Am I an Animal?

The part of Jacques Derrida’s “The Animal That Therefore I Am” that intrigued me the most were the quotes from the Bible that he included. He quoted from Gen. 1:26-28 “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have authority over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens, every living thing that moves on earth” (7) and how man was given the job to name all the animals. But then he questions, “Who was born first, before the names? Which one saw the other come to this place so long ago? Who will have been the first occupant, and thus the master?” (7) This makes me wonder how people interpret this authority over the animals. I suppose most people use this as justification of using animals for human needs, but does it really say that? To me it seems more as if this authority is supposed to be a protective one; that humans have authority over the animals to protect them and to make sure that nothing happens to them. It reminds of the type of authority that the supreme court as over the other courts in the legal system, to keep everything in balance. And like Derrida points out, animals were here before mankind and that they were living and getting along before man made their names. Maybe there is much to learn to learn from the animals since they were able to live in peace and balance for so long without us.

In the Oxford Dictionary, it states that an animal is a “living being, endowed with life, sensation, and voluntary motion”(229). What surprises me in this definition is that it’s so careful to never actually state that humans fit into this description.

I also found it interesting that the definition of humanity implies that “kindness and tenderness” (233)are defined as distinct human traits, that humaneness is “disposition to treat human beings and animals with consideration and compassion"(232). It seems that the definition of animal disconnects humans and animals but humanity connects them back together under some kind of human trait that wants to practice kindness to all living things, not just to humans. What’s also interesting is that like humanity, the definition of compassion is not limited to humans either, it just simply states “to suffer together with, to feel pity” (237). Humans can have compassion for humans and animals.

What I am finding most interesting about Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is the fact that once all the animals disappeared or are very rare, they become cherished, important, and a necessity for humans to live a happy life. What I like most is that their necessity is not for their meat or skin, but just for the sake of them being an animal.

The androids have “an intelligence greater than that of many human beings, which had no regard for animals, which possessed no ability no feel empathic joy” (32). I think that Dick is trying to say something about how humans feel that they are superior to animals because our greater intelligence but questioning if intelligence is really what makes us human. If you had to redefine animal in the setting of this book, I am sure that humans would be regarded an animal without a question and it would be positively looked at to be seen as an animal rather than an android.

Personally I feel that humans are animals. We are just a type of animal, a little more advanced but still an animal. Sometimes I even feel like I have more in common that some animals than I do with some humans.

Human and Horse. We're all made out of the same stuff.

This is from Body Worlds. A traveling display of real bodies that have been preserved and composed into different positions to show how the human body works. I saw it in Houston a few years ago.

Two animals. A slice of a cow, commonly known as steak, and slices of a human from Body Worlds.


When Jeremy Bentham makes the argument that "the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"(245A), I feel that he makes a point that is really difficult to argue with. A human baby can not talk or reason, but yet is granted certain rights simply because it is human. Is it right to favor our own race even though there are creatures out there more advanced than a human baby and can suffer just as greatly?

Blue and Some Other Dogs

My relationship to my dog Skipper that I wrote about in my introduction is the same kind of relationship that John Graves has with his dog Blue. I've had many dogs around in my lifetime but there was just something about Skipper that made him a "Nice Dog". Maybe it was the way he would sit and guard the house or watch us as we played outside as kids to make sure we were ok. Sometimes there are just some dogs in your life that have this certain type of personality that separate them from other dogs. I can't really say much about it except for the little head tilt that he had when he knew you were talking to him or the way he always knew when someone was sad or sick - he would always sleep with that person.

"Occasionally she bit people too, always men. Women, for her own secret reasons, she liked more or less indiscriminately." P. 205
We once had a dog, Tina, that was scared of men just as Blue's mother was. We got her from a lady that was bringing her into the shelter in Utah and she said that a guy had beaten her. Her who life she was skittish around men and it had always seemed obvious to us that it was because it was a man that hit her. I don't really think it's Pan's "own secret reason" that she liked women more because it was a man, the author, who in the previous paragraph described how he had whipped her.
Sometimes I wonder what the correlation is between people who hit their dogs and people who hit their kids. I bet there's a big overlap of the two groups.


Recently my Cat disappeared just like Blue did. He was stray and I took him in. I had never had a cat before so it was a new experience for me. I consider myself a dog person but I was quickly able to bond with this cat who spent every night sleeping at the end of my bed or on my chest. He went outside during they daytime to prowl neighborhood and sometimes stayed away for a few days but always came back eventually to curl up in my bed. I never liked cats before. I didn't like how they clawed at you if you touched them wrong or how they make you work for their love but I learned to like cats after Tucker. I don't know what happened to him but I keep thinking that he is probably dead somewhere under a bush. After all he was starting to lose a little weight before he left.
"Or maybe I want to believe this because it has finality." P. 214

Introduction

Hi my name is Kelly. My parent’s first children were their dogs Rufus, Nikki, and Toby. Then I was born, partly raised by human parents and partly raised by the dogs. When I was six we got another dog, Skipper, who became “my” dog. He quickly became my best friend. Moving around a lot as a kid made it hard to make friends, but no matter where we moved I still had my dog with me. He died when I was 18. I have a tattoo of him on me.

Daisy

In my family we have always had at least three dogs at a time. Tina, Daisy, Rudy, and Bella came next. Then I went to college and got my dog I have now, Spooks. The dogs in the family always came first. They eat first, the get the most attention, and we can’t even leave them by themselves when we go on vacation. They always come with.

The day we got Spooks at the shelter

Tina

In High School I had a large pet sitting business. I looked after people’s dogs and cats while they were away. Every day before and after school and during lunch I went to take care of animals. I started volunteering at the San Antonio Humane Society. I was required to go a few hours a month for a school program I was in but found myself going much more than that and continuing to go when the program was over.

Rufus and Me

Somewhere in the transition from High School to College, I found that I had a different type of relationship with animals that I never realized before. Something different than my pets or the dogs I looked after at the shelter. I realized that I also had a relationship with the animals that I was eating and it wasn’t a good one. I quickly stopped that and became vegan when I got to college. I found myself with this need to learn more about the abuse of animals all over the world and an urge to try to do something about it. I joined a bunch of different animal rights groups and started going to protests and doing other things to try to bring about awareness. This is where I am now.