From the perspective of natural selection it’s a reasonable expectation for us all to either die or adapt, as a collective. Pan out for the bigger picture and you see that personal suffering means nothing on the grand scale. The current of changing times sweeps us in which ever direction and our demise (or survival depending on a few things) will serve to support something bigger than us, bigger than all 6.8 billion of us (1). Suffering, then, is a perpetual circumstance that is inescapable to all living beings.
Life is married to suffering; it is the yin to being mortal. What came first - the egg or suffering? It begins in our mothers, who are the most vulnerable for the 9 months between conception and birth. Ask any woman who’s passed a person like a stool, it fucking hurts. The whole ordeal is only described as magical by the masochist or the anestatized. From there on, it’s a downhill slope - a constant struggle to find material to sustain our bodies by resisting homeostasis.*
For what? I must ask. Why do we do it? Do we really believe we are the chosen creatures on Earth, whose survival will somehow benefit our planet on a massive scale? Quite the contrary, but I guess that’s not yet been proven. Although it has been proven all the ways we’ve taken advantage of it in the course of selfish aims. I maintain that we can’t be more or less than equal to our animal peers. The qualities that make us unique don’t make us more privileged. Who the fuck is judging us? God? Puh!
I suppose the conflict I have with this topic has to do with the transference of pain and how much attention do we pay to it. Is personal suffering something that should be highlighted and actively resisted or should we accept it to a degree? Since our pilgrimage from pain ultimately amplifies afflictions, it is a selfish act to resist.
Many of the reagents used in the biological laboratory are extracted from animals(2). Anti-sera is collected from a large variety of animals and used widely in a number of laboratories. Producing anti-sera involves injecting substances into an animal before bleeding them out to collect only what you wanted to form. Since we know now that there are a multitude of factors to consider, there are animals specific to aims. We use rats, rabbits, mice, horses, pigs, cows, chickens, cats, dogs, monkeys, guinea pigs, fish, frogs, birds, etc. And that’s only a short list exclusive to biomedical research.
Our need for anti-sera can’t be replaced, it practically flows in the blood bank, thus our need for animals to suffer on our behalf won’t be replaced. To take the "moral" stance on this argument would mean no more surgeries. No more RH factor delivered to expecting mothers, meaning more dead babies. No more transfusions. You can’t check for a tumor without anti-sera to tag the malignant cells with. Without the rising cost of lives, many of the people in your life (if not you too) would simply not be there.
What are we to do? Are they not just like us too? Don’t dolphins fuck for fun just like us (3)? Don’t elephants average one per birth and have burial practices just like us? Monkeys even look like us and have thumbs like us. Birds can mimic us and speak like us. Dogs know shame, cats have autonomy. Pigs can even play the piano. Who are we to say what’s better; are two legs better than four or can I have two legs with wings?
I’m not making an argument for either side, because I’m still undecided. I’ve analyzed the situations from both perspectives. I was born into this world in a limited hospital in Southern China’s countryside. In these areas, most medical practices are contained to homeopathic remedies. Upon arrival into the states, I underwent heart surgery. Even as a three year old, I used at least 3.5 bags of blood to maintain my blood pressure during the operation. The first pump that set the standard for coronary operations was first tested on a number of dogs with no names, only numbers.
I think for the rest of my life, golden retrievers will always remind me about my functional heart. How I feel about this is a mixture of reverence and sadness. I’m thankful that I have a life to experience, without being a sickly child confined by her own body. If my heart became my cage, I think I’d lose healthy mental faculty and in lieu of natural selection, would quickly be weeded out. Can you blame a mother for desperately wanting to protect her children from circumstance? Is this not a quality ingrained in all animals across the board?
It’s a daunting task to remedy this conflict. I wonder myself if I could and the answer looks unpromising. I will continue to work on the side of suffering in an effort to relieve suffering. It’s not because I think we are better than animals and so we can do this to them. Maybe I’m starting to accept this arrangement that suffering can never dissipate. Like energy it’s not created or destroyed, but flows around our world along the same waves as chi. Maybe there is no good fight to be fought, but an understanding to grasp. I guess when your expiration date draws near it’s your decision to make. A sole decision whose effects are expounded by events only the living will endure.
*Contrary to what you heard, true homeostasis would kill our bodies – why do you think we have ATPases? It’s not to keep the balance but to resist the balance. True balance rights itself and is incompatible with life. Osmosis is natural balance and that is exactly what we are resisting! Active transport, yo.
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