In the past I have tackled subjects which, at some time, have been at the centre of baying crowds of oft ill-informed and always uncompromising individuals, most of whom rally to the banner of one or the other of the extremist poles of opinion. In writing these entries I daringly consulted a variety of online forums. I can assure you that nothing in this age of the world is as certain to cultivate blind rage as reading the ramblings of these morons, not least because their definition of articulate debate does not seem to extend beyond mashing the keyboard with their stupid fists and instructing each other to commit suicide, or paradoxically requesting sexual favours from those they profess to hate. That being said, there are those with intriguing, often persuasive, opinions, who seem capable of presenting them in complete sentences. Still, the overwhelming majority are cretinous imbeciles who clog the veins of the internet like clueless lumps of cholesterol, and blow their hot-gas into the consciousness of humanity. Atop the great shit-heap of human folly (moral, intellectual and other) that I perceive, these pseudo-intellectuals are poised, at any moment, to place the final banana skin which will cause the whole sorry mess to collapse, driving me to mentally implode, becoming a dribbling vegetable, capable only of rasping the words “so... stupid” over and over again.
Having just reduced these people to the level of cholesterol, I urge you to remember, lest you forget, that they are living, breathing human beings just like ourselves (albeit with Turkish delight for brain cells), and this point brings me to the subject I wish to discuss. My fury (a mere glimpse of which I have furnished you with) was ignited by the reading of a forum, for the use of students, on the morality of animal charities. It is a subject in which I am quite interested, and I was simply curious as to whether there were any out there whose thoughts on the matter ran parallel to my own. I was not disappointed in this regard. In every other regard, however, I was not so much disappointed, as forced to take a time-out, make a cup of tea and smoke a cigarette, before taking my place back at my desk. I am afraid, nay terrified, that this is a symptom of me being drawn into the realm of the internet-arguer, that intellectual cum-sock we all love to ridicule. I dare you to approach the brink of sanity and read some of the millions of threads out there. I suspect you will find that the position from which we launch our mockery is less a luxurious VIP box and more a perilously narrow arête, from which we are all in grave danger of plummeting. However, if you have done so in the past, or intend to, and found (or fear you will find) yourself slashing at the tendrils which lash themselves around your legs and, with terrible vehemence, threaten to drag you screaming into the abyss, then fear not! It is only natural that you should be outraged by what you read, but what sets you and me apart from these people, is that you and I scoff, and retreat (more you than me though, given the medium through which I am communicating with you). We take the time to calm down, and have a good, self-important chuckle about how stupid these people are, or sit for a few hours and compose an equally self-important Blog entry.
But, as usual, I have just spent a good six-hundred words digressing outrageously. What I intended to write about (which I have so far only mentioned once) is the subject of animal charities: whether or not it is moral to give money towards maintaining cat and dog sanctuaries or continuing the work of environmental activists when human beings the world over are suffering. It’s a hotly contested issue, as you will see if you read this forum.
My own views on the subject were fairly concrete until I started considering exactly how I was going to justify them. As much as I love animals (they’re like friggin’ Pokemon!), I always thought it was somewhat ridiculous to donate however many pounds a month to helping pandas while millions of human beings are starving to death in Africa, while corrupt governments orchestrate contemptible violations of human rights and while children grow up without parents due to AIDS and extreme poverty. How can people in our wealthy, enlightened, western world give their money to tigers when, statistically, at least one of their loved ones is likely to contract cancer, or some other awful, incurable illness? How many human lives could be saved if funds were diverted from cat and dog sanctuaries and invested in cancer research, or sustainable agriculture schemes in the Sahel?
Such was the pattern of my logic. Now, I am not so sure.
We in the western world have become desensitised to the suffering of our fellow man. Ignorance, it seems, is secondary to apathy. Oxfam adverts play while we are watching ‘Friends’, and we, numbed by helplessness, choose to carry on with our lives as best we can. This is human nature, I think. There is some part of us, slumbering beneath a superficial veil of western concerns, which wilts in mourning for those we see dying and suffering. But what can we do? What can you or I do, witnessing these horrors? Individually, we can do nothing. We can act, but we cannot do anything. We cannot realistically make a blind bit of difference. We, normal people, people who are just trying to live in relative comfort and happiness, are powerless. We can pop our change into a charity tub while purchasing our organic muesli in Sainsbury’s. We can fill out a form and maintain a direct debit, contributing some paltry sum to any of a thousand great causes, but really, this is just the impotent spasms of a drowning man who knows he is drowning and, confronted with the magnitude, the immensity, of the sea’s power, surrenders with a choked curse. “We can raise awareness”, I hear you cry. “If we cannot help as individuals, then we must band together, as a group!” A valiant effort, no doubt, but a futile one. In order to transcend the all too obvious limitations of the individual, one must penetrate the shroud of apathy surrounding one’s fellow man. History teaches us that such a feat is almost always hopeless.
We can implore those few among us with the means to make a difference, but the same difficulties present themselves, only magnified. Even the rich and powerful, faced with the enormity of the task of improving the world, find themselves assaulted on two fronts. Before them stands the plight of millions, whose lives teeter on the knife-edge between death and something we call ‘life’. Behind them lurks the shadowy spectre of their own insignificance, a carnivorous creature of doubt whose whispered rhetoric erodes any semblance of optimism. These people, wealthy businessmen, politicians, monarchs and all their like (at least those for whom greed and self-interest have not yet devoured their humanity) face the same reality we do: that these problems are so vast, so deep, so opportunistic and enterprising in their spread and development, that even they, with their funds and influence, stand like helpless children, while the horrors of the world swirl around them.
We are all, the best of us at least, terrified by this. The malevolence of these realities, the mercilessness of them, frightens us, not least because much of them are, if not made by human hands and minds, reared by them. What can we do in such a dire situation? What action can we take? We feel we can do nothing, and so our psychological instinct is to deal with it by other means, as we do with any painful reality we cannot control. We suppress it, and imprison it within walls of indifference. In turn, the awfulness from which we hide ourselves, feeds on our disinterest, and becomes all the more immense and unassailable.
A few of us though, have managed to release that within us which we have hidden. Some of us, and it is with enormous shame that I am scarcely able to count myself among them, stand up to the twin threats of suffering and helplessness, and in that way that is curiously and fascinatingly human, refuse to yield. If someone has managed such a feat, then who am I to say they are going about it the wrong way? If the most powerful men and women in the world cannot bring themselves to implement a solution to the world’s problems (and they have displayed this inability in the public forum many times) what right do I have to criticise how an ordinary man or woman rises above this weakness?
As humans, we constantly strive to give significance to our existence, and be damned with the fact that we are all specks of dust in the universe. These people do the same, they exhibit a localised version of what we all try to do: to make a difference in any small way we can, regardless of how poor we are, how clever we aren’t, how small and weak we may be. For us to sit back on ivory thrones and condemn some poor woman for giving money to orang-utans, or some well-meaning man for helping preserve the Great Barrier Reef, instead of aiding humans, when we ourselves may not even be doing anything, is madness. It is arrogance. To assume such a position as an arbiter of morality is something none of us has the right to do. It would be like criticising a person who, in an attempt to comfort someone in the wake of a loved one’s death, offers them a cup of tea. A cup of tea isn’t going to solve that poor soul’s problems, but we aren’t all gifted empathisers, and at least they’re having a bloody go at helping. We are too quick to attack those whom we perceive to have acted wrongly, when we should be directing this contempt at those who have not acted at all, and I assure you, they are in far greater abundance.
To return more tangibly to the subject of animal charities, I admit, I am still somewhat inclined to think that donating to human causes is preferable to others, though I admit to feeling ashamed even as I write this. As much as I am certain that this is what I believe, and that had I regular income, it would be to a human charity my £2 a month would be directed, I feel a pang of guilt for drawing such a distinction, for making the decision not only that humans are more important than animals, but that those humans helped by Amnesty International are more important to me than those helped by Cancer Research.
To make this a little clearer, if I arrogantly decree that human charities are superior to animal charities, where do I stop? There are charities out there dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminals, and as you can imagine, many people loathe them. Am I to say that these organisations are inferior to those for cancer research, but superior to those for sea turtles? In doing so, I am saying that the living things these charities seek to help, occupy a scale of ‘worthiness’, and that we should all be helping those who have their place at the top of that scale. But, as we reach the top, we have those at 100, and those at 99. Are we to say that the 99s are inferior to the 100s and are consequently not worth our money? And how do we allocate places on this scale: are victims of cancer, who otherwise live comfortably and securely, inferior to those in Africa who are impoverished, but otherwise healthy? Surely it cannot be done. All these problems, poverty disease, starvation, impending extinction: which are the most severe? Which deserve priority? You simply cannot make these distinctions. It is not because no man is clever enough, or wise enough to do so, but because it is simply an impossible decision- absolutely impossible.
And there we are.
There is that malevolent presence of doubt, powerlessness and guilt I described earlier. You and I cannot help everyone. Nobody can. Not even those powerful individuals I made reference to earlier can help everyone. It is from this realisation that apathy emerges, ready to sink its claws into anyone who succumbs to their own helplessness.
In light of this, I feel that, if you have the courage (for surely that is what is required) to contribute to a cause about which you are passionate, in the full knowledge that you are effectively denying another cause the money you are donating, then I have no right to declare your contributions anything other than commendable.
Jamie
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