Monday, November 30, 2009

Dobie


J. Frank Dobie worked in the English department in 1914, but three years later he went to war. After he returned from war he returned to U.T. and became editor of the Texas Folklore Society in 1922. Then in 1924, he published “Legends of Texas.” He became Chair of the English Department at Oklahoma State, but came back and in 1930, he taught a course named “Life and Literature of the Southwest.” He taught this class to over 1596 students. This class became ‘the most popular elective ever taught at U.T.” (433) Throughout his career, Dobie earned many academic honors including an M.A. citation that says “What he does not know about longhorns is not worth knowing.” (433) In the 1940’s the Regents took out “The Big Money” from the reading lists and they fired the economics professors that protested. This caused many students to protest along with Dobie, but Dobie got fired in 1947. Students didn’t believe that this was fair and they protested in front of his house, but that didn’t work. Dobie died in 1964, but many people remember him as a great person. Chancellor Ransom said that he thinks Dobie was “one of the greatest teachers the University of Texas ever had…” (433)



Dobie recognized that horses are still necessary in places like ranches. He doesn’t think that mustangs should be thought of as slaves to human beings. Dobie believed that “the true conceiver must be a true lover of freedom –a person who yearns to extend freedom to all life.” (466) In other words, Dobie believed that mustangs should be treated well and thought of as ‘the most beautiful,…spirited…, and…inspiriting creature ever to print foot on the grasses of America” (466)


It is said that the Texas longhorn has influence human beings immensely. “He (the longhorn) is…also a home lover and a persistent returner to his querencia, as the vaquero language calls the place where an animal is born or to which he shows a strong attachment.” (437) The story about Kerr, Maria, and Sancho is about how Maria finds a white and black bull calf. She raises him as a pet and grows attached to him. However, Sancho was a bit difficult and he gave the Maria and the men that were guarding him not to get out of the gate a hard time. Even though Sancho was known as a stubborn animal, he was also known as the gentlest. When compared to other animals such as cows, the longhorn proved to be a leader, loyal, persistent, intelligent, and strong. “He was one of the ‘walking Texas Longhorns.’” (445)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos

This painting is part of Francisco Jose De Goya’s series Los Caprichos. Goya was a Spanish artist in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. His paintings inspired many artists in the 1900’s to draw about themes that were difficult to the public. Back in those days, people were extremely conservative and they wouldn’t dare to criticize the government or religion. Many of Goya’s paintings included themes like war and ethical corruption. I read about Goya in my Spanish literature class last year and I learned to admire him because I think it takes courage to question people’s ethics. It is even harder to imply new ethical beliefs. Goya is important to our class because ethics is one of the major topics that we’ve covered. However, I think that it is easier now to express our ethics and try to encourage others to think like us than it was before. This is simply because we now have freedom of speech and people are more liberal, especially here in Austin.

The painting’s title is, El Sueño de la razón produce monstruos. Translated in English this means, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. This painting was meant to be the opening to his collection Los Caprichos, but it was hidden because of the criticisms that it made of society and politics. This exhibition includes both reality and fantasy, which in my opinion make it magical. I learned that the painting demonstrates the cruelty of human beings. It is said that there are three categories which are: “the absurd and ridiculous, images of trauma, and the mutability of body and spirit.” The mutability of the body and spirit can also be compared to this class because we’ve been reborn and we’ve all slowly turned into better human beings. We’ve learned how to be leaders and how to be ethical.

There are also different kinds of animals in the self portrait. The painting includes owls, bats, a cat, and lynx. All these animals are referred to as daemons and monsters on the video below. The bats definitely add fantasy to the painting because of the myth that bats are vampires; the owl is always used in scary movies to represent something bad. I think that these animals represent society and politics and he is attempted to express how both society and politics trouble him. I thought that the image of the owl giving Goya the paintbrush was interesting because I saw it as a way that animals want somebody to speak to them whether they are beautiful animals or not. If animals were and still are being used to represent human beings, what does this tell us? It tells us that animals and humans are very similar to each other and that we can relate.
Other links?

Monday, November 16, 2009

A Life Changing Experience

The memory of what happened five years ago still torments me to this day. I remember that sunny day when my mother went away to get more bananas. Shortly after she left, I was trapped in what I learned is called a net. Before I knew it I was stabbed with a shiny hard and cold shiny and from that moment on, I lost my sense of consciousness and my life changed forever. When I awoke, I found myself in a strange environment. Definitely not the kind of atmosphere I was used to, or the environment that I liked.

This environment was so different, cold, unattractive, and uncomfortable. I glanced around looking for my mother because I had hope that perhaps she had taken me to a better place while I was asleep. I also tried to convince myself that the stabbing was just one of those bugs my mother always told me to eat before they bit me. I turned up, down, and all around only to be disappointed when I failed to find my mother.

After a few glances I learned that this was not where I wanted to be. I found myself trapped in a hard and cold shiny box with gaps like the rest of the monkeys there. A hideous smell filled the air and it was difficult to breathe. I thought to myself, this is not how the jungle smells like and definitely not how it looks. There were no beautiful trees filled with bananas here or clean oxygen air to breathe. Even though all of these things seemed essential to me, what worried me the most was not finding my mother.
[1] Obviously my first instinct was to look for a way to get out of the hard and cold shiny box. I pushed it, jumped around it, screamed, and nothing I did opened the box. Then I thought that maybe the other monkeys knew how to get out. I asked them and none of them knew how. We all shared the same opinions about that place and none of us could escape from the box. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a greater sense of desperation in my life.

I wanted my mother more than ever and she wasn’t there to help me. All I wanted was to go back to my ordinary life. I wanted my mom fed me great bananas, cuddle with me, and tell me stories. I wanted to be taken care of and babied by my mother. I also wanted to have enough space to jump and a tree to climb. I was not prepared to go out on my own and find my soul mate. I was definitely not ready to live in a place like this with strangers who I couldn’t even communicate physically with.

As I thought about how miserable I felt, a noise interrupted my thoughts. An animal entered the closed place and starred at me. To be honest, this animal was not very attractive. His body was quite hairless; except for his head. He was wrapped in a strange fabric that seemed unnecessary. Now that I think about it, maybe the purpose of the fabric was to make up for his lack of fur. The unknown creature, let’s call him human, put his finger, which was quite similar to mine, inside the box where I was trapped in and wiggled it around. Curiously, I reached to touch it, but he took it out before I had a grasp of it.

[2] Days passed and more and more of these creatures entered and left the place. What I didn’t see coming was the decrease of monkeys that were with me. I saw the humans take them in the box, but most of the time they wouldn’t come back. At first I made myself believe that the monkeys were returned to their jungle with their mothers, but one day a monkey returned to the place and he was hurt. The monkey looked weak and unconscious. I didn’t want to think that the humans were bad because they fed us everyday, but who else could’ve hurt him? After we all asked him, he told us that the humans had maltreated him and made him do things against his will. Back then I was naïve about the cruelties that some animals can make, but I learned better than that, the hard way.

[3][4] After that day, more and more monkeys came back injured. In fact, some of them never came back. I highly doubt that there was a good reason behind that too. Sometimes the humans would even do terrible painful things to my monkey peers in front of us. There were times when they poked their eyes with those shiny pointy objects and other times they connected them to devices that hurt them and wouldn’t allow them to move. After watching all this I found it impossible to find a motive for these humans to hurt us so much.







I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had never seen any animal maltreat another this way. This was unethical and unfair. I had seen animals kill each other to survive in the jungle, but never before had I seen an animal hurt another simply because they could. I didn’t know what to think or do in the situation in which I found myself. I couldn’t escape and I knew that my death was coming closer and closer. By this point, being killed sounded like a better option because I didn’t want to be hurt pointlessly. I always thought that when I died I’d want it happen because I was old or because I was giving life to another animal by allowing them to eat me, but never to be experimented on and played with by animals who thought they were dominant.

I sat in the box replaying the last memories that I had with my mother, over and over and again. I did this for days to keep myself distracted and lose conscious of what was happening to the all the monkeys. I didn’t want to be next because I didn’t want to have a terrifying decease. I knew that the day of my death was approaching and I was afraid. In a way, I wanted to get it over with, but I also wanted to go back to the jungle and be free. Even though I knew that the second option wasn’t realistic, I still had hope. That hope kept me alive and encouraged me to eat the bananas even though they had a nasty taste to them.

Days passed by and I continued to eat the bananas. I also continued to be alive and that was something that surprised me. One day, I looked around and I noticed that there were only two of us left. The monkeys had been disappearing or coming back injured two at a time. What did this mean? It meant that that day was my day. It was my turn to be killed or seriously injured by those humans and I was afraid. That day was also the day I lost hope, but the humans never went to the place where we were at. We got lucky that day, but I knew that they would be back the next day and that my life would be over soon.

The day after I avoided not being mistreated, the most unexpected thing happened. While I was taking one of my many daily naps I was saved by a human. Yes, I know, right? I suppose that not all humans are the same. Anyways, the human walked towards the box and this frightened me because I didn’t see my changes of being saved this time. Luckily, my predictions were wrong because the human freed me.

At first I didn’t know what to do, but once I gained confidence I stepped out. After I was completely out of the box, the human put me inside a box of fabric and passed by a lot of humans. I know they were humans because I could smell them and oh boy do they stink. Before I knew it I was put in a moving device that made me dizzy, but by this time I trusted the human. I knew that he was my friend because he had saved my life by taking me out of that terrible place. Before I knew it I was in taken out of the moving device and I was back in the jungle.


[5] When I returned to the jungle I felt tremendously happy to be there. I never thought that I’d return to being free again, but I misjudged the humans. I learned that if not all monkeys are grumpy, not all creatures are bad either. At first I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I was free, but I didn’t know where to find my mother. The jungle is big and I didn’t know where to begin my search. First I ran to a tree and climbed it. Then, I jumped from tree to tree feeling the breeze of nature.

The breeze of what I called home and what I missed so much. Finally, I ate natural tasting bananas and began my search. I asked several monkeys and they directed me. After months and months of looking for my mother, I found her. That day was the happiest day of my life and will probably always be. Even though it’s been great to be back and free, I have to admit that it was difficult to adapt to this environment again. While I was trapped in that place, I developed nervousness that I still sometimes can’t control. My mother said that it will ease up eventually, but I’m still waiting. Even thought I’d love to forget about this experience, what I want the most in the world is for all the monkeys in the world to be free.


Word Count: 1,655



[1] http://gallery.photo.net/photo/6244992-md.jpg
[2] http://www.all-creatures.org/anex/monkey-cage-01.jpg

[3]http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/Vivisection/baby_monkey_injection.jpg

[4] http://farm1.static.flickr.com/83/249427008_3e5f0e05fb_m.jpg

[5] http://media.photobucket.com/image/monkey%20crying/heathhav/bush_monkey.jpg

Monday, November 9, 2009

Compassion

Since I was a child, I was told that I had to treat animals well. We always had a dog and I knew that I wasn’t supposed to ride my dog or pull its ears because it also had feelings. However, not all children are taught have compassion for animals. I’ve noticed that many people try to excuse the lack of compassion that kids have for animals by saying, “Oh, he’s just a kid”, but compassion is something that has to be embedded in an early age. “Nothing could more effectually tend to infuse benevolence than the teaching of little ones early to consider every part of nature as endued with feelings.” (349) I definitely think that the world would be a better place if people were taught to be compassionate for earthlings because in the end, we’re all here for a short amount of time and we all deserve the right to enjoy our lifetime to the fullest without being mistreated by other species. The way animals were treated in the west was simply terrifying. I cannot understand how a person could see the pain of these animals and enjoy watching the pain they were producing.


I found this reading assignment to be rather interesting because I had never thought about how religion affected people’s compassion for animals. Since I’m not religious myself, I assumed that compassion is something that is taught to people during childhood, learned throughout life, or even worse, never learned. I learned that most people have learned to focus on morality towards humans more than with any other living creatures. “Because these worldviews are largely anthropocentric, nature is viewed as being of secondary importance.” (369) What does this mean? To me it means that people have been somewhat selfish even in their teachings of faith for others. It’s great that people are taught to be compassionate to other human beings, but this shouldn’t be dominant. Since it is said that animals and humance are very similar, everyone, no matter what religion they are, should be compassionate for all living things equally. However, "those rare souls who bothered to notice maltreatment of animals felt uneasy not because the habit might extend to abusing human beings." (339)



I thought that what professor bump said about Judaism was very interesting. He basically told us that “Judaism values human life more than that of other living things, but at the same time stresses the special responsibility of human beings to work and look after the created other.” (371) I admire that Judaists value other living things as well and that they feel responsible for maintaining the wellbeing of all the living things on earth. I honestly think that since we are the only rational animals on Earth, we should do what we can to maintain stability and justice for all earthlings.












Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Walk the Walk

Walk the Walk was interesting because we talked about the factors that make good people make bad decisions which is something I wrote about earlier. Before going to this workshop I thought that people did unethical things because they were bad people who were being selfish, but I learned that there are reasons for good people to do bad things. Some factors that might influence people to do bad things are when people think that they can defensively say that they’re boss made them do it. I realized that many employees might allow unethical things to happen in the companies the work at because their boss approves of them and because they don’t wan to lose their job.
Some other people might convince themselves that everybody does these things and that nobody is harmed by their actions, but it only takes some critical thinking to figure out that many people are affected by a simple unethical and selfish decision. Dr. Drumwright also talked about moral muteness which is when people don’t discuss ethics enough that they become unaware that they are doing unethical things or they don’t even question their own morality. We also discussed moral myopia which means that people choose not our ambition to be rich or be successful can blind us and we may do things that we wouldn’t normally do.

In the workshop we were given a situation in which we had to decide what we would do, who would be affected, and what factors would make us make those decisions. The scenario that my group had was about a UT student who was a senior who was struggling to pay for college and she got the internship that she always wanted. However, her boss asked her to make unethical decisions and she was debating whether she should make that choice or not. My group decided that if we were in her position, we’d try to reason with our boss or maybe asked if we could be assigned another task. We decided that customers, the company, our boss and our reputation could all be affected negatively if these unethical movements came to the public, but we thought that doing the right thing was more important.

I thought that Dr. Minette E. Drumwright was the ideal person to present information like this because she is a true leader academically. She has won school-wide awards here at UT, written books, taught in educations programs in various countries such as Mexico, Asia, and Europe, and she was recently an assistant professor at Harvard Business School. What qualifies her even more than all of those achievements is that she is currently researching about the social responsibility in business which we all know a lot of unethical things are done to be successful. She told us various stories about ethical and unethical behavior in the business world, but what impacted me the most was a quote that she told us by Elie Wiesel (a Holocaust survivor) and it said that “The opposite of love is not hate it’s indifference.” Then she applied it to the business world and said that the opposite of indifference is ethics.
Links?

Slavery


On Tuesday at our last LEAP meeting, the speaker pointed out that negative actions always make the headlines on newspapers. After saying that he said, “Every time I read one of these headlines, I ask myself, ‘Why did they do it?’” As I agreed with what the man said, I asked myself the same question and I wondered if they were afraid or karma. “If what goes around comes around, what do they get for their pain?” (310) Then, I thought about slavery and animal cruelty. Did these people ever feel the pain that they produced by killing animals and mistreating human beings? I honestly don’t think that they did. I don’t think that the price to pay for these injustices is too high for a man. After thinking of that, I tried to think of reasons why they did/do it. I came to the conclusion that people tend to ignore their values to satisfy society and do what they’re expected to do. In other words, society has shaped these bad people in the past and continues to do so. It would have been considered erroneous and it would be frowned upon for a white man to defend black people just like vegetarian and veganism is today.


It is important to remember that “…the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor.” (313) Social stratification encourages individuals to believe that they are have more or less value than others their according to their ideological beliefs. I think that this is another factor that leads to social issues such as slavery and animal cruelty. Both PETA and MLK have/had proof of this because they both support the statements that I made above. What I read on the manuscript for Earthlings and what I’ve read about slavery are very similar. Both animals and black people are/were threatened by people who thought they were superior than them, but because that exploitation is/was acceptable and normal, nobody was willing to stand up and defend their values. MLK stood up for blacks and stated that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” but what can animals do? PETA is their chance for change and their statements on the displays of experimentation, justification, and exploitation are all similar to MLK’s speeches. PETA and Earthlings are both trying to give animals a voice because they don’t want animals to be slaves to society like black people were in the past.

“Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is-whether its victim is human or animal-we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing a living creature.” (311F) When society accepts that what they are doing is wrong, they will finally be in peace with themselves and with all earthlings. Meanwhile, they will continually be unfair and selfish. Slavery and animal cruelty are simply too similar to differentiate. People need to understand that “They [animals] were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women and men.” (319) In other words, nobody was made to serve or feed anybody. We’re all here to live our lives, be free, live in peace and make the best of what we have because we only live once.






Links?

Monday, November 2, 2009

Earthlings!





I had never heard of Earthlings before we discussed it in class and I was honestly afraid to watch it because I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to hold back my tears. I can sometimes be insensitive, but when it comes to injustice towards living individuals that can’t defend themselves, I am very caring. Even the introduction of the documentary made me feel compassionate for animals when it said, “…morally disrespectful treatment occurs when those who stand at the power end of a power relationship treat the less powerful as if they were mere objects.” (280-281) I think that the parts of the documentary that made me cry the most was where the part where the pigs were being hit. That just broke my heart because even thought the people say that the pigs were in pain, they kept hitting them and they also cursed at them like they had done something wrong.

I think that a German or a white person would have reacted the same way I did. Watching Earthlings was an eye opening experience that helped me realize the truth behind the daily meals that most of the U.S. population consumes, not to mention other countries that might eat more meat. A German or a white person could have also made a change. Even though it was frowned upon by society and quite unusual, they could have both decided not to be part of The Holocaust and slavery. The same thing applies to me, I can choose to be vegetarian and do something that is frowned upon by society, but I’d be following my beliefs. I think that the people who were or are part of such horrible injustices like The Holocaust, slavery, and animal cruelty are either heartless or are too afraid of being judged by others for following their beliefs that they decide to fit in and do what everyone else is doing.


When I read the screenplay, I knew that I had to expect gruesome images and that I was going to have a hard time looking at all of that injustice and pain. The descriptions on the screenplay made me feel ashamed and I was surprised to notice in how many ways animals are mistreated. Before reading the screenplay, I would have said that there are maybe three ways in which animals can be mistreated, but my calculations were obviously off. Even though I felt sad after reading the screenplay, the visual version of Earthlings was much worse.

I think that it was very brave of the makes of this this documentary to release all this information to the public. Since this country is known for doing the “right things” and Americans like to think of themselves as caring and fair, Earthlings shows the opposite. After watching Earthlings I asked myself “How free is this country?” I mean, people are free to express themselves and do whatever they want as long as they don’t break the law, but what about animals? If cruelty against animals is being practiced everyday in such terrible ways, the U.S. is not a free country. Maybe it is true that “freedom isn’t free?”