Tigers and Cultural Relativity

FCA 6/21/97                         Tiger Bones and Cultural Relativity

This essay was inspired by a conflict in San Francisco between Chinese-American people selling live chickens in a market and animal rights people accusing them of being cruel. The paradoxes involved are really interesting. How can animal rights people criticize someone who wants to kill their own chicken when they themselves must take life in order to keep living? All the meat and other food at the grocery store is killed by somebody. What can be so bad about killing it yourself? Why don’t the animal rights people lobby to just do away with all domestic animals period? Domesticated animals and plants are an indelible part of our human heritage. Why is taking the life of one of God’s plants any less severe than taking an animal? They are both alive. People are very willing to judge but just what it is that makes them feel they are correct is something we don’t really seem to take too close a look at.

Having respect for tradition and cultural diversity is something noble and expansive; you are showing respect for those who are different. On the other hand if a tradition demands bear paws and gall bladders, rhinoceros horns, tiger penises and bones and hundreds of thousands of shark fins and the animals are going extinct, you have to wonder where to draw the line. When does merely different or “diverse” cross the line to demanding judgement as bad? Even though a majority of all animals that have ever lived are currently extinct, many species now are threatened with extinction because of the continuation of old cultural traditions carried on by a greatly increased human population.

Personally, I believe no culture has the right to unquestioningly terminate a whole species, no matter what. It is just plain ignorant to willfully exterminate fellow species. This is the only planet we’ve got. Once tigers are gone, that’s it. The animals are innocent and it is up to us to protect them. Every form of life is innocent compared to humans. Tigers, as a representative species,  have no idea of the forces stacked against them and the world would certainly be a much poorer place without them. I don’t know if there is God or if it is evolution. It doesn’t really matter because if there is respect for life, you can take it seriously on that basis alone. To husband resources is in my opinion, better than squandering them. People are smart enough to know that if you overwork the fields, they won’t produce. If you eat the seed corn you have nothing to plant next year. If you kill all the deer, there is no meat. If you sacrifice all the virgins, you can’t reproduce.

The wise husbanding of resources is counterbalanced by a human tendency to maximize a good thing until it is too late. This is a Cain and Abel thing, good and bad, that goes to the root of our humanity and also to our animal ancestry. Our ancestors were meat eaters whenever possible. The nutrition to maintain our large brains demanded protein and fat. Killing animals was/is part of everyday life. It was not any more cruel than what the rest of the animal kingdom does. Shoot, there are carnivorous plants. Take for example the extinct Pleistocene megafauna, the driving of  bison over cliffs, hunting Stellar’s Sea Cows to extinction, the maximizing of resources has always been a strong human tendency. People can get carried away, as can animals and go for slaughter rather than just what is necessary.

Animal rights and vegetarian arguments boil down to a number of factors. The practices of

keeping and consuming domestic and/or wild animals was OK as long as the scale was at a certain level. When you take those traditional human practices and multiply them by billions of people, the sheer scale of it creates environmental and ethical problems. I don’t think a persuasive argument can be made that carnivory is inherently bad. This is nature. The problems are of having too great a scale and also that food and medicine procurement methods of the past just don’t fit today.

But how about if the people who want tiger bones are uneducated and don’t know any better? Are they to blame? No. If you don’t know then you can’t be ignorant. Concomitantly, would any one argue that it isn’t the right thing to do to want to save the tiger? Is it anyone’s responsibility to try and stop the demand? With myths of unlimited resources it is not logical for people to assume things will run out. Who will step up to tell them what is really going on? Maybe the locals think they just need to pray harder to the animal master to keep the animals coming. Maybe they didn’t get the ritual just right. Maybe the old beliefs don’t fit when the human population is too great and the rest of the animals have not increased in population also. In the case of China and the peasant demand for exotic animal parts seen as medicine, is any amount of US trade and money even remotely worth the extinction of tigers? All US arguments in favor of continuing to trade with China are economic, there is no mention of tiger bones, there is too much investment at stake. Could the USA make a stand or would that interfere with diplomacy and create a perceived lack of respect? If inertia, economy and tradition are the underlying factors and no one steps up to challenge things that are obviously wrong, it is just hideous shame.

Yet, why would a Tiger be any more valuable in the eyes of the world than some weasily little salamander that lives in cattle tanks in the southwest and is also facing extinction? There are many creatures here in our own back yard to be concerned about. In the USA, rampant consumerism, waste of resources and social and economic injustice do not give us any moral high ground to criticize China or any other country or culture. If we can’t keep our own house in order we are hypocrites and become the pot calling the kettle black. If we live in the USA, we participate in a huge industrial, consumer society, we can’t deny it. Our culture is not cast in stone as some sort of absolute truth or cosmic birth right. We have as much fallibility and hypocrisy as any. Our country was born out of righteous protest against tyranny yet we were able to justify slavery and racial prejudice for hundreds of years. We could justify genocide of the Native Americans. We put our system on a pedestal because of the freedoms we have and because of our democratic form of government. We also are not above assuming some sort of divine support. We buy into our own myth. If God created the world for human use, then extinction is a moot point because then God will make everything right later in Heaven, it allows us to justify our consumerism as a birthright. The Chinese are doing the same thing. They want tiger bones and that is OK for them.

There is no sense in pointing the finger too far when we are all human and have the same basic shortcomings. Maybe sometimes it is easier to see it in others than it is to see it in ourselves. Political leaders in the US are great at sounding off about democracy and fairness and freedom but none of them have the courage to turn a critical eye on the home territory. That is the real problem. We can’t act morally as a nation because the economic forces of consumerism override ethical considerations. No national leaders are stepping up because they all buy the myth that growth is essential and then that gets foisted on us as rhetoric about more and better jobs and more money, which really just boils down to being able to consume more stuff. How can we criticize China when the incredible mass consumerism of our culture and economy are running the earth’s resources into the ground?

Some things can be merely different and respected in that way. But it is a fine line. The Tower of Babel proverb where different languages came to confuse people and prevent them from understanding each other is a real roadblock and a constant challenge. The temptation towards judgement is strong and moral absolutism is seductive in it’s security. Relativity seems to imply ambivalence and lack of ability to discriminate and judge right from wrong. Perhaps the trick is to accept these conditions as part of being human and quit being so righteous and have a little compassion for those who while different, are just like us. In the context of this argument, to judge right from wrong is relative because on the one hand husbanding resources is right because you are providing yourself for the future. On the other hand resources could be squandered because of a belief that God will make everything right later. It is difficult to convince anyone in either case that they are wrong.

How do we act in the face of demand for parts from animals that are going extinct? I expect the world has never been a Polly Anna kind of place and if you look at what is really going on, all of life is committed to living by consuming other life. The world is a cruel place. It is no wonder people feel like they need gods to make sense of it all. It is tough to stomach. The business of eating day to day is harsh, animals are killed, plants are chopped down, competitors are fought, resources are hoarded and manipulated to suit the needs of the people. Being fair is a luxury based upon successful technology and management of resources. Successful technology and management of resources means that some things die and are consumed so that we may live in a relatively comfortable way. In the US relatively comfortable means consuming a majority of the earth’s resources for our American dream lifestyle while more than two thirds of the human population suffers from poverty. We still have a myth of unlimited resources and people are in denial that there is a finite aspect to our consumption. We have the technology and the resources to be fair, but we aren’t fair because we don’t redistribute, we don’t actively fight extinction, we don’t husband and we justify it all on the basis of democracy and freedom as the highest ideals. We throw a god in there too if it suits our needs. That ends up being a lot of bullshit because freedom ends up being not a high social ideal but an economic right to take and consume more resources than is necessary. Why else would such a small percentage of people in the US control so much of the country’s wealth? In 1996 the compensation for CEOs went up 18% while the average yearly earnings for the rest rose only 2.9%. It is obscene. It is a kind of unnatural, maniacal hoarding that is antithetical to anything in nature or to a sustainable society.

How much do we need? What do we need? What premises do we use to justify how much and what we need? If we are free does that mean we are free to take as much as we want, until there is none left? Apparently that is the way it is and therefore, we are proceeding with our own version of wanting tiger bones and rhinoceros horns and we see there is nothing wrong with it. Bear gall bladders and tiger bones in China are analogous to trophy hunting in the USA, there is no bone fide need to do it, to have it, it’s just cultural inertia. We have absolutely no ground to stand on morally if we want to criticize Arabs wanting rhino horns for dagger handles or Chinese wanting tiger bones for hard-on/ Viagra type medicine. We can’t say anything because we are in the same boat. Enough people are complacent and willing to carry on day to day because that is easier than digging up a lot of messy contradictions, paradoxes and hypocrisy. Maybe it can be broken down into the difference between maximizers and husbanders. Those basic tendencies may be at the root of all current resource issues and we don’t need to look any further to see where these things come from than to look in the mirror. If we won’t or our leaders won’t step up and begin to establish some moral high ground as to what kind of stewards we are going to be for the planet, if we don’t bring our defining metaphor up to the level of the planet, then extinction and environmental degradation will continue at an increasing rate. We are not a small village any more. We are billions and billions and old practices and old premises just aren’t going to cut it.

Our cultures and our ability to have the luxury of civilized discourse, is all dependent on having our basic needs met. Without basic needs, the veneer of civilization soon peals off and all the worst in us starts to come out. It could be bad if those with power and those controlling resources don’t start to see the writing on the wall. Short term growth at all costs is long term folly.

Economic considerations alone push people too far out of balance with nature and resources. We need to put some culture, some gods back into the dollar and insist on a quality of life not dependent on continuous consumption of silly, stupid-ass products. People don’t all need to have such a large array of stuff to be happy. It is crazy. Unfortunately it is difficult to see any good outcomes because everyone naturally wants to have offspring and it is just going to be more and more people. One more American will probably consume more resources than thousands of Rwandans. Is this the way we show the world how to be?

People think God will save everything but where has God been? I don’t see God in any burning bushes or golden tablets or anything, not the slightest sign whatsoever. The image of Jesus or the Virgin on a pizza is a pretty sad level of revelation. If there was even a reasonable hint, that would be hopeful but unfortunately all this is projection into other realms without any evidence at all. If people can deny responsibility in the present through a projected salvation later, that is just using fantasy to avoid the consequences of poor stewardship and lack of action now.

I’m sorry to be so negative but this is one way to see things. The global economy is in some senses good because it is taking this incredible consuming power of Americans and diluting it or even getting rid of it. If Nike had to pay American workers to make Air Jordans, the cost would be much greater in wages and therefore, more stuff could get consumed by these American workers. When the buying power of Americans goes south, however, I suppose it is only a matter of time before it pops up somewhere else. They all want to be like Americans in their material fantasy.

If the jobs stayed in the USA, CEOs wouldn’t get as much profit but the wealth would be spread more evenly among Americans and the incredible consumption could continue. But if Nike pays Vietnamese or Mexicans $1.25 or less a day, the world-wide consumption of processed goods will go down. The wealth would become concentrated at the top with the CEOs. Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise because once only a few control such tremendous wealth, no average or poor person will be able to afford to buy anything anymore, all their potential earnings and disposable income will have been skimmed off or exported and down-sized, more than 50% of income payed in rent. In this scenario, the maximizers win out, they have all the monopoly money and all the property. This would then leave the rest to cut down all the trees to burn for heat and cooking and to revert to a simpler lifestyle where the resources are consumed at a more direct and immediately detrimental level. This would be the Sahara-ization of the world.

In contrast to that scenario, people could plan and legislate and work for sustainability. Sounds kind of pathetic doesn’t it? You just know that self interest is so much greater than any notion of the common good that these terrible fantasies have a pretty good chance of turning out to be true. Just like we see peace on the horizon in the middle east, some assholes have to go fundamentalist and screw it all up. The appeal to the most base always wins out over what might be moral.  Until we get to a Star Trek level of social organization, that’s the way it is.

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