About animals

[tailor STATELY]

Some poems using anthropomorphism I wrote several years ago.

Background: Hawkman, a regular forum contributer, related in a poem almost 7-years ago that he needed to rid his flat of mice: http://www.online-literature.com/for...54385-Intruder My poems (3) follow shortly after given inspiration by Hawkman's poem, and subsequent poems:

moiaussi (for hawkman)

such a vile nom de plume for a moiaussi to view
why not cheesenip or woodbine or even curlew
still he writes with such verve with so much flair
rarely the doggerel he crafts with words quite debonair
not profligate but profound pounding out his tome
of posies of prose and here and there a poem
i skitter he starts and both of us halt
the silence screaming out an unearthly gestalt
now is the time to be more discerning with food
perhaps if i shower him with gifts like shaved wood
sprinkled liberally with nibbled bits of book
of inurbane authors undeserving a second look
might i escape his snares and prolong my fate
might i escape once more to the bosom of my mate

7/15/2010
Commentary and context at Litnet... http://www.online-literature.com/for...-(for-hawkman)

moiaussis reprise

allons mes enfants the struggle is nigh
our friends the bats his decree have espied
the hawkman has declared his enmity
theres no time nor reason nor plea nor rhyme
poetry for peace prose best for these times
sound the alarm see who else we may call
rally to my side who fear not death all
assemble strings and rocks and keen edged steels
then sharpen your claws your beaks your great stings
first cut the power then set the deadfalls
ticks hedgehogs rats wasps spiders and vixens
you are the ones to offer first sally
then well raise a call of ululation
keen is our resolve surprise our ally

7/20/2010 http://www.online-literature.com/for...aussis-reprise

death of pious the hedgehog ( moiaussis best friend )


first to answer the call first to the fray
first to enter into that final peace
that to where hedgehogs spend eternity
was barely a test a trap less cunning
of wire and mesh construct a hidden spring
partially hidden with gingham bunting
perhaps greater hedgehogs have lived and died
but pious was dear to me and i cried
then with a wrath i knew not existed
twelve skunks i marshalled to the arena
alas our intelligence was faulty
nowhere was hawkman to mete out his worst
perhaps its best not to trust in a bat
in light they can barely make out a horse

7/20/2010 http://www.online-literature.com/for...s-the-hedgehog

I really miss the contributors from that era: Hack/Bar/Hill/Prince/daffy/etc

[Danik 2016]

I laughed a lot about this superb dialogue between poems.
The antromorphism lends voice to a whole army of small creatures which marches
(with some problems of modus operandis though) against hawkman.
That´s what I call a real poetry contest
I got a bit confused with the title moiaussi. Does it refer to the historical battles between the English and the French or is it justthe name of an animal?
And yes, LitNet seems to have had an animated past.

[tailor STATELY]

Funny you should ask. You are the first to see an idea I started 1 1/2 years ago just to flesh out the story in the beginning for moiaussie (roughly French for Me Too... my French is as bad as my German):

how moiaussie got his name

it was in the spring that three orphaned mice from france came ashore after being adrift for days; sole survivors of a wrecked cargo vessel. they were brought before the forest king in lanchester, england - a badger named charles (after charles the great if legend be told), to be brought into his household to learn a trade.

king charles asked the eldest mouse, a strapping snow-white with one black spot in the shape of a elm leaf on his hind-quarter, what his name was, and he replied “brevard, sire”.

“moi aussi ! moi aussi !” said a smaller and younger mouse, a tawny brown with bright hazel eyes, in his best french; interrupting the sanctity of the royal hall.

“my, my” said the king. “we cannot have two mousie's named brevard can we. you, little one, shall be named moiaussie to amuse me, that we might not have confusion when brevard needs calling for.”

“brevard, you shall become a squire to sir kit of foxshire and learn the arts of war. moiaussi, you shall be a page to the royal librarian and learn the scholarly arts” said the king.

“and you little miss, speaking to moiaussi's twin sister, what is your name?”

“je m'appelle... i mean, my name is gabriella, sire, but brevard - i mean moiaussie, calls me ci-ci.”

“then ci-ci it is” laughed the king. “you shall be a hand maiden to the princesses of the realm; badger maidens one and all.”

and so brevard and moiaussi and ci-ci began their service to the king and prospered in a time of peace in the realm; moiaussie and brevard becoming fast friends, teaching each other the skills they learned in their tutelage.

10/13/2015

[Danik 2016]

I see. My French isn´t good but I read a little and what confused me, was this mouse called "me too". It´s a cute story, maybe you could make a poem of it to add to the others.

[tailor STATELY]

lol. Rather than metoo... moiaussie, which also sounds like mousy.

[Danik 2016]

I hadn´t noticed the similaritie of the sound: moiaussie=mousy.

[Danik 2016]

Yes/ No: "So perhaps the annoyance with anthropomorphism begins in the 19th century."
It seems that in art and literature antromorphism has always seemed more or less natural, be it from the picturing of gods with animal heads/and/or bodies to the stories where the animals talk and behave as humans as in TS´s texts.
The question that still bothers me: when we actually deal with animals (and to some extent with humans too) where do we draw a line between understanding/correctly interpreting their actions and projecting our own feelings into them?
I used to give my real cats a "voice" when I talked to them. How much of it was them, how much of it was me?

[YesNo]

It has been seven years? Those posts are just a few months before I started posting here, Tailor STATELY. That does use anthropomorphism but one doesn't really think animals do such things. People also refer to "muses", but I have only found a few who actually think muses exist (unless they see their girlfriends or boyfriends as the muse).

I think you are right, Danik, that anthropomorphism is a metaphoric way to understand animals. They are different as each of us are different. What they experience will be different. However, if one claims that animals are incapable of emotions, such as fear or love or despair (thinking of my chicken), and justify that by claiming that we don't want to anthropomorphize an animal it makes me wonder why we should assume animals don't have those emotions when we can see it on their faces even ignoring genetic and brain chemistry similarities? I think the way we view anthropomorphism today is an historical, cultural perspective on animals that might have originated in the 19th century, but with roots further back.

John Ruskin introduced the idea of "pathetic fallacy" in the 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy Although this applied to the personification of nature more generally, I suspect it could be applied to animals. For this phrase to work in the 19th century there needed to be cultural change starting a few centuries earlier which would have restricted our empirical data to what we can individually observe or hear or taste. Other intuitive (also empirical) data would be dismissed as illusion.

[Danik 2016]

Thanks for the link on "pathetic fallacy" Yes/No. I noticed there are several denominations for anthropomorphism (I will have to look better into it.)I think they are two different things, saying that animals don´t have emotions and antromorphising the emotions of animals. Animals show their emotions, some of them more than others, but I think we often interpretate their behaviour and the emotions they show according to our own lights and thinking systems. We may be right or just parcially right.
For example: I had to put a flea collar on a cat of mine. The cat was so shocked(at least that´s what I interpretated) that she remained in the bedroom the whole afternoon. In the evening she came out, rolled on her back and showed herself receptive to belly rubbing. I understood that I had been "forgiven". But I couldn´t really know what went on in the cat´s head,
That´s the way I feel about the chicken episode. There may be different reasons for his behavior. For me it is still more difficult than for you to know as I wasn´t there. For example: if she had run away, could she have hidden herself somewhere? Could she have saved herself at all?
I think the only thing that matters today is that you don´t feel bad about the whole episode.

[YesNo]

What I am thinking of doing is writing about that dog-chicken encounter so I want to remember as much as possible and everything we discuss about animals in general helps that. I don't feel bad about it although I do feel responsible. Those chickens were given a longer life and they got to spend a few months outside on a free range. They were to be thrown into a furnace for sanitation purposes prior to the next batch of chicks arriving.

I agree that our empathy may be inaccurate even when it is reflecting other human beings let alone other species. However, I think our view toward animals today dates back to the 19th century as a dominate viewpoint. The seeds of that viewpoint originate around the time of Descartes viewing animals as individual machines. Anything said about animals can be said about humans. Then if one projects to future AI one can see the pattern complete where we don't anthropomorphize even our own species and our consciousness and emotions become illusions or completely determined by brain cells or genes. I think those cultural trends are coming to an end. So I am not interested in opposing them, but understanding them better to come up with a correction.

[Danik 2016]

I have the feeling that many of our cultural trends and habits are coming to an end, even some that are very dear to us. For once the world population is increasing enormously and future planings will have to care for the survival of as much people as possible. But I shudder when I think of a futur in the claws of AI whatever that might be able to achieve. The great question is whether the humans will have the maturity to handle the great issues.
Why were these chicken to be thown in a furnace?
To continue writing the story is a good idea, adding to the two haibuns on Fred in the short story thread.

[OrphanPip]

Acknowledging the sameness between humans and animals would not by necessity lead to human beings losing all consideration for the value of emotions. Recognizing that emotions are the effect of neurons and hormones doesn't make them any more illusory than thinking of emotions as a divine spark provided by God. If my emotions are mystical rather than material how do I trust they aren't being manipulated by demons or spirits? Why would I be less sure of the authenticity and value of my emotional experience just because I can recognize it's possible to alter my emotional state materially. Jeremy Bentham was one of the first people to articulate a philosophical defence of animals and he was a secular philosopher. Peter Singer is the most prominent contemporary advocate of animal rights and is an atheist. Recognizing animals as essentially the same as us on a biological level should lead us to the conclusion that animals deserve some level of equal consideration as us, not that we deserve to treat people as animals have been unjustly treated in the past. It's not materialist who say that the animals exist to serve human beings, that's a theological viewpoint.

[YesNo]

The farmer raised hens from chicks. When the birds were big enough they were either sent as meat or layers. A truck came to pick them up. We would clean the barn and he would sanitize it afterwards. Some hens escaped being placed on the truck that would have led them to their final destination. There were maybe a dozen of these birds. The farmer had to get rid of those birds and I suppose he could have eaten them himself, but he mentioned once, when I asked him, that he disposed of them in a furnace. He was making sure his barn was ready for the next batch of chicks.

It is true that our bodies individuate us and we can manipulate our bodies and get different emotional responses. It is like clicking on a different link or (to use an older metaphor) turning the radio's dial to a different station. The key question is whether our minds (including the minds of animals) are produced by our individual bodies or whether our consciousness is transformed through our bodies. The transformation rather than the production perspective works better as I see it. It also allows us to get past our individualism and make sense of psi phenomena, language as well as senses of community. Now a computer, because of its deterministic-random programming, is completely transparent, much like a radio. It doesn't have a mind. It cannot make a choice although it can use a model to select an optimal solution.

I agree that if there is a mind or mystical dimension to our emotions that cannot be reduced as something produced by and therefore reduced to neurons, genes or atoms, it opens up a whole dimension of demons, spirits, ghosts and gods. That is why an atheistic position, at some point, has to forget about negating gods and start creating those machines that would prove there are no gods. I am not saying that atheists don't respect animal rights and I don't trust modern theistic views of animals. We are all caught in our current cultural common sense whether we are theists or atheists. As human beings we can also transcend that common sense which I think is cracking.

[Danik 2016]

Acknowledging the sameness between humans and animals would not by necessity lead to human beings losing all consideration for the value of emotions. Recognizing that emotions are the effect of neurons and hormones doesn't make them any more illusory than thinking of emotions as a divine spark provided by God. If my emotions are mystical rather than material how do I trust they aren't being manipulated by demons or spirits? Why would I be less sure of the authenticity and value of my emotional experience just because I can recognize it's possible to alter my emotional state materially. Jeremy Bentham was one of the first people to articulate a philosophical defence of animals and he was a secular philosopher. Peter Singer is the most prominent contemporary advocate of animal rights and is an atheist. Recognizing animals as essentially the same as us on a biological level should lead us to the conclusion that animals deserve some level of equal consideration as us, not that we deserve to treat people as animals have been unjustly treated in the past. It's not materialist who say that the animals exist to serve human beings, that's a theological viewpoint.

The idea of distinguishing (not denying by any means) animal and human emotions is to give animals their due.
Any defense of animals is always highly welcome!

[Danik 2016]

The farmer raised hens from chicks. When the birds were big enough they were either sent as meat or layers. A truck came to pick them up. We would clean the barn and he would sanitize it afterwards. Some hens escaped being placed on the truck that would have led them to their final destination. There were maybe a dozen of these birds. The farmer had to get rid of those birds and I suppose he could have eaten them himself, but he mentioned once, when I asked him, that he disposed of them in a furnace. He was making sure his barn was ready for the next batch of chicks.

It is true that our bodies individuate us and we can manipulate our bodies and get different emotional responses. It is like clicking on a different link or (to use an older metaphor) turning the radio's dial to a different station. The key question is whether our minds (including the minds of animals) are produced by our individual bodies or whether our consciousness is transformed through our bodies. The transformation rather than the production perspective works better as I see it. It also allows us to get past our individualism and make sense of psi phenomena, language as well as senses of community. Now a computer, because of its deterministic-random programming, is completely transparent, much like a radio. It doesn't have a mind. It cannot make a choice although it can use a model to select an optimal solution.

I agree that if there is a mind or mystical dimension to our emotions that cannot be reduced as something produced by and therefore reduced to neurons, genes or atoms, it opens up a whole dimension of demons, spirits, ghosts and gods. That is why an atheistic position, at some point, has to forget about negating gods and start creating those machines that would prove there are no gods. I am not saying that atheists don't respect animal rights and I don't trust modern theistic views of animals. We are all caught in our current cultural common sense whether we are theists or atheists. As human beings we can also transcend that common sense which I think is cracking.

Sticking just to the animal question, as my sight is not so good today. Putting animals in a furnace is a horrible way to get rid of them. Couldn´t these chickens at least be distributed to the hungry?
Yesterday I looked for your two haibuns on Fred, but couldn´t find them.