurt or kill except in case of vital (life-or-death) necessity (our own species) and (2) sentient species that we are allowed to hurt or kill in the absence of vital (life-or-death) necessity (all other sentient species).

Politicians and businessmen compromise. Deities decree. (And from an omnipotent deity even a no-kill decree would be a cynical and psychopathic joke — if the very notion [so very humanoid] of an omnipotent Culprit behind it all were not already as absurd as it is morally repugnant.)

(Yes, there are a lot of vegetarians in Israel. More important, Israel (reportedly) has the world’s highest proportion of vegans in the world (5%). But 5% is still extremely tiny.)