winners & losers
by uzwi
A chimpanzee did pre-planned violence, something we believed only human beings had the intelligence for. While that’s interesting & –of course–comical behaviour, it might conceivably have been a safety hazard for visitors. So we castrated him. This solution (a) maintains the very important distinction between humans & other primates; & (b) eliminates the risk of him passing on his genetic material. What is the very important distinction between human beings & other primates, I hear you ask ? It’s that human beings can fly to Sharm el Sheikh for £29, you loser.
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Your blog is flying. I want to say, You’re really clever. But as Philip Roth observed (I think), it’s actually all of us creating the material. We castrate the chimp etc.
Why don’t we castrate Myerson too? Or staple her lips and fingers together.
I think the defining line which you draw for humanity, and which occupied so much of my time in Ordinary General Philosophy, not to mention the complete works of Philip K Dick, solves many problems.
But I’m still not going there, because of (a) the Muslim terrorists and (b) the essential frivolity of the place.
Instead, I’m going to Florence to look at an exhibition about Galileo. Hedging my bets, you see. Sound religion, high culture and rationality all at the same time. That must be worth wrecking the planet for.
True. But does that stop us pointing these things out to ourselves ? I hope not, because if it does nothing will ever get changed. The argument to hypocrisy was great in the early 80s when people were just discovering it. But we’re all aware of it now, & it’s just become one of the great stoppers of debate. If I’m not allowed to talk about this because I once visited a zoo, or because I belong to a society which condones zoos, then I’m not allowed to have changed my mind about either the zoos or the society, & I’m not allowed to try to change the minds of others. I’m not sticking for that, so Roth will have to taunt away at me.
I should emphasise that just as Myerson wasn’t the issue in the post below, zoos and chimpanzees aren’t the issue here. It’s the structures of anthropocentrism I hate. Also, I just feel sorry for the poor fucking animal, along with an almost unbearable hatred for the man quoted in the last paragraphs of the piece.
Hi Andrew. Our posts crossed there. If I was the ape I would be looking for further solutions now.
Just because my toaster’s called Tricia…
According to the NY Times the Czech Republic is considering castration of violent sex offenders. Will they be allowed to fly (Sharm or Florence) after?
The chimp’s showing more evolved behaviour than the apes in charge of it: either you entertain us, laddy, or we’ll cut your balls off.
Actually, that approach might have worked in the Myerson household, too. But it’s too late now.
Tricia the Toaster? Kevin the Kettle? Willa the Wok? Lara, this culinary anthropomorphism bodes ill for our culture. Levi Strauss said the same thing. Probably.
This is how it starts. We all know that. This is always how it starts.
And from here it’s a slippery slope to Charlton Heston on his knees blubbing at the half-buried Statue of Liberty on the shore.
Well, he certainly appears to be *our* dysfunctional, violent and potentially murderous primate.
If he were in a troop, and was messin’ about like this, he might suffer some catastrophic blowback from his peers (and we’d call it natural); certainly chimps, like humans, are capable of taking life for very mercenary and power-hungry reasons:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE6DE1F39F930A25750C0A96E948260
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976794596
It’s the old love and justice thing, the eagle and the dove: it’ll just keep rolling along….
On the other hand, I’ll be happier when I read a story about a monkey doing meditation – with his/her keeper, and we then start asking about what the differences are between humans and chimps