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A Burger King ad only shown in Singapore

After more thinking of Carol Adams and what she wrote, while I don’t necessarily agree with veganism, I do agree with her in the way that we are desensitized to the meat we eat today. 

As an American child, I myself did not understand where meat came from until I saw my father stuffing a turkey for thanksgiving. I asked him what it was and he told me “a dead bird. we’re going to eat it.” 

I was mortified, but by the time it was cut finely and put onto my plate, I quickly forgot about it. 

I think there is something about us though that has desensitized us to animals since the industrial revolution, because hunting for our own food is no longer a survival skill. Meat eating has evolved today into something disturbing. Livestock has turned into an industrial business now, where animals are packed into meat factories, living miserable short lives. 

We have completely shifted into an unethical way of eating meat. In a video I saw of Carol Adams talking about The Sexual Politics of Meat, she mentions that the meat we eat is disembodied from the animal. For example we call meat from a cow beef, or we eat leg of goat, instead of calling it goat or a goat’s leg. With our own language we are desensitized from the meat we eat. Western culture’s methods of meat eating has desensitized us so much, that we have evolved to sexual advertisements of meat. Meat being sexy, or a sex object. Think about those sexist ads from Hardee’s with sexy women eating burgers. 

Does this affect western culture’s empathy with animals? I think it does, because we don’t face the truth of what it takes to eat meat. So for those of us who are squeamish and hate the sight of blood, we can pick up the meat we want from the grocery store. If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. 

image source:

https://personalwriting72.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/meat-advertisements-and-their-techniques-how-industries-produce-and-naturalize-our-craving-for-meat/

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Modern science seeks to bend nature to serve human desires; the Renaissance artist denied nature's ultimate reality in order to create his alternative cosmos

John Opie, “Renaissance Origins of the Environmental Crisis” 

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Vitruvian Man, Leonardo Da Vinci

The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli

For this post I will be talking about humanism. 

After the Dark Ages of Europe living in ignorance under the Church, A rebirth occurred, an age known as The Renaissance. Humanism was a new notion of individualism that one’s faith could not be governed by a religious institution. Back in the Middle Ages artists and artisans were only commissioned to do mostly religious work for their churches. This new notion freed artists to expand on their artistic skills and also inspired them to become scholars. Humanism can also be explained by a Protagoras' statement that 'Man is the measure of all things'.

This lead to human-centered philosophical thinking, and human-centered subject matter and portraiture in Renaissance art. The Renaissance was an era where science, mathematics, and overall education boomed. However, nature or the inclusion of plant and animal thinking was left out during this era due to the Aristotelian vision of a hierarchy of species. This notion freed man from any moral obligation toward animals. At the time, people were not as interested in trying to learn more about them or connect.  

There are some good and some bad things that came out of humanism, but the negative effect that came with this notion gave westerners the idea that humankind is more intelligent, therefore humankind is the superior species. The center of the world. I think that humanism along with Judeo-Christianity has influenced western thinking for generations, resulting in our western ancestors foolishly wiping out animals and ecosystems with little regard for their lives and their environmental contribution.

Sources:

- Rethinking the Status of Animals in the French Renaissance Culture: from Pierre Belon to Michel de Montaigne By Olga Gennadyevna Sylvia

- Italian Renaissance Art: Humanism

- Humanism

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The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch

I wanted to share this painting because I decided to go back to the subject of Judeo-Christianity and how it contributed to the western relationship with nature. 

In this tryptic the common theme is sin, and the garden in the middle is supposed to be a false paradise of everyone living deliciously, leading them to Hell. Some people perceive this painting differently out of a Christian context, as this predicting the fate of humanity from the abuse of resources, turning Earth into Hell, what the Earth could look like when the effects of climate change have arrived in full. 

Many scholars agree that Judeo-Christianity has influenced the western perception of nature and the notion that we are separate from nature. This goes beyond religion as well, even for those who are not religious, religion ideals over time shape world view, and over time western civilization has further alienated itself from nature. I encountered a paper that can be found on google titled “Pro-Dominion Attitudes toward Nature in Western Culture: First Cracks in the Narrative” written by Bina Nir. From this genealogical research paper I found on this subject, in summary, it shows how western culture lost its connection to nature in these steps: 

the separation between divinity and nature. God being something that is not part of nature

the separation between human beings and nature

the positioning of humans atop the creation hierarchy. Man being created in God’s image.  

Anyway I think it is a good analysis. Search it. Read it. 

Source cited:

Nir, Bina. 2020. "Pro-Dominion Attitudes toward Nature in Western Culture: First Cracks in the Narrative." Genealogy 4, no. 3: 68.

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In regards to my last post, here is a video of the artist Cannupa Hanska Lugar after the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. I wanted to share from an indigenous point of view what western culture is to him.

“Western culture is savage, primitive. It doesn’t use the land properly. It doesn’t take account of relationship, on how we relate to one another.” 

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Should we blame Western culture?

When searching through my college’s research database, I came across a small article titled “White Supremacy is Bad. Western Culture Isn’t.” from the Washington Post online. to summarize the article, it said that Western culture historically originated from what is now southern Iraq. The author of the article thinks that there is a confusion between Western culture and white supremacy. However I don’t think there is. From a historical point of view and the art and literature that came from western culture, “these people were only in the right place at the right time.” And that we shouldn’t think to destroy western culture in order to take down white supremacy. 

I agree, but I also disagree. White supremacy and the industrial revolution is what came from western culture. In order to end these I think we (as westerners) have a responsibility to understand the values of our current culture and how we got here in the first place. We must go back to our roots and figure out what went wrong and what we can do to change it. White supremacy is a bi-product of western culture that continued to be nourished and grown. 

People say that it doesn’t help to blame western culture, but it does help to be aware of the flaws of it. 

-"White Supremacy is Bad. Western Culture isn’t." WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post.

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The case [fall] of Western Civilization is different because the consequences of its actions were not only predictable, but predicted.

“The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

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The Purpose of this Blog?

I just wanted to make some clarifications before I post more because I feel like my posts are a little vague and all over the place. So I want to make my intentions a bit clear, and give a few disclaimers.

First of all I want it to be known if anyone comes across this blog that I am only doing it for me, not for likes or clout. This is more a personal research project.

Second I want my origins to be known and why I am criticizing specifically western culture:

I am a white American. I have grown up and lived in the United States my entire life. I have never once left this country. During the years of my college education, I began to realize the propaganda that I was fed when I was a kid, and how that could make someone blind and ignorant about the real violence that happened in the making of this country. This, I acknowledge, was a realization that came from privilege. I am a college educated person who was able to meet more people from different cultural backgrounds and parts of the world and listen to their experiences. I thought a lot about it, even though I have never had the opportunity to visit another country. I realized that western culture, especially in the U.S. is very selfish, violent, and focused on individualism. I think this kind of cultural thinking is what lead to the current climate crisis because when a culture that lacks empathy, values power, does not practice proper stewardship with nature, and imperializes the whole world... something catastrophic is bound to happen. 

I wanted to take this project, or this blog, and use this as an opportunity to somehow unlearn this American propaganda that has been ingrained in my mind. When I say propaganda I mean actual history not being taught and pledging allegiance to a flag every morning at 8am, not even knowing why I had to. 

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a pile of American bison skulls in the mid 1870s (photo: wikipedia)

When I look at this photo it makes me feel uneasy. In a way that makes me ashamed and disappointed that this history of American colonialism and violence is only glossed over when we (Americans) are taught about it when we were children. The buffalo massacre was never talked about from what I can remember when I was a child learning about the Transcontinental Railroad and westward expansion. It was only brought to my attention when an Anishinaabe friend of mine told me about it.

It really is disturbing to see the opportunity for wealth and the gold rush make a whole country to be willing to go great lengths to kill almost an entire species population. Not just to kill them, but to kill them in order to take control of the indigenous population in the plains.

Here are some of my sources I referenced for this blogpost:

Where the Buffalo no Longer Roamed:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904/

The Buffalo War (2018) [distributed by] Bullfrog Films

The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920, by Andrew C. Isenberg

Western Expansion and the Buffalo Massacre

I remember when I was in fifth grade we were being taught about the Transcontinental Railroad and how it was a grand moment in American history when it was finished. It was a quick and safer mode of transportation that connected the continental U.S. from coast to coast. According to this article, and many other sources that can easily be found, the Transcontinental railroad is actually responsible for the countless Native American lives lost and the slaughter of tens of millions of buffalo that have roamed the continent freely since the ice age. 

The pressure of the gold rush and manifest destiny lead to colonists to break their treaties with the natives who lived in the Great Plains by invading their lands in order to build the Transcontinental Railroad. The Plains tribes, justifiably angry, fought back and proved to be difficult for even armed military men guarding the railroad from the Native Americans with their guerrilla tactics. The men in charge of building the railroad were enraged by the “Battle of a Hundred Slain” where 81 U.S. soldiers were slain, mutilated, and scalped in an ambush executed by the Cheyenne and Lakota. General Philip Henry Sheridan was then tasked to eliminate Native Americans that were in the way of their precious Manifest Destiny. Sheridan even ordered defenseless women and children to be slaughtered as well, and for those who survived he targeted their main food and clothing supply to starve them out: buffaloes. 

If a village is attacked and women and children killed,” Sheridan once remarked, “the responsibility is not with the soldiers but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack.” (Smithsonian mag)

Sheridan was a bloodthirsty, sick man.

(this post is to be continued)

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Western Expansion and the Buffalo Massacre

I remember when I was in fifth grade we were being taught about the Transcontinental Railroad and how it was a grand moment in American history when it was finished. It was a quick and safer mode of transportation that connected the continental U.S. from coast to coast. According to this article, and many other sources that can easily be found, the Transcontinental railroad is actually responsible for the countless Native American lives lost and the slaughter of tens of millions of buffalo that have roamed the continent freely since the ice age. 

The pressure of the gold rush and manifest destiny lead to colonists to break their treaties with the natives who lived in the Great Plains by invading their lands in order to build the Transcontinental Railroad. The Plains tribes, justifiably angry, fought back and proved to be difficult for even armed military men guarding the railroad from the Native Americans with their guerrilla tactics. The men in charge of building the railroad were enraged by the “Battle of a Hundred Slain” where 81 U.S. soldiers were slain, mutilated, and scalped in an ambush executed by the Cheyenne and Lakota. General Philip Henry Sheridan was then tasked to eliminate Native Americans that were in the way of their precious Manifest Destiny. Sheridan even ordered defenseless women and children to be slaughtered as well, and for those who survived he targeted their main food and clothing supply to starve them out: buffaloes. 

If a village is attacked and women and children killed,” Sheridan once remarked, “the responsibility is not with the soldiers but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack.” (Smithsonian mag)

Sheridan was a bloodthirsty, sick man.

(this post is to be continued)

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White Veganism

Today I want to address Carol Adam’s book The Sexual Politics of Meat and white concepts of veganism. I’m not against anyone who chooses to be vegan, as there are a variety of reasons why one chooses to go vegan. Maybe you think it will reduce your carbon footprint, or you want to eat a diet that is cruelty free, or maybe you’re just uncomfortable with eating a dead animal, which is totally fine! 

However, it is pretty hard to eat a diet that is completely cruelty free in today’s age of late-capitalism with farmers harvesting your fruits and vegetables earning only the equivalent of $2 an hour. Being vegan is not always cruelty free.

I read the first chapter of Carol Adam’s book and found myself agreeing with some of the things she said on western culture’s obsession with meat, (although I wish there was some more intersectionality in this book) and the power dynamic throughout history where the ones in power were the ones who would be allowed to eat meat, (ie. a wealthy, white patriarch). George Beard, a white supremacist and racist medical doctor in the nineteenth century influenced by Darwin’s theory, believed that white people, specifically white men, were on the scale of higher evolution. Meat also being on a higher scale of evolution and fruits and grains being lower, was his reasoning that meat should be the main meal for white men. Cultures that relied more on eating plant-based foods were considered inferior, because “how could they survive without eating meat?” which according to Beard’s logic, meant that those specific groups of people were intellectually inferior. Adams lists the Hindo-Chinese and the potato eating Irish as an example of cultures that were conquered by the English.

With meat-eating being associated throughout western history as an elite white type of thing, it bothers me that white vegans who think they’re more righteous than a peasant in a third world country raising and selling chickens for a living for people to eat when:

1. It was their white ancestors who pushed the narrative that meat eating is superior.

2. If you’re upset about animal rights, look into the meat packing industry in the U.S., don’t get mad at a poor farmer who only has a handful of chickens that they’re selling to their neighbors.

3. Find something else to get mad about? There are human’s rights violations happening all over the world, and you want to get heated over someone selling their chickens? 

Anyway, I agree with what Carol Adams writes in her book, The Sexual Politics of Meat, to an extent. One of my peers pointed out that her writing did lack some intersectionality in her argument and failed to mention more ethical ways of meat eating that have been practiced by indigenous peoples in the Americas for thousands of years. Maybe I will talk more about that in another post.

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Teddy Bear Patriarchy: A Conversation With Donna Haraway

Regarding my Teddy Bear Patriarchy post, I found this conversation with the author, Donna Haraway. I think she addresses some important points with the toppling of American racist monuments recently how the Roosevelt one in New York can be replaced and how we need to address American imperialism.

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The Teddy Bear Patriarchy

“In the upside down world of the Teddy Bear Patriarchy, it is in the craft of killing that life is constructed, not in the accident of personal, material birth.” (Haraway p. 23) 

When it comes to the western culture’s obsession with hunting and killing for sport, you won’t have to look no further than Theodore Roosevelt, who seemed like a nature loving guy in his time, but today? Nothing more than a guy who  wanted to justify needlessly killing animals for sport. 

“Teddy Bear Patriarchy:Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936″ by Donna Haraway is a relevant reading if you’re into the history of taxidermy, but it also highlights the theme of the skewed western ideas of what it is to be a man. This essay is about Carl Akeley, a man who admired Theodore Roosevelt, and his “curation” of animals for the natural history museum that he taxidermied. “Sportsmanship” is often mentioned in this essay when it comes to hunting animals, even though their purposes are not for sport, it certainly does seem that way . Akeley is hunting gorillas for the African exhibit in the natural museum and even worried about gorillas eventually going extinct. So why kill all those gorillas in the name of science? His reasoning was he wanted to create an environment as accurate as possible to display these creatures for what they really are and how obsessed he was with showing true science. Truth and perfection in this essay are often conflating. He is so obsessed with showing a realistic environment, but he is also looking for the perfect specimens in their prime that are more aesthetically pleasing. 

In his efforts of curating for this natural history museum, he justifies his actions as noble and scientific, but in reality his process is very ignorant and dismissive of the African natives and their practices. This notion of manhood or putting your life in danger is also a recurring theme, as people like Roosevelt and Akeley feel more like men from conquering and exploring uncharted territory while leaving destruction behind them, and putting the lives of the natives they bring with them in danger while they get to do their little adventures. The disregard of animal and human life from these men come from their self-centered white supremacy, and their misogynistic ideas. 

The museum, as Haraway puts it, was not dedicated to preserving science and nature (there are obviously way more ethical methods they could have done), it was dedicated to preserve a threatened western idea of manhood. 

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Human Superiority: a Christian Concept

Something that has been ingrained in western culture is that human beings are superior to animals, which I think is a contributing factor to our unsustainable way of living, and prepare for this hot take: I believe that this western notion of humans being superior, came from Christianity. 

I came to this conclusion when reading the preface of the book Art and Animals by my professor awesome Giovanni Aloi, where he criticizes this one passage in the book The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction, by Laurie Schneider Adams. I’ve copied the passage below for those who can see for themselves:

“Animals build only in nature, and their buildings are determined by nature. These include birds’ nests, beehives, anthills, and beaver dams. Molluscs, from the lowliest snail to the complex chambered nautilus, build their houses around their own bodies and carry them wherever they go. Spiders weave webs, and caterpillars spin cocoons. But such constructions are genetically programmed by the species that make them, and do not express individual and cultural ideas.”

To summarize Aloi’s argument against Adams, which I whole heartedly agree with, I’ll leave this quote:

“Discounting the abilities of animals as ‘programmed ‘and ‘unconscious ‘is something ingrained in Western culture ; to force specific human abilities onto animals in order to relentlessly produce skewed evidence of human superiority is a typical anthropocentric disease.” (p.xix)

But where did this separatist notion between man and animals come from? That is where Christianity comes in. Once upon a time, believe it or not, Europeans were once, in a way, indigenous before Christianity took over Europe. Don’t believe me? Look at European paganism. (I’ll include a bibliography at the end to support these claims, because I know this is a bit of a hot take). From what I’ve learned as an educated person, and as a raised Christian myself, is that a big part of the religion is spreading the holy gospel to everyone you can while blindly thinking that what you’re doing is saving people from Hell, but when you look at it, many massacres and witch hunts that killed thousands of pagans in Europe were done in the name of Christianity. It’s not as much of a kind religion the more you look into the history of it. Also, Christians believe that God made us in his image, and that animals do not have a soul. The belief that we are godlike creatures has inflated the egos of many for thousands of years, eventually leading to the devastation of our environment and ecosystem.

sources:

 https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/european-paganism-and-christianization/#:~:text=Before%20the%20spread%20of%20Christianity,belief%20systems%20are%20listed%20below.

here’s also an academic article that is easily accessible on google, I’ll cite it in MLA format.

Abbot, Wyn. "Is Christianity the Source of our Attempts to Dominate Nature?."        (2004). 

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Also here’s an article I found in the twitter thread of where I found the comic above addressing eco-fascism:

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2020/apr/6/humanity-isnt-disease-ecofascism

“Humans are the Virus??” Nahh

For my first post on this blog I wanted to address this dumb, eco-fascist idea that I’ve heard since this pandemic started. That we, the humans, are the virus that’s causing climate change and whatnot. I first saw this comment on a video— I can’t remember exactly where it was but it looked like some city in Europe, maybe Italy where they have these built in rivers for transport, and because people were staying home due to the pandemic, the water was clear. (dumb idiots the water was clear because there was no disturbance in the water from the boats). 

Anyway, the point is that it’s not the people’s fault when they’re forced to live in a consumerist society, it’s consumerism itself. Blaming people, especially poor people who use plastic bags for grocery shopping is incredibly eco-fascist that all of you need to let go. Saying that it’s our species’ fault also completely disregards the existence of indigenous people and how they’ve been able to live sustainably with nature. We humans are as much a part of nature as any other wild animal, but consumerism, brought by Western culture and colonialism has severed our connection with nature. On the whole this blog will be dedicated to the faults of western culture and consumerism, and how Western culture went wrong which lead to an unsustainable way of living.

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Also, I wanted to include this comic I found done by twitter user @/spoiledsacks. It definitely illustrates eco-fascism in an easily understandable way!

“Humans are the Virus??” Nahh

For my first post on this blog I wanted to address this dumb, eco-fascist idea that I’ve heard since this pandemic started. That we, the humans, are the virus that’s causing climate change and whatnot. I first saw this comment on a video— I can’t remember exactly where it was but it looked like some city in Europe, maybe Italy where they have these built in rivers for transport, and because people were staying home due to the pandemic, the water was clear. (dumb idiots the water was clear because there was no disturbance in the water from the boats). 

Anyway, the point is that it’s not the people’s fault when they’re forced to live in a consumerist society, it’s consumerism itself. Blaming people, especially poor people who use plastic bags for grocery shopping is incredibly eco-fascist that all of you need to let go. Saying that it’s our species’ fault also completely disregards the existence of indigenous people and how they’ve been able to live sustainably with nature. We humans are as much a part of nature as any other wild animal, but consumerism, brought by Western culture and colonialism has severed our connection with nature. On the whole this blog will be dedicated to the faults of western culture and consumerism, and how Western culture went wrong which lead to an unsustainable way of living.

[westernfaults]

“Humans are the Virus??” Nahh

For my first post on this blog I wanted to address this dumb, eco-fascist idea that I’ve heard since this pandemic started. That we, the humans, are the virus that’s causing climate change and whatnot. I first saw this comment on a video— I can’t remember exactly where it was but it looked like some city in Europe, maybe Italy where they have these built in rivers for transport, and because people were staying home due to the pandemic, the water was clear. (dumb idiots the water was clear because there was no disturbance in the water from the boats). 

Anyway, the point is that it’s not the people’s fault when they’re forced to live in a consumerist society, it’s consumerism itself. Blaming people, especially poor people who use plastic bags for grocery shopping is incredibly eco-fascist that all of you need to let go. Saying that it’s our species’ fault also completely disregards the existence of indigenous people and how they’ve been able to live sustainably with nature. We humans are as much a part of nature as any other wild animal, but consumerism, brought by Western culture and colonialism has severed our connection with nature. On the whole this blog will be dedicated to the faults of western culture and consumerism, and how Western culture went wrong which lead to an unsustainable way of living.