I have read Marc Houser’s book Moral Minds. As you read more and more about psychology, you
notice that people treat animals as if they were “other people” and apply their people oriented “theory
of mind” to animals. This subject is studied both by academicians such as Prof. Houser and also by
fund raising groups such by fund raising groups such as conservation organizations.
An extreme version of such mental activity is shown in the group VHEMT, which stands for the
Voluntary Human Extinction MovemenT. My theory is that the “EMT” ending, is “fought for” perhaps
because it stands for a legitimate function (an emergency medical technician). The VHEMT group
wants all humans to become extinct so as to leave earth pristine and unpolluted by human activities.
This would work until the next asteroid wipes out 90% of living species.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Voluntary_Human_Extinction
Noble Eagles, Nasty Pigeons, Biased Humans
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/science/29angi.html
Basics
By NATALIE ANGIER
The other day I glanced out my window and felt a twinge of revulsion delicately seasoned with
indignation. Pecking at my bird feeder were two brown-headed cowbirds, one male and one female,
and I knew what that meant. Pretty soon the fattened, fertilized female would be slipping her eggs into
some other birds' nest, with the expectation that the naïve hosts would brood, feed and rear her
squawking, ravenous young at the neglect and even death of their own.
Hey, you parasites, get your beaks off my seed, I thought angrily.
That feeder is for the good birds, the birds that I like -- the cardinals, the nuthatches, the black-capped
chickadees, the tufted titmice, the woodpeckers, the goldfinches. It's for the hard-working birds with
enough moral fiber to rear their own families and look photogenic besides. It's not meant for sneaky
freeloaders like you.
I rapped on the window sharply but the birds didn't budge, and as I stood there wondering whether I
should run out and scare them away, their beaks seemed to thicken, their eyes blacken, and I could
swear they were cackling, "Tippi Hedren must go." [She is perhaps best known for her role as Melanie
Daniels in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and her extensive efforts in animal rescue at Shambala
Preserve, an 80-acre wildlife habitat which she founded in 1983.]
In sum, I was suffering from a severe case of biobigotry: the persistent and often irrational desire to be
surrounded only by those species of which one approves, and to exclude any animals, plants and other
life forms that one finds offensive.
It was not my first episode of the disorder, and evidently I don't suffer alone. "Throughout history
there have been vilified animals and totemic animals," said John Fraser, a conservation psychologist at
the Wildlife Conservation Society. "There are the animals you don't like and that you dismiss as small
brown vermin, and the animals whose attributes you absolutely want to own," to be a tiger, a bear,
lupine leader of the pack.
Biobigotry is different from the impulse to avoid organisms that can hurt or sicken us, like yellow
jackets, mosquitoes or poison ivy, or to fend off traditional household pests like mice and roaches.
Rather, it is the dislike we direct toward creatures that live outdoors and generally mind their own
business, but that behave in ways we find rude, irritating, selfish or contemptible. The squirrels are
gluttons, the crows are schoolyard bullies, the house sparrows are boring and look like mice when they
skitter along the ground. How we love those noble falcons and eagles that lately have blessed us by
nesting on our skyscrapers and bridges. How we beg them to feast freely on the pigeons and starlings
that curse us by nesting on our skyscrapers and bridges.
Sometimes our biobigotry is merely attitudinal. In the course of an interview about spotted hyenas, for
example, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, scornfully referred to the wildebeest
that the hyenas frequently prey on as "wildeburgers."
Why? Because once a wildebeest has been caught, said the scientist, it just stands there with cowlike
passivity and allows itself to be torn apart. Compare that with a zebra, the researcher said, which will
go down fighting and kicking and cracking the predator's jaw if it can.
"Oh, we're all of us prone to a massive over-interpretation of the things that we see," said Marc D.
Hauser, professor of psychology and evolutionary biology at Harvard University and author of "Moral
Minds." "I distinctly remember, when I first went to Amboseli National Park to study vervet monkeys,
how quickly I developed strong feelings about the personalities of the monkeys -- here were the great
and brave ones, there were the lame ones that hid in the bushes and acted pathetic."
At other times, we take steps to favor our local heroes or thwart our chosen goats, whose greatest sin,
as a rule, is being exceptionally good at their game. We try to squirrel-proof our bird feeders, yank
weeds from our flower beds, call Animal Control, and when all else fails, reach for our guns. Stephen
C. Sautner of the Wildlife Conservation Society cited the case of a friend and avid birder who has a
colony of purple martins on his property. "He spends much of his time shooting and trapping starlings
and English sparrows," said Mr. Sautner, "both of which he describes as `evil.' "
We always have a story to justify our most aggressive attempts at unwanted-animal control. The animal
is an invasive species like the European starling, and it doesn't belong here. Or it's a native species like
the cowbird but its range has been unnaturally extended through deforestation. Or it likes our garbage
and our raggedy parks and thus has an unfair advantage over fussier creatures. Whatever the self-
exculpatory particulars, said Marc Bekoff, author of "The Emotional Lives of Animals" and emeritus
professor of biology at the University of Colorado, "I see it as a double cross that we create a situation
where cowbirds spread, or red foxes eat endangered birds, and then we decide, well, now we've got
to go out and kill the cowbirds and the foxes."
Our proneness to biobigotry, experts said, arises from several salient human traits. For one, we are
equipped with an often overactive theory of mind -- the conviction that those around you have their
own minds, goals and desires, and that it might behoove you to anticipate what they'll do next. We
spin elaborate narratives out of the slenderest of observational threads: Look, the blue jay is trying to
dislodge the cowbird from the feeder. Could the jay know the cowbird is a nest parasite and be trying
to drum it out of town? "We interpret animal behaviors through a human lens and human morality,"
said Mr. Fraser, the conservation psychologist.
Related to the human impulse to see ourselves in nature is the persistent sense that nature belongs to
us, and that we have the right and the means to control it. "In the past, when we talked about
exploiting nature, that was seen as a good thing," Mr. Fraser said. "Now we realize that that attitude is
counterproductive to human success."
Nowhere is our sense of droit du roi over nature more manifest than in our paradoxical attitudes
toward farm animals. On the one hand, they're the beloved figures of our earliest childhood. On the
other hand, many of our most pejorative comparisons were born in the barnyard -- you lazy pig, you
ugly cow, you chicken, what a bunch of sheep.
Conservation groups, which keep track of public attitudes toward animals, acknowledge that they are
ever on the lookout for the next Animal Idol -- an ecologically important creature that also happens to
be large, showy, charismatic and likable. If you have two important birds from the same region of Latin
America, said Mr.
Fraser, one a hyacinth macaw that looks like flying jewelry and can vocalize like a human, the other a
storm petrel that is brown, squawky and cakes the coastline with guano, guess which face ends up on
the next fund-raising calendar.
Not that public attitudes can't be changed. Bats, for example, were long considered vermin, but
nowadays, in the wake of the wildly popular children's book "Stella Luna," they've taken on a magical
air, as the mosquito-eating Tinkerbells that if you're lucky will soon take up residence near you. Until
then, step away from that bat house, sparrow. Don't make me shoot.
Next
notice that people treat animals as if they were “other people” and apply their people oriented “theory
of mind” to animals. This subject is studied both by academicians such as Prof. Houser and also by
fund raising groups such by fund raising groups such as conservation organizations.
An extreme version of such mental activity is shown in the group VHEMT, which stands for the
Voluntary Human Extinction MovemenT. My theory is that the “EMT” ending, is “fought for” perhaps
because it stands for a legitimate function (an emergency medical technician). The VHEMT group
wants all humans to become extinct so as to leave earth pristine and unpolluted by human activities.
This would work until the next asteroid wipes out 90% of living species.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Voluntary_Human_Extinction
Noble Eagles, Nasty Pigeons, Biased Humans
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/science/29angi.html
Basics
By NATALIE ANGIER
The other day I glanced out my window and felt a twinge of revulsion delicately seasoned with
indignation. Pecking at my bird feeder were two brown-headed cowbirds, one male and one female,
and I knew what that meant. Pretty soon the fattened, fertilized female would be slipping her eggs into
some other birds' nest, with the expectation that the naïve hosts would brood, feed and rear her
squawking, ravenous young at the neglect and even death of their own.
Hey, you parasites, get your beaks off my seed, I thought angrily.
That feeder is for the good birds, the birds that I like -- the cardinals, the nuthatches, the black-capped
chickadees, the tufted titmice, the woodpeckers, the goldfinches. It's for the hard-working birds with
enough moral fiber to rear their own families and look photogenic besides. It's not meant for sneaky
freeloaders like you.
I rapped on the window sharply but the birds didn't budge, and as I stood there wondering whether I
should run out and scare them away, their beaks seemed to thicken, their eyes blacken, and I could
swear they were cackling, "Tippi Hedren must go." [She is perhaps best known for her role as Melanie
Daniels in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and her extensive efforts in animal rescue at Shambala
Preserve, an 80-acre wildlife habitat which she founded in 1983.]
In sum, I was suffering from a severe case of biobigotry: the persistent and often irrational desire to be
surrounded only by those species of which one approves, and to exclude any animals, plants and other
life forms that one finds offensive.
It was not my first episode of the disorder, and evidently I don't suffer alone. "Throughout history
there have been vilified animals and totemic animals," said John Fraser, a conservation psychologist at
the Wildlife Conservation Society. "There are the animals you don't like and that you dismiss as small
brown vermin, and the animals whose attributes you absolutely want to own," to be a tiger, a bear,
lupine leader of the pack.
Biobigotry is different from the impulse to avoid organisms that can hurt or sicken us, like yellow
jackets, mosquitoes or poison ivy, or to fend off traditional household pests like mice and roaches.
Rather, it is the dislike we direct toward creatures that live outdoors and generally mind their own
business, but that behave in ways we find rude, irritating, selfish or contemptible. The squirrels are
gluttons, the crows are schoolyard bullies, the house sparrows are boring and look like mice when they
skitter along the ground. How we love those noble falcons and eagles that lately have blessed us by
nesting on our skyscrapers and bridges. How we beg them to feast freely on the pigeons and starlings
that curse us by nesting on our skyscrapers and bridges.
Sometimes our biobigotry is merely attitudinal. In the course of an interview about spotted hyenas, for
example, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, scornfully referred to the wildebeest
that the hyenas frequently prey on as "wildeburgers."
Why? Because once a wildebeest has been caught, said the scientist, it just stands there with cowlike
passivity and allows itself to be torn apart. Compare that with a zebra, the researcher said, which will
go down fighting and kicking and cracking the predator's jaw if it can.
"Oh, we're all of us prone to a massive over-interpretation of the things that we see," said Marc D.
Hauser, professor of psychology and evolutionary biology at Harvard University and author of "Moral
Minds." "I distinctly remember, when I first went to Amboseli National Park to study vervet monkeys,
how quickly I developed strong feelings about the personalities of the monkeys -- here were the great
and brave ones, there were the lame ones that hid in the bushes and acted pathetic."
At other times, we take steps to favor our local heroes or thwart our chosen goats, whose greatest sin,
as a rule, is being exceptionally good at their game. We try to squirrel-proof our bird feeders, yank
weeds from our flower beds, call Animal Control, and when all else fails, reach for our guns. Stephen
C. Sautner of the Wildlife Conservation Society cited the case of a friend and avid birder who has a
colony of purple martins on his property. "He spends much of his time shooting and trapping starlings
and English sparrows," said Mr. Sautner, "both of which he describes as `evil.' "
We always have a story to justify our most aggressive attempts at unwanted-animal control. The animal
is an invasive species like the European starling, and it doesn't belong here. Or it's a native species like
the cowbird but its range has been unnaturally extended through deforestation. Or it likes our garbage
and our raggedy parks and thus has an unfair advantage over fussier creatures. Whatever the self-
exculpatory particulars, said Marc Bekoff, author of "The Emotional Lives of Animals" and emeritus
professor of biology at the University of Colorado, "I see it as a double cross that we create a situation
where cowbirds spread, or red foxes eat endangered birds, and then we decide, well, now we've got
to go out and kill the cowbirds and the foxes."
Our proneness to biobigotry, experts said, arises from several salient human traits. For one, we are
equipped with an often overactive theory of mind -- the conviction that those around you have their
own minds, goals and desires, and that it might behoove you to anticipate what they'll do next. We
spin elaborate narratives out of the slenderest of observational threads: Look, the blue jay is trying to
dislodge the cowbird from the feeder. Could the jay know the cowbird is a nest parasite and be trying
to drum it out of town? "We interpret animal behaviors through a human lens and human morality,"
said Mr. Fraser, the conservation psychologist.
Related to the human impulse to see ourselves in nature is the persistent sense that nature belongs to
us, and that we have the right and the means to control it. "In the past, when we talked about
exploiting nature, that was seen as a good thing," Mr. Fraser said. "Now we realize that that attitude is
counterproductive to human success."
Nowhere is our sense of droit du roi over nature more manifest than in our paradoxical attitudes
toward farm animals. On the one hand, they're the beloved figures of our earliest childhood. On the
other hand, many of our most pejorative comparisons were born in the barnyard -- you lazy pig, you
ugly cow, you chicken, what a bunch of sheep.
Conservation groups, which keep track of public attitudes toward animals, acknowledge that they are
ever on the lookout for the next Animal Idol -- an ecologically important creature that also happens to
be large, showy, charismatic and likable. If you have two important birds from the same region of Latin
America, said Mr.
Fraser, one a hyacinth macaw that looks like flying jewelry and can vocalize like a human, the other a
storm petrel that is brown, squawky and cakes the coastline with guano, guess which face ends up on
the next fund-raising calendar.
Not that public attitudes can't be changed. Bats, for example, were long considered vermin, but
nowadays, in the wake of the wildly popular children's book "Stella Luna," they've taken on a magical
air, as the mosquito-eating Tinkerbells that if you're lucky will soon take up residence near you. Until
then, step away from that bat house, sparrow. Don't make me shoot.
Next
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