It has been a quiet few days since I got back from my Easter holidays which were spent in Ecuador and the Galapagos islands, an account of which I will give in a seperate entry shortly. I can only write with amazement at how stupendously easy it is for the hours to fly past when one does not plan anything to fill the day, be it spent idly surfing the net, or just idling in general. Still, it has been nice to genuinely have two days or so of complete rest and relaxation involving nothing too strenous. I will finally be able to move back into my rooms in college from tomorrow, after staying in a guest room for the past two days or so. It will be quite refreshing to be able to unpack early, before everyone arrives and hopefully to be able to finally knuckle down to some revision for my collections as well as some general reading for the term ahead.
One thing that has been going on here is the Oxford Literary Festival, with many interesting speakers coming down to give talks on a whole variety of subjects. I have attended two talks so far, one being a debate on animal testing and another one featuring a theme on 'migration' which featured three distinguished authors, one of whom had written a history of migration in Britain and another of whom was Hari Kunzru, who had gained a great deal of plaudits for his debut novel, The Impressionist, and some noteriety for rejecting a prize the book was awarded on the grounds that one of its cheaf sponsors - a british paper the Sunday Mail - had a distinctly anti-immigration editorial stance.
The animal testing talk was certainly quite interesting, and indeed merely sitting within the Union debating chamber, sensing the reactions of the audience that was present to the points that were being made, one could instinctively sense what a divisive issue this was. I had chosen to attend this debate in part due to the long running controversy over the building of a new animal testing facility within the University, something that has prompted numerous protests down Broad Street. On the whole though, I found that the debate was not really that instructive, in particular breaking down over the usual fault lines.
One of the panelists used the oft-repeated argument in the special nature of human beings and the idea of fundamental human difference trumping any possible rights that animals might have. However, that was problematic for a number of reasons - as one audience member pointed out, part of what is special about human beings, besides our cognitive ability, is our ability to feel compassion to fellow creatures, to instinctively seek to help those that are weaker and in need of aid, and should this not include animals, especially those with similar capacities to feel pain? Also, he seriously ran the risk of sounding rhethorical and seemed to advance the line that human beings are just fundamentally different from animals because they just are - they have to capacity to think, to dream, to advance human society. But he often seemed to take this as a given fact and expected all of us to as well - "anyone who doubts that humans are not special have lost that intrinsic faith in humanity, that faith in our ability to dream, to believe, to progress" or something in that ilk. But is that really such an easy assumption to make? Precious little evidence was offered why we should accept this. Certainly in terms of DNA, scientists have proven that we differ less then 3% in evolutionary terms from some species of ape such as the bonobo. Even if we were to take cognitive ability as a marker, things would still be problematic, as Peter Singer argued that to do so would mean that we had to logically accept that certain animals, such as Giant Apes could have more rights that babies, since they seem to have greater cognitive capacity in a one to one comparison at a given point in time.
However, the positions that many of the others advanced was no less attractive. One of the other panelists, a member of a group committed to trying to find alternatives to experimentation without animals, tried to straddle the fence, but found himself sitting on a thorny hedge. He claimed that "animal testing was morally wrong because it caused pain but not carry out these vital experiments, especially if it had the capacity to save large numbers of lives (such as in the case of testing a drug) would also be morally wrong." As such, we were stuck on two seperate horns of a dilemma and had to decide which course of action was less wrong and thus undertake that course. As attractive as that sounds, an admission of guilt (that animal testing is wrong) and his attempt to wriggle free from the question by saying that we are forced by circumstances to carry out something that is morally questionable does not really help us all that much. A parallel to this form of argument is the classic example of a man in WWII hiding a jew in his attic, and finds a gestapo officer knocking at his door. He surely must lie to the officer (even if to do so would be in a sense, morally wrong) in order to avert the greater evil of having the Jew captured by the Gestapo. But does this same reasoning apply in the case of animal testing as well?
The problem of course is this: what if we were to replace animals with humans, say convicted criminals, would that then justify us being able to use the purported benefits that testing drugs on them as a trump for the suffering and pain and risk that they would undergo in such testing? Of course not, almost everyone would reply, for it is morally unconscionable to act in such a way, and furthermore to do so without the given consent of another person, even if he is a convicted criminal. But, if we are admittedly unwilling to test anything on any human (without consent) even if there are enormous, calculable benefits to such testing being carried out (which is not always the case), then why should this not be the case with animals as well? They are clearly unable to give their consent. The fallback argument would then go along the lines we have looked at above - that animals are fundamentally different from human beings, with all the associated difficulties that line of reasoning entails.
This is not to say that I am about to take up arms and become an animal rights activist. Far from it. In fact, I think that as animal testing goes, researchers and scientists have improved a great deal in the way in which they treat animals, as well as ensuring that pain (whenver possible) is minimized and suffering is reduced. Far worse goes on daily in terms of the cattle and poultry industries in terms of animal cruelty. That is not to say that absolves these scientists or even that animal testing is morally right, but clearly as a philosophical problem, it is something that it intensely problematic (like most philosphical problems in general!). This might sound very amoral of me, but perhaps what we should do is admit that the evolutionary hand that we have been dealt has meant that man is the dominant species, and as such, there is an innate selfishness that leads us to look out for human interest above all else, and gives us the ability to use (and perhaps abuse) animals in contravening their welfare to our own advantage. Perhaps, what we do is morally in a sense wrong, and utterly selfish, but an inevitable fact given the current evolutionary circumstances. Given this line of reasoning, one can only hope that all those tales of Extra-terrestorials that are more advanced than us, UFOs (and abductions) and the like are not true, for goodness knows what tests a more advanced alien species would be able to carry out on us!
The other talk I attended was on migration - another thorny issue, especially given that it is one of the major topics of concern now that an election has been called. On the whole, though, it was a rather less heated discussion. One key point about migration brought up and discussed was the particular difficulty a migrant has either in trying to conform to society (becoming more English than the English like they said of Lee Kuan Yew) and how far one can achieve this, or indeed hunkering down into his own little community, attempting to preserve one's own values, at the risk of feeling a sense of alienation. Another possibility which was explored was that of trying to bridge those two opposites, if indeed such a seemingly contradictory position were indeed possible. One of the writers gave the personal anecodote of his great-uncle Nat, a jewish immigrant from a small village near the Russia-Poland-Belarus border, who tried to balance his Jewish heritage and his support for the Zionist cause with his intention to remain a true British subject in every sense of the word, difficult as this may be. With the increasing movement of peoples brought about by Globalization, many of whom retain a strong link to their native countries and cultures, this need to straddle the fence may become increasingly prevalent.
Another topic that was discussed in some detail was the inevitable tension that arises between the so-called 'natives' of a country with regards to immigrants. One interesting point that was raised was that as a political issue, immigration seemed to provoke intense feelings in precisely the areas which paradoxically had among the least immigration in the country. Another interesting point that was raised by Hari Kunzru was how quickly things can change over the generation - he spoke of the Indians living in South London who were immigrants just a generation before feeling threatened by a wave of Somalis that were settling in their neighbourhoods.
One way the talk did stand out was through the number of brilliantly quixotic anecdotes. Among the gems was the fact that Protestant Hugenots who were expelled from France migrated to London, where many of them became weavers, some of whom perfected a red dye that was used to make the cardinals hat and vestments for the Catholic Church! Another jewel was the revelations that both Michael Howard's father and grandfather were illegal immigrants into the country, a nice irony considering his no holds barred rhethoric on illegal immigration. Many were used to illustrate points though, one being the debate about skilled immigrants and using a point system to rank their 'desirability' according to such things as education, labour shortages etc. One panellist, who said he disliked any such system illustrated the case of Marcus Mark, a Polish immigrant who could not speak any english and set up a vegetable cart in London distinctive for its sign which read "Don't ask - it's all one penny!" He of course went on to found Marks and Spencers, certainly now as British an establishment as they come.
