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Names

It is well known by horse owners that it is bad luck to rename a horse. I have had the kind of anecdotal experience that frequently comes forth when attesting to the truth of a superstitious belief. Tara, Tux, and Tucker were great horses, and I did not change their names. Locherran, renamed Luke, and Luke, renamed Boon, were disastrously bad. Given that lineup of names, I could just as well…

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Emily Bronte's Birthday

Emily Bronte’s Birthday

July 30, 2018 marks the bicentennial of the birth of Emily Bronte, best known as the Victorian novelist who wrote Wuthering Heights. That novel, aside from occupying an eternal place in the literary canon, still has the power to captivate the modern reader. This 200th anniversary gives me the excuse to revisit that novel and explore what was so special and original about it as well as celebrating…

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10 of the Best William Wordsworth Poems Everyone Should Read

Since I was blown away by “Surprised by Joy” and left wondering how I had never before read it, I have reposted this.

10 of the Best William Wordsworth Poems Everyone Should Read

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Observations of a Poet

They (nonhuman animals) are called into existence by human artifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence of slavery and disease, that their bodies may be mutilated, their social feelings outraged. It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1815

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Stoicism: No Guarantee of Logic or Morality

I have on several occasions questioned certain authors, typically ones who write about nonhuman animals, about whether their discovery that non-humans are intelligent, social, and emotional has led to the ineluctable conclusion that those creatures should not be abused, killed, and eaten. In response, I have encountered illogic and ersatz ethics to support the insensate continuation of…

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Dinner with an Animal Lover

I had dinner with a long-lost friend a few years ago. As I have experienced before and since, such reunions are exciting in anticipation and satisfying in the shared memories but do not typically demand a sequel. The lack of further dinners is relevant to explain why I never got the chance to follow up on the most salient point in the evening, which arose from the following anecdote. Why…

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Happy Birthday Mary's Son

Happy Birthday Mary’s Son

As the bumper stickers clamor at this time of year (and actually year-round) to keep the Christ in Christmas, I will do so by pondering a question that no doubt Christian theologians have explored and probably argued about, and, if other differences of arcane matters are any indication, such arguments might have been the basis for several years of righteous religious war. The question is about…

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Civic Quiz

Here is a civics quiz: which is the wording of the Second Amendment: In order for the people to feel secure in their homes, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be…

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And the Winner of the Most Valid Protest Award Is . . . .

If you have taken even little steps into the world of activism for animal rights, you might have experienced, and likely will if you persevere, the opponent who challenges your actions on the grounds that you should be fighting for a different cause. I suspect that argument only arises when the activist’s cause is not focused on humans. Do anti- abortion activists encounter foes who, rather than…

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Comfort Yourself

Many Stoic precepts have gained traction in our modern society, such as abandoning the quest for happiness through material goods, keeping in mind that each day could be your last, and valuing the present. However, the injunction in Stoicism against complaining and turning to others for solace finds no home in today’s world where, to the contrary, we are encouraged to visit mental health workers…

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#grief #psychology #stoicism

Shame on Jane Smiley

John Keats criticized Lord Byron for treating serious things lightly and light things seriously. The latter is the lesser of the evils and not at issue here. As to the former, Byron’s treatment of shipwrecked, starving sailors resorting to cannibalism in “Don Juan” is a good example. There is nothing of the truth of the suffering, anguish, desperation, or horror of such a plight, but rather a…

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Another Fourth of July

Meat propaganda spikes at holiday time, as we have just witnessed with this 4th of July and the usual media barrage of meat-equals-celebration messages: you must consume heavily spiced scraps of dead pigs and cows formed into tubes (even have contests to see what cultural robot can eat the most), ground up cow flesh, and dead bird parts. This particular holiday, in addition to encouraging the…

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Reading Wuthering Heights: An Appreciation

I just finished Wuthering Heights for the umpteenth time, leaving Lockwood poetically musing at the graves of Catherine, Edgar, and Heathcliff, those quiet sleepers in the quiet earth. Those final lines are the culmination of a poetry-infused final section of roughly twenty pages, in which Heathcliff’s character as the greatest mourner in literature comes to the fore as he wills himself to death…

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The Morality of Horseback Riding

In considering the question whether horseback riding is wrong under an anti-specieisist morality, I have developed a two-part test. However, before applying it to that case at hand, I will briefly reiterate what an anti-specieisist approach to nonhuman animals entails. Peter Singer clarified that all animals have different interests, but that differences in interests are not the relevant…

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The Morality of Horseback Riding

In considering the question whether horseback riding is wrong under an anti-specieisist morality, I have developed a two-part test. However, before applying it to that case at hand, I will briefly reiterate what an anti-specieisist approach to nonhuman animals entails. Peter Singer clarified that all animals have different interests, but that differences in interests are not the relevant…

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Another Fabulous NYC Restuarant

Re: When Meat is Your Destination by Pete Wells New York Times February 8, 2017 Dear Mr. Wells, Your review of the restaurant White Gold Butchers certainly is long overdue. I have been searching for a place to find meat, meat, and more meat. I was beginning to think there was a shortage and that those pesky animal rights advocates had started to illuminate people about the torment of farm…

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Coerced Morality

Is it good enough for a person to stop doing an immoral act at the request of another if he does not believe that the act is wrong? That is the general articulation of the following question that I came across on Facebook recently: my fiancé will stop eating meat because I have told him I cannot marry him if he doesn’t become vegan, but he says that he doesn’t agree that there is anything wrong…

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#Animal Rights #Emmanuel Kant #Existentialism #hypocrisy #peter singer #stoicism #Vegan #veganism

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