Blog 11 The Trajectory of Violence: From Early Hunter to Donald Trump

I was reading an excellent book by Matthew Calarco called Thinking Through Animals. It is a very concise survey of the philosophical ideas running through modern animal rights thinking. While discussing Peter Singer and Tom Regan, (both authors have made valuable contributions to our views about animals), he mentions both have gone to considerable pains to ensure their positions are based on rigorous logic to avoid the oft-levied accusations of “sentimentality”. This idea struck me anew as odd. Why is an appeal to our sentiments inferior to cold, rigorous logic, so much so, that even animal defenders must avoid it at all costs? Where does this come from and why?

When I was a young boy in the 1950’s, I recall watching southern senators on TV ridicule northern senators who proposed an end to the worst abuses against Black Americans. They would rhetorically ask: “What are you, a Nigger Lover?” The implication being that only those with excessive affections could “love” something so obviously abhorrent as a black person. More often than not in those “good old days” the white senator would shrink away in shame, or else retort: “it has nothing to do with feelings, but the principle of equality set forth in the Declaration Of Independence”.

During the earliest protests against animal experimentation and vivisection (dissecting live animals), protestors were frequently characterized and dismissed as “little old ladies in tennis shoes”. Apparently there was something bad about anyone who was: “little”, “old”, “a lady” or a wearer of “tennis shoes”. No doubt these awful characteristics stood in marked contrast with the stalwart defenders of animal experimentation, who by inference, were conversely: “big”, “young”, “men” and no doubt, wearing hard leather shoes or boots. The hierarchy of size, age, sex, and the use of animal product is clearly revealed.

In more recent times, defenders of the environment are derogatorily called “Tree Huggers” (note the excessive emotionality implied). Donald Trump recently said Greta Thunberg needed a course in “anger management”. Coming from this towering exemplar of reason she should no doubt immediately enrol. Responding humanely to issues of all kinds usually gets one derided by right wing apologists for the status quo as “sentimentalists” or “bleeding hearts” i.e. people who feel too much. In contrast to what one might ask?

This accusation that those who would defend either “animals”, the environment, black people, the poor, etc. are too emotional, motivated by overblown feelings, can be found again and again whenever a humanitarian cause arises. The large, staunch young men who represent the status quo invariably paint themselves as the holders of stolid, hard-headed reason and logic. They see themselves as “the realists”, and the sole possessors of credibility. It is worth noting that 96 percent of the murders committed world-wide are by young men (between ages 17-34). The supposed holders of logic and “reasonableness” overlap, not coincidentally, with the most homicidal segments of the world population.

Where did this primacy of “hard-headed” logic over feeling come from? And perhaps more importantly, where did the contempt for feelings and emotions originate?

It began a very long time ago when humans began to kill other Peoples. And by “Other Peoples” I mean those beings we now call “Animals”. What a change a simple word can make. To kill other peoples is objectionable – though not if we first depict our human victims as “animals”; “subhuman”, “pests”, “parasites”, “vermin”, or “savage beasts”. Such linguistic redefinitions have allowed human slaughters over and over throughout human history.

To kill “animals” is less fraught emotionally. They are lesser; they have less reason, less feeling, less consciousness, less mind, less self-awareness, less soul. Or so we have conveniently claimed. Those who became good at killing these “Other Peoples” needed to subdue their emotional response to these beings. They needed to deaden their own feelings as well as their perception of the feelings of these “Other Peoples”. Empathic feeling, or “sentiment” is a dire impediment to killing. Such feelings could be left to women who had to “care” for infants and children, and to infants and children whose feelings didn’t matter much anyway, and would eventually (if male) have such feelings beaten out of them one way or another.  “Feelings” and “emotionality” became despised in male/hunter dominated cultures. To be overly sympathetic meant you were “womanish”, “childish” or “infantile” – all terrible things to be, or so one would be led to believe.

The human being was literally split into two. In the female half of the population feelings and sentiment were allowed. In the other half, sentiment and feeling meant you were “unmanly” and this could literally be a death sentence if you were male. Of course this division between male and female is not absolute. Obviously there are ruthless women and caring men but statistically this division holds true.

We continue to be plagued by this early division between the “bleeding heart”, feeling, “feminine” parts of our populations, and the opposing “hard-headed realists”. These “hard realists” are typically found in the right wing side of the political spectrum. The right invariably supports the strong: the entrepreneur, the military, the police, the proven “successes” i.e. the rich and the corporate world. They tend to despise the poor who they see as “losers” and unworthy of support. If only we bolster the strong we will be “Great Again”. The “feeling” types usually find themselves on the left of the political spectrum. These are the people who believe in social programs, the social safety net, minimum wages, equal rights, support of public education, the environment, etc.

What we are facing now in the world is the violent collision of these two ancient strains in our history. The rise of the “Strong Man” – the regimes of Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, Assad, Erdogan,  Orban, Bolsanaro, Duterte etc. are a re-presentation of this age-old archetype of the tough, hard, ruthless warrior/hunter/male who derides people on the basis of size, power, sex , looks, and differences – real and imaginary. These men dominate by means of fear, intimidation, and violence. They represent the major human trajectory for much of our time on earth. The rise of feminism, the attempt to attain equality, and the linking of the female, “animal”, indigenous, black and differently sexed groups, fundamentally threatens this ancient established order. The reaction is now erupting. Either we will continue the logic of male dominating heartlessness, or we will embrace our more feeling, caring selves. One way leads to death, the other to a love of life. We are coming to the showdown. The fate of the world now depends on which side triumphs. Whose side are you on?