The Ethics of Compassion

The definition of compassion is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “to suffering together with another, participation in suffering; fellow-feeling” (399). I have felt compassion many times throughout my life. I believe all human beings have. For example, when the major tsunami hit southeast asia, india, and other different parts of the world, every country, every person, felt the lost that the individuals endured being at the specific locations. Many organizations donated money, effort, healthcare, and food to help get these people back on their feet. That is compassion. In the anthology, it also talks about compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is defined as “apathy or indifference towards the suffering of others or to charitable causes acting on their behalf, typically attributed to numbingly frequent appeals for assistance” (400). This is true, because many individuals such as myself see so many horrid events happen and feel too overwhelmed to help anymore. Feeling compassion towards someone or something will never end for me, but my actions become limited due to the infinite problems that occur. Compassion is existent through every living creature on this earth.

 I have seen on Animal Planet, tigers milking a deer and protecting it from other lions because the deer was motherless. Regardless if its an animal or human, all will contribute and share the same suffering.

During the beginning of the school year, I was triumphed with emotion of homesickness. All I wanted to do was go home, take the easy way out by transferring to a less intimidating university, and be back in my comfort zone. I put minimal effort for my classes, skipped many times, and took no responsabiltity. Although my brain told me what I needed to do, my emotions chose my decisions. In Anatomy of an Emotional Hijacking, it talks about how “the thinking brain plays an executive role in our emotions—except in those moments when emotions surge out of control and the emotional brain runs rampant” (407). I have experienced my emotions controlling my actions. Usually reasoning from my brain keeps me on a straight path to what needs to be done and what the right thing to do is, but during the first few weeks of school, the emotion of sadness, homesickness, anxiety, stress, and confusion caused me to start off in my classes in the wrong path. I now am having to deal with the consequences I created by letting my emotions “guide [my] moment-to-moment decisions” (407). Although my emotions can get out of control and lead me to different complications, I believe without it, I won't be able to find reasoning in anything I do or believe in. My aunt has always told me to love with your brain, and this paradigm is similar to “harmonize head and heart” (408). I believe by doing or following what your heart wants and sending it through the brain and then back to the heart, that is the balance of what makes you happy and what can lead you to a better future.

Image 1: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm177/krucceriano/Corazon-cerebro.jpg&imgrefurl=http://xxalizexx.xanga.com/683872348/late-nite-rambling/&usg=__Hzojd8qXW_7Vmo97_3WMrqJ6gcc=&h=276&w=400&sz=24&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=Jbb_onxm8-dUlM:&tbnh=156&tbnw=208&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dheart%2Bvs%2Bbrain%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1267%26bih%3D608%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=313&vpy=92&dur=31&hovh=186&hovw=270&tx=172&ty=84&ei=0ajITOW_H4X-nAfAjMCnAw&oei=wKjITOWBG4GglAerlpjpAQ&esq=9&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0

Image2:http://www.christshopeusa.org/Content/10206/michigan%20team%20pics%20do%20not%20delete%20012.jpg

Image 3: http://www.motifake.com/tags/animal

Image 4: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.islandpacific.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/3075209482_7367cde0aa.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.islandpacific.org/blog/%3Fp%3D174&usg=__SksR2OTye7eAkCbMGiHFRskYm_g=&h=357&w=500&sz=65&hl=en&start=116&zoom=1&tbnid=9SYMf427MwxG7M:&tbnh=142&tbnw=184&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcompassion%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1267%26bih%3D608%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C3117&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=876&vpy=119&dur=578&hovh=143&hovw=201&tx=159&ty=62&ei=BqnITPijOo3anAeH_t2nAw&oei=4ajITO7NC4GdlgfLxbn1Ag&esq=16&page=7&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:12,s:116&biw=1267&bih=608

Blanton Museum

Mercury and Argus by Pieter Mulier 

                     

In this painting, Mulier illustrates a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which Argus is assigned by Juno to guard Io from Jupiter but instead is lulled to sleep with music and then killed by Mercury. Mulier, being trained in Dutch seascape, his artwork portrays the classical traditions in Rome. In this painting he depicts a romantic mood with his landscapes of northern Italy and the genre in the west century. The Centaur in this picture is luring Argus to sleep and is painted really dark and eerie. Mulier contrasts Argus to the centaur as light to dark symbolizing good and evil. There are cows in the background to illustrate the innocence of good within each subject in the picture such as the animals and Argus. The centaur clearly represents the dark side of the human and Argus struggles to fall into what the centaur is luring him towards.

 

the stop to animal cruelty

The Stop to Animal Cruelty

While you sit down at the dinner table admiring the delicious steak that you are about to enjoy, have you ever once thought about the fact that your dinner came from a cow that was raised for the purpose of slaughter? Or how the chicken on your plate was tortured from a factory farm? Can you even begin to imagine what animals undergo in the name of scientific research? What about many of the animals that are turned in to shelters that come from abusive homes and who have severe injuries? Have you imagined what it would be like to have the life of an animal? Animal cruelty is defined as the cruel, unwarranted, unethical treatment of animals. A few years ago, I attended a convention held by PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. That convention opened up my eyes to the suffering that animals endure on a daily basis just to make human life “better” and “easier”. From factory farms, to vivisection, to the abuse that house pets suffer, animal cruelty makes hell visible to animals on earth. I was exposed to the reality of animal suffering, such as beating dogs with baseball bats, people declawing cats, and cutting off the beaks of chickens.¹ I had to look away from the terror that was documented. After attending the convention I was inspired to educate myself and become aware of animal cruelty, and to make choices in order to prevent animal suffering and to help fight it.

Animal cruelty can be defined in many different ways. Some people think killing for food is animal cruelty, while others disagree. Animal cruelty can be seen as skinning animals for fur, using them as entertainment, or performing scientific research on them in order to better our healthcare. There is no humane way to kill, but there are unnecessary things humans do that make the pain more enduring. Cows and pigs should not have their heads smashed in before they die, and animals should not be picked around solely for humor or entertainment people desire. As Lewis Carroll stated, “It is a humiliating but an undeniable truth, that man has something of the wild beast in him, that a thirst for blood can be aroused in him by witnessing a scene of carnage, and that the infliction of torture, when the first instincts of horror have been deadened by familiarity, may become, first, a matter of indifference, then a subject of morbid interest, then a positive pleasure, then a ghastly and ferocious delight” ². This is where my goals come in. Being a UT student, I have many resources and many opportunities to change this world. In my long-term goals I plan to form an organization focused on animal cruelty and the means of preventing it. My perfect world would consist of no killing of animals and no meaningless torture of animals. Although these goals seem unreasonable now, in the next four years of my college experience I plan on taking steps to make this happen. To begin, I have manageable goals such as becoming a vegetarian (once again) in order to lead the no animal cruelty life in general. I want to help animal shelters and familiarize myself with animal cruelty suffered by animals that have been abandoned or abused. After accomplishing these goals and being an example of what I want to lead and what I believe in, I will start my organization in the next year. As a freshman at UT, I have experienced the stress and overwhelming change of college life. I believe I am not yet ready to take on “the world” as of right now because I am still inexperience and incapable to lead.

When I chose this class during summer orientation I was amazed by the description. I have always cared for animals and have always wanted to connect leadership and ethical decisions with animals. Professor Bump’s class seemed to be the perfect fit for both my schedule and also my interests. In his class I have learned that I need to manage my time in order to succeed. I have begun to conqueror my routine of procrastination and I am currently on a better path to developing mature writing skills. With reading and writing comes great power. I believe with his class and my other classes, the reading and writing will teach me ways to illustrate my views in a meaningful fashion. With animals suffering more and more each day, I am motivated to be successful in my classes in order to take on bigger challenges such as preventing animal cruelty. When I have begun a routine as being a student, and an individual determined to change the world, during my sophomore year I plan to start my organization to eliminate animal cruelty. I will use my skills as a writer and a leader to provoke students on campus to become aware of our behavioral choices that affect animals. Ethical decisions about animals include choices about what we eat, what we wear, and what we choose to participate in. During my junior year, I will use my organization to gain popularity and awareness outside of campus and spread it among the community in order to engage more people in different community projects and spread awareness of animal cruelty. As I conclude in my last year of college, I hope my organization branches out to ignite other students to become aware of our purpose and hope they continue to extend our message further until animal cruelty no longer exists on the UT campus and in the Austin community. By starting the organization, I will not only have become a leader, but I will have created great expectations to strive for in my career as I leave UT. I plan on joining an animal rights organization in order to continue my fight for zero animal cruelty in this world and become an example of leadership in whatever career I embark on.

Witnessing the suffering of animals has made me realized that humans think we are the “top dogs” of this world, but what will happen when our supremacist attitude backfires on us? Are we heartless and selfish enough to torture earthlings that have every right to live on this planet as we do? As Mother Teresa said, “ they too, are created by the same loving hand of God which created us... it is our duty to protect them and to promote their well-being” ³. It is my duty to expose the truth and find a “cure” for it. As I walk by everyday and pass the amazing tower that reminds me of my vision, “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”, I plan on carrying it out in my career, and my model of life in order to succeed financially and morally.

[1] People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), “media”, 2010

http://www.peta.org/mediacenter/default.aspx

[2] Lewis Carroll, “Vivisection” in Leadership, Ethics, and Animals, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copies & Binding), 380

[3] Mother Teresa, “Earthlings screenplay” in Leadership, Ethics, and Animals, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copies & Binding),

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/30210/P1/cruelty.html

Image 1

Image 2

Vivisection

Three years ago, I was very moved with my decision making with animals as I went to a PETA convention. They informed me about animal cruelty and illustrated with disturbing images I yet to have forgotten till this day. It was on October 1, 2007 I became a vegetarian. In doing so, I made it my job to inform my classmates and peers about animal cruelty and vegetarianism. I bought a copy of Earthlings when it came out and decided to show my best friend one night. He also became a vegetarian, after viewing the film. Animal cruelty has many aspects to it. One part is vivisection. As Harriet Ritvo describes it, is "commonly understood as dissecting a live animal or performing some other painful operation on it for scientific purposes" (388). As I read on about the Victorian era, scientists believed they were above "moral obligations" (387), and it got me thinking who are they to determine this? They are not God or anyone superior to declare this title upon them, and no one has the right to inflict pain or cause suffering or even death upon another living creature. I was agitated by the fact that scientists, were willing to ignore a being's agony in order to prove a scientific experiment or perhaps it being a step to the medical field. I started to question, if scientists believe that by vivisection, we can find cures in diseases and medical problems. How is it by using animals we do so? Animals, are similar to us humans in many ways but they are also different too. Can we really determine a cure for cancer if we inflict pain on a rat? Why not just use human beings in an experiment? That is the reason we use animals, why are human beings any different?

In Lewis Carroll's letter to the editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette", he states "pain is indeed an evil, but so much suffering may fitly be endured to purchase so much knowledge" (384) as he mimics the idea that he praises the guy for acknowledging the fact that "you shall suffer that I may know" (384). Carroll illustrates vivisection can lead to many medical solutions but it is "hell for animals" (386) and by doing so we are going against our moral codes and giving into selfish education. He questions the need for vivisection and what our world will come to once every university practices vivisection. As I continued reading, it comes up that the University of Texas, my beloved university, a place I look up to, actually has its own Animal Research Center. The story about trying to find a better "understanding of novelty" (392) by experimenting on male/female Japanese quails frightens me that my college is actually doing this and other experiments! How can one cutt off a quails head and observe it through a microscope have a heart or yet a moral standard upon them? What good does it do? Is doing "an immoral thing for moral reasons" (393) worth the suffering and torturing of animals? My ultimate question is, would we do it to humans?

1 http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/v/vivisection.asp
2 http://www.dmn.dmatter.org/Inside/images/Pingfan_diorama_vivisection.jpg