IN> Malakim of Animals

[William Keith]

On Mar 17, 2007, at 8:50 AM, Rob Farquhar wrote:

>
>
> James Walker <nyungan at yahoo.com.au> wrote:    Freeing animals isn't 
> going to cause any problems with
> Judgement.
>
>   Wordplay: well, unless you count incidents like the one where some 
> folks freed a bunch of minks from a mink farm, and they devastated the 
> local ecosystem, or if someone "frees" a virus-infected monkey from a 
> government research lab.

And even Jordi's going to be peeved if you free animals that promptly 
die of exposure.  *That* just shows that your ignorance of simple 
biology is getting in the way of your ideals.

Anyway, freeing domesticated animals -- even lab animals -- probably 
isn't high on Jordi's list of priorities.  He oversees hierarchies of 
predators, prey, symbionts, and parasites.  He knows about one species 
making use of others, and humans happen to be really good at that.  He 
doesn't want you to see animals as people.  He wants you to see animals 
as what they are: separate beings, unique individuals, and beings with 
varying capacities for feeling and thinking that are as worthy of 
mindfulness as those capacities in a human.  In particular, they have 
Destinies, which are a lot easier to consummate when humans are playing 
a balanced role in the biosphere.  Explaining this to humans is part of 
what his Mercurians do.

Now, because animals don't have Fates, Jordi can afford to be patient, 
but there's a line between 'patient' and 'letting humans tromp all over 
his portfolio.'  Where he sets this line is going to set a lot of 
flavor in Jordi's extended writeup: is Jordi okay with domesticated 
animals?  Does he distinguish between beloved pets, service and draft 
animals, and food animals?  (Would he encourage vegetarianism?  On the 
one hand, we're not biologically herbivores.  On the other hand, 
technology makes some moral acts feasible that once were not.)  Is 
advancing medicine a legitimate use of lab animals?  How about testing 
cosmetics?  The upper limit of this is almost certainly a Jordi that 
gets involved when even humans broadly agree the animal is being 
treated immorally -- budding young psychopaths torturing dogs or 
burning ants with magnifying glasses, or a puppy mill churning out 
genetically defective Christmas gifts.  (In these cases, the *human*'s 
Fate is probably part of the equation as well.)  You could also push 
the line further downward from the status quo, starting with expanding 
animal rights and emplacing protections, increasing and safeguarding 
wilderness areas, putting in his own 'enforcers', advocating in human 
societies for radical environmental footprint cutbacks, and crossing 
the line from advocacy into militant action.  Maybe that Japanese 
whaling ship fire wasn't quite an accident.  And the darkest Jordi is 
looking for ways to drastically reduce the human population, possibly 
rummaging around Makatiel's old work.

William