(I presented this paper at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on 09 November 2023 in a two-day conference on Language and the World.)
Humans, the Earth and Nonhuman Animals
Language, Politics, Ethics
Rustam Singh
What I’m going to present here is not a paper. These are selected pieces from my diary written over a period of six years.
A diary is a form of fragmentary writing. In fragmentary writing we do not dwell on or pursue an idea or a few ideas consistently throughout as we do in an essay, a paper or a book. It is closer to the way we speak, dwelling on an idea or a thought for a short while at a time and then passing on to another idea or thought, which maybe a new idea or in some way related to the previous one. In diary, as in fragmentary writing in general, we may come back to a previous idea or thought and dwell on it in a somewhat different manner and elaborate it further. Inevitably, in a diary, as in all fragmentary writing, there may be some repetition.
Fragmentary writing has a long history, especially in philosophy, and some of the most illustrious thinkers spoke or wrote in fragments, beginning with people like Confucius and later Marcus Aurelius and Blaise Pascal. In the modern period one can mention names such as Nietzsche, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille and Emil Cioran. Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Derrida and even I have experimented with this form of writing.
* * *
I have noticed that nonhuman animals (and that includes birds and insects as well) can communicate with their own kind. For me that means that they can talk to each other. Therefore they too have language. But till now humans believed that only humans have language and most of them still believe this. There has been a unanimity on this issue between scientists, thinkers and linguists for a long time. I think humans persist in this view because they don’t know enough about animals. Or they persist in it because they don’t wish to give up the idea that humans are superior to nonhuman animals.
--- 2 December 2017 and 23 September 2018
Probably it is only arrogance which makes most humans believe that only humans have language. In the twentieth century some philosophers went so far as to suggest that humans are made of language But nonhuman animals too talk to one another, understand one another. Now some scientists are saying that even trees and plants have language. Humans should give up their arrogant belief in this respect. Language has different forms.
--- 06 August 2019
I find it very strange that often when scientists try to test certain nonhuman animals’ linguistic ability, they teach them words of a human language, mostly English. But how can you assess the linguistic ability of a nonhuman animal by teaching him or her a human language? Would we assess the linguistic ability of a human by teaching him or her the language of a nonhuman animal --- if we knew that language? The very idea seems absurd. Obviously these experiments are based on the presumption that only humans have language, a presumption with which it is difficult to agree.
--- 28--10--2023
Nonhuman animals have opinions, too. When they growl at someone or chase him away, they are expressing an opinion. When they come and sit close to someone, they are expressing an opinion. When they assume a certain facial expression, they are expressing an opinion. And so on. To take just one example, a cat has nearly three hundred different facial expressions to express its feelings, emotions and opinions. Nonhuman animals are intelligent, sensitive and emotional beings, at times more than humans.
--- 06 August 2019
Elephants mourn their dead. They even mourn the dead humans who had looked after them and cared for them. Dogs do the same. Monkeys and crows also mourn their dead. And possibly many other nonhuman animals. I recently saw bulbuls hovering around and repeatedly visiting the dead body of one of them. From my childhood I remember a buffalo mother, our own buffalo in the village where we lived, mourning for many days when her young she-calf died. I saw tears flowing from her eyes and she refused to eat for many days.
--- 16 August 2019
Humans constitute 0.01 percent of all life on earth but they have always believed, to a greater or lesser extent, that the earth belongs to them, is for them, and so also all the nonhuman animals. This idea goes as far back as the Genesis in the Old Testament and can be found both in the eastern and western thought, including religious, philosophical and scientific thought. At the same time humans believe that they are the most intelligent species on the earth. But look at what they have done to the earth using their so-called intelligence. They have increased their population to impossible numbers. They have spread themselves and occupied more or less the entire earth. There are hardly any undisturbed spaces left now for the other species. In other words, they have invaded and turned the earth into a colony for themselves. So far as the other species are concerned, the earth is now a colonized space, colonized by humans.
On top of that they have, to a large extent, consumed and eaten up the nonliving resources of the earth. Plus, they have polluted, to an unprecedented degree, the air, the water, the surface of the earth and the sea. They have destroyed the forests and the trees. They have destroyed any number of nonhuman living species and are still destroying them with their unscrupulously unrestrained activities. They have interfered everywhere, snooped into every corner. And now they are interfering with life itself by manipulating genes and trying to create new species. The latest reports tell us that they have already created new species in the labs by combining the genes of different species and this includes combining Homo sapiens with other species, with pigs, for example --- apparently for the benefit of the humans as well as for commercial purposes.
--- 14 April 2017
According to the New York Times, in a first case of its kind a 57-year-old man who had heart disease received a heart from a genetically modified pig. The paper called it a “ground-breaking procedure” that offers hope to hundreds of thousands of patients with failing organs.
But what did the poor pig get out of the whole thing? He was forced to sacrifice his life to save the life of a human. Such cases qualify as cruelty to animals. It is unethical and shameful.
--- 11 January 2022
As per a large study of all life on the earth carried out a little more than five years ago, ever since human civilization began humans have destroyed 83 percent of all wild mammals and half of all plants, while the total number of livestock raised for meat and milk has enormously increased. Sixty percent of all mammals on earth are now livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36 percent are humans and only 4 percent are wild animals. Similarly, 70 percent of all birds on earth are now farmed poultry and there are only 30 percent wild birds. Further, since the so-called industrial revolution just one-sixth mammals, from mice to elephants, have survived and after three centuries of whaling just a fifth of marine mammals in the oceans remain. And here is another figure: about half of all wild animals which were there just fifty years ago have either been killed by humans or have died due to human activities. Meanwhile, humans have increased their population to 8 billions and over 6 billions were added only in the last two centuries. Clearly, 99.9 percent of all living species on the earth are dominated by and live under the enormous shadow of humans.
--- 28--10--2023
Humans have given no solid proof to validate the claim that they are more intelligent and wiser than nonhuman animals. Human history is full of violence and carnage carried out for different reasons. Now climate scientists are saying that life on the earth is on the verge of extinction, what is called the Sixth Extinction, and that this is due to human activities. This implies that it is not due to the activities of nonhuman animals. If this is so, then how are humans more intelligent and wiser than other species on the earth? In fact, they appear to be more stupid than them.
--- 31 May 2017
How many hierarchies humans in their intelligence and wisdom have created! Varna hierarchy, caste hierarchy, class hierarchy, gender hierarchy, race hierarchy, colour hierarchy, hierarchy based on power, hierarchy based on authority, hierarchy based on knowledge. And that most scandalous hierarchy in which humans place themselves at the top and all the other creatures below themselves. But even more scandalous is that particular hierarchy in which certain imaginary figures such as gods and goddesses are placed above humans and all other creatures.
--- 22 July 2017
There are no hierarchies in nature in the sense of higher or better. Such hierarchies are created by humans. Can we say that a human is higher or better than a cat, or a cat is higher or better than a tree, or a tree is higher or better than a stone? Actually no. But if we wish to say this, then on what basis?
--- 25 June 2017
Nonhuman animals are more or less prisoners of the humans and humans can do, and they do, anything to them. It is as if human lives were more precious than the lives of other creatures. If humans are superior to other creatures --- a claim they have been making for a long time --- how come they are, as a species, so self-centred? What does superiority consist in --- in the so-called intelligence or in ethically-governed behaviour? And if their "intelligence" cannot make them more ethical than they are, then should we call it intelligence?
--- 25 April 2017
Intelligence and ethical thought and conduct are inseparable. It is not brilliant inventions and ideas which demonstrate a person's intelligence. Rather, it is the degree to which ethical concerns direct a person's behaviour towards other people and nonhuman beings. In a world which is inherently cruel and heartless, it is only the person who tries to overcome this received condition in his or her thought and behaviour who can legitimately be called intelligent.
--- 15 March 2018
Poets have often used nonhuman animals as symbols to depict or talk about cruel, vicious, pitiless behaviour. "Beastly" is a word that is quite commonly used even in non-poetic language. In my view, this kind of thinking about nonhuman animals is incorrect. Haven't humans shown, even proved beyond doubt, that they can be worse than any "beast"? They have. And that is why using nonhuman animals as symbols in poetry for the so-called "inhuman" behaviour is inappropriate; it is difficult to justify on ethical grounds. Whatever humans do, they do as humans. Bringing in nonhuman animals to underline what is regarded as "less than human" makes no sense. (Let me say that nonhuman animals are not "less than human".) Even the cruelest, the most despicable act by humans is a human act. Nonhuman animals have nothing to do with what humans do.
--- 17 May 2017
Humans are a tiny part of the total number of living creatures on the earth. Yet it is mostly human suffering that moves us. After thousands of years this is where our thinking has brought us: even now we can only think of ourselves.
--- 25 June 2017
All beings are equal. All beings suffer and feel pain. The best humans are those who understand the suffering, feel the pain not only of humans but of all beings.
--- 27 May 2017
All beings have a different kind of beinghood but all are equal as beings.
--- 13 September 2017
Sages have advised humans to lead simple and frugal lives. But this advice has never had much impact on humans. On the contrary, they have over a period made their living so complex and elaborate that they have devastated the earth. By doing this they have turned themselves into one of the most destructive species on the earth, probably the most destructive. Let us face and think about a strange fact: it is the animals, birds and other living beings, and not humans, who have always maintained that level of simple and frugal living which has been advised by our sages.
--- 12 July 2017
Humans keep talking about human freedom, human equality, human slavery, abuse of humans of various categories and so on, and rightly so. But what about the freedom of domesticated animals, animal slavery, equality of animals with humans, abuse of animals, the barbaric ways in which they are raised, kept, transported and slaughtered by the meat industry so that billions of people can eat their flesh every day? So far as domesticated animals are concerned, there is a Holocaust every day. But the much lauded human concept of justice stops at the border between what are called "humans" and "animals".
Clearly, the commitment to the abolition of slavery and the theory of slavery are incomplete and partial, focused only on the human species. It is an instance of species-centrism, where the species at the centre is Homo sapiens, a name which is clearly inappropriate.
--- 03 April 2017--20 October 2018
About 22 people are killed every year by elephants enslaved by Thailand’s tourist industry. Why? Here is my guess: (1) These elephants don’t like to be mistreated, (2) they don’t like people to ride them, and (3) they want to be free.
--- 17 October 2023
As per a recent study more wild animals are killed by humans than by wild animals themselves. The study says that wild animals are now more scared of humans than of the lion who was so far known as the apex predator in the wild. As a result, scientists have now labelled Homo sapiens as the super predator on the earth.
--- 08 October 2023
According to another study, in this age of Anthropocene, that is, the age when humans are the dominant force on the earth, the rate of extinction of nonhuman species is 1000 times more than the rate when there were no humans on the earth.
--- 22 October 2023
Which creature hangs, eletrocutes, kills by injecting poison, executes by firing squads his or her fellow creatures? Only the Homo sapiens, the “most civilized” creature on the earth.
--- 20 October 2020
Sages have tried since ages to ensure that humans become kind and compassionate towards others --- both human and nonhuman animals. But they have failed. Humans have displayed a powerful tendency to pick up and retain only that kind of knowledge which helps them survive in this world --- what is called instrumental knowledge. If we divide knowledge into categories, then this will be a low kind of knowledge. It is a tragic fact that the mass of humanity think that this is the only kind of knowledge and that this is what they need --- they don't wish to have or use what one may call higher forms of knowledge.
--- 11 October 2017
Humans have too much curiosity. They want to know everything about themselves and the world. This curiosity and this desire to know about everything has proved to be the main factor behind the shape in which the world finds itself, which, needless to repeat, is in a deplorable condition. More than anything else, it is the acquisition of what I would call already excessive knowledge which has led the world to this state. Things would have been better if this knowledge were accompanied by a sense of restraint and discrimination which unfortunately humans lack when it comes to the use and application of their knowledge. Four things follow from this. (1) Knowledge is not enough; it must be accompanied by wisdom. (2) Ethics are wisdom and to be ethical is to be wise. (3) Too much curiosity is bad. (4) Too much knowledge, too, is bad.
Let me make it clear that curiosity and knowledge may not be bad in themselves, but they are bad given the demonstrated nature of humans to misuse them. Unfortunately, in the education system everywhere in the world and in the systems through which the world is run, curiosity and acquisition of limitless knowledge are lauded and valorized: in fact these systems are driven by them.
On the other hand, nonhuman beings are not boundlessly curious and they acquire only that much knowledge which they need in order to survive for a certain period.
--- 30 August 2017--10 October 2017
Another thing that has damaged the earth is the tendency of the humans to make things which are not there in nature. This tendency has spread out a lot of junk on the surface of the earth, in the oceans and in the space around the earth. In this context, we should notice that nonhuman animals, birds etc do not invent or make any new and artificial thing. They take some things from the earth and nature as food or to build nests etc. They only take what is already available. Even when they are ill they try to cure themselves by taking already available grasses, leaves and herbs.
Humans are the only ones who are busy making new, unnatural things everyday. To make them they consistently exploit the earth and nature. Only recently scientists told us that at this moment the weight of the things made by humans is greater than the combined weight of all the nonhuman species on the earth. In other words, humans have endlessly robbed the earth and nature and turned natural substances into unnatural, artificial things and they are still doing this. And this happens on a gigantic, mass scale.
--- 04 Mar 2021--01 August 2021
Excessive curiosity. Excessive knowledge. Making artificial things. Polluting the earth with junk. It is precisely this history of the humankind which leads us to raise the question: What is knowledge? Or rather what is true knowledge? Is it simply finding out the empirical nature of things in the universe and the empirical nature of life on the earth? The kind of things that science does? Or is it also finding out how to live in harmony with one another and with other living and nonliving beings on the earth? In my view, true knowledge is definitely the latter.
--- 16 March 2018
I'm surprised that Pope Francis believes that "human intervention on...animals is permissible when it pertains to the necessities of human life" and that "experimentation on animals is morally acceptable if it remains within reasonable limits" and "contributes to caring for or saving human lives."
This remains a human-centred and a discriminatory view.
Would the Pope allow intervention and experimentation on humans for the necessities of and for saving animal lives? Clearly he won't.
--- 24 August 2018
The "brilliant scientific and technological geniuses" have also turned out to be evil geniuses precisely because every new innovation has ethical implications: they can have bad effects for the humans as well as for life and environment in general on the earth; they can be and are used by unscrupulous people for profit and other such purposes.
But the inventors and innovators, including big scientists, rarely seem to care about such consequences of their discoveries and inventions. They notice them and regret them only later when the harmful effects have already taken place. Sometime they actively participate in projects with bad intentions, such as the making of the atom bombs or creating new viruses.
But the bombs and viruses are not the only examples. There are any number of things which have been made due to scientific and technological discoveries and inventions which have harmed or are harming the earth, the nature and living beings in general.
--- 17 March 2018
At times philosophers make big mistakes. These mistakes become influential, their influence persists for a long time and ends up doing a lot of harm. One such mistake was made by Descartes when he wrote that nonhuman animals are little more than machines, which had the implications that they are not conscious beings, do not feel and suffer pain. This view became a dogma and was adopted both by philosophers and scientists and had an influence till recent times. In fact, some philosophers and scientists believe even now that nonhuman animals don't have feelings and that many of them don't feel pain.
Not that this view was not challenged. It was, by people like Schopenhauer and Jeremy Bentham. But it continued to persist. It was not until ethologists (people who observe and study animals in their natural habitat trying not to disturb them) and philosophers and activists of animal rights came up with the opposite view based on observation and proper reason and logic that this dogma yielded place. But traces of it still linger in the philosophic and scientific communities.
On the other hand, people like Siddharth Gautam, Mahavir and many common people have known for more than 2500 years that nonhuman animals do have feelings and feel pain. Mainstream science caught up with them only in the second half of the twentieth century.
This is true about plants and trees as well. Pythagoras and Empedocles believed 2500 years ago that plants feel pain. Mainstream science admitted this fact only in the twentieth century.
--- 26 April 2020 -- 18 September 2017
The human prejudice against non-human animals is overwhelming and it colours their investigations, study and judgement about the latter. And it is part of a long chain of similar prejudices: against slaves, working classes, people of so-called lower castes, people of other religions, women, blacks, foreigners and so on.
However, when it comes to nonhuman animals, it is almost the entire humanity vs. them.
--- 20 September 2017
I see no reason why nonhuman animals should be sacrificed as part of religious ceremonies or other such rituals. I don’t know of any animals who sacrifice humans as part of a religious ceremony or ritual or who even have a religion. It is only human imagination that invents such weird, illogical and irrational practices. And these are not the only examples.
--- 27 October 2023
There was a time when humans hunted nonhuman animals and some nonhuman animals too hunted humans. This was done because they were food for each other and this was according to the laws of nature.
But even today some people hunt certain nonhuman animals with modern weapons, rifles and so on. This is called “sport”. This is done not to eat them as food but only for entertainment. And this is done at a time when the number of wild nonhuman animals has gone down drastically due to human activities. The killing of wild animals as “sport” must stop.
--- 30 August 2021
It appears that no nonhuman animal drinks human milk. Then why do humans take away and drink the milk of nonhuman animals? Humans snatch away the milk from their children. It is a strange thing that humans are probably the only species that drinks the milk of other creatures. This is only one example of their very strong tendency to exploit. Just think about this. What if members of a stronger species, stronger than humans, were to snatch away the milk from human mothers for themselves and for their children?
--- 24 June 2021
"Art" in which animals are placed in glass boxes and are starved, or where an animal is left in a room to starve for people to view, is sick "art" or it is sickness in the name of art. The sickness here is the pathological cruelty or ugliness to which this kind of "art" gives vent.
A lot of such "art" has been allowed to be displayed in the Tate Modern gallery in London.
--- 15 September 2017
Let us reduce nature-tourism, including ecotourism. Mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, trees and plants, animals and birds, insects and even stones --- they all need some respite from people.
--- 26 June 2017
I think we should not take too many photos of birds and wild animals or make videos or films of them. By doing that we interfere in their life and disturb their habitat. The best way to preserve them is to leave them alone as far as possible.
--- 08 April 2017
Future generations of humans will remember us for two things: horrendous cruelty to animals and for messing up the earth. They will feel ashamed that their ancestors enslaved animals, tortured them in various ways and killed millions of them every day for different purposes.
16 January 2018 -- 12 July 2020
Humans have invented a number of sophisticated ways of killing humans as well other animals. Whereas the other animals have only the ways that nature gave them. There is no doubt now that Homo sapiens is the most dangerous animal on the earth. But perhaps it is no longer accurate to call it an animal. Probably it should now be called a monster and that is what I have done in a couple of my (already published) papers. Humans had imagined monsters. But in fact the only monster that is there on the earth is this species called Homo sapiens.
--- 13 May 2018
