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updated: 4/6/16

The "mission and core purpose" of the University of Texas at Austin is" to transform lives for the benefit of society through the core values of learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity and responsibility."

 

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Born Free

http://www.youtube.com/v/1qBK4RRpouQ&hl=en&fs=1&

Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart

Live free and beauty surrounds you
The world still astounds you
Each time you look at a star

Stay free, where no walls divide you
You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide

Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'cause you're born free

(Stay free, where no walls divide you)
You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide

Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'cause you're born free

 

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TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:Einstein quote:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.  Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Source: Mathematical Circles

NEW DASS IMAGERY focused on sending light and love, PRECEDED BY RELAXATION AND MINDFULNESS GUIDED IMAGERY

4-7 Fowler 1; must bring book or -10: Best and Worst 2nd half of alphabet;quiz, discussion of blogs.

Topic 1. To what extent are all living beings members of one

family?  Our family tree?

Can a nonhuman animal become a member of a human

family? 

RED HAWK: As we all know, the word is derived from the Latin familia, usually translated "household," and from famulus, usually translated "servant." As we shall see, both of these root terms invite animals into the family, most commonly defined as "the body of persons who live in one house or under one head, including parents, children, servants, etc." (OED).

That "etc." is quite inviting, in view of the more specific definitions of "family" in the O.E.D.  My favorite is the application of the term "Happy Family" to"a collection of birds and animals of different natures and propensities living together in harmony in one cage." The OED citations begin with P.T. Barnum's recollection that he visited such a family at Coventry in 1844. More importantly, in Victorian science "family" meant specifically "a group of allied genera." The Chambers Encyclopedia of 1753 is the first OED citation for this word: "The bream and the herring, though very different in genus, may yet be brought into the same Family." A related definition of "family" is "those descended or claiming descent from a common ancestor: a house, kindred, lineage" (OED). In 1859 The Origin of Species proved to the Victorians that the lineage of all living beings could be traced back to common ancestors, demonstrating that animals are indeed our "kindred": members, like us, of the "household" we now call the world ecosystem. A very powerful recent documentary about speciesism builds on this sense of family, identifying us all as Earthlings. 

            There are many more examples of families that include animals ranging from, for example, the popular Life of Pi to the Bible. Pi grows up in India with the animals in his father's zoo. When the family and some of the animals set out for Canada and the boat sinks, Pi cries, "And what of my extended family – birds, beasts, and reptiles? They too have drowned." He ends up on a small lifeboat with a few survivors, eventually only himself and a tiger, and they make it all the way to Mexico. Naturally, readers recall a similar boat full of animals who also survive a watery disaster. Noah has an even more extended "family" of animals, but when they reach land, the peaceful kingdom becomes a war within the "family": "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered" (KJV: Genesis 9:1-2). This conflict, repressed at almost every meal, is the chief family secret.

RED FOX  "But much, much more important, I wanted you to see how it really was. I tell you that Fern is a chimp and, already, you aren't thinking of her as my sister. You're thinking instead that we loved her as if she were some kind of pet," (77).

"The most astonishing thing about Rosemary's revelation almost a third of the way into the novel is that after you take a minute to pause and process this information, you immediately go back and flip through the previous pages in disbelief, refusing to believe that you could have so completely missed such a vital piece of information. Sure enough, after locating and rereading every mention of Fern in the sections of the narrative before Rosemary drops her bomb on us, I could clearly see how the sister being described was actually a chimpanzee the entire time. Little specific details that were slightly odd before - such as Fern eating the photograph of Rosemary's grandfather, or Fern being unable to go the movies/nursery school - suddenly made sense. Most strangely, however, after piecing together all the tidbits that Rosemary had strewn throughout the novel before her revelation, was the fact that there was nothing that glaringly, obviously screamed that Fern was not human. Had Rosemary not casually mentioned that Fern was a chimpanzee partway through, we might have very well gone through the entire novel never doubting that she was every anything other than human (well, probably not, as it would have eventually become necessary for plot development, but the fact that she managed to string us along for this long is already impressive by itself).

The most interesting observation to me is Rosemary's explanation for why she waited so long to reveal that Fern was a chimpanzee: that she wanted us to understand that Fern was her sister before she was an animal experiment, a peer before a pet. And Rosemary was right to do so, wasn't she? After all, before the revelation, readers likely imagined Fern as a normal biological sibling in every sense of the word. We could vividly picture the bond between the two sisters as Rosemary recounted her memories, and we understood with a personal relatedness the strength of a childhood sibling bond. Once Rosemary states that Fern is an animal and not, in fact, a human, that empathetic understanding - the ability to place ourselves in Rosemary's shoes and view her experiences through the approachable lenses of our own identifiable personal experiences, evaporates.  From that moment on, we are unable to perceive Fern in the same manner as purely a normal sibling. Rosemary understands that we cannot extinguish the bias that is ingrained in us to view a member of a different species as separate from us, and she accepts that fact. Even more so, she makes us aware of our inability to fully view an animal as equal to ourselves, try as we might, by introducing and later, unmasking Fern to us in the manner that she does so.

Perhaps, Dad suggests, Fern can't sustain a single sound through a cycle of repeated exhalation and inhalation. What would this mean for oral speech development? No one seems to care that Fern was being mean, though that seems to me to be the crucial bit," (82).

What is fascinating is that Rosemary and Lowell truly see Fern as their sister - they do not hold that socially ingrained distinguished separation that the rest of us do in our mental perceptions of our relation with other species. At least, they don't specifically when it comes to Fern. While both her parents clearly to love Fern and view her as part of the family, they are not mentally capable of perceiving and treating Fern with a complete and full lack of bias, as Rosemary and Lowell can.  Raised in childhood with Fern, they view the chimpanzee as wholly and utterly as their sibling as they view each other. This is evident in the way they perceive her in Rosemary's memories.

This contrast becomes particularly poignant in the above quoted passage, in which Rosemary's father and colleagues watch Rosemary and Fern play and focus only on Fern's physical behavior and traits - in this case, her breathing and how it is different from a human's. Rosemary, on the other hand, observes that Fern "was being mean," and reflects that "to be the crucial bit." While the adults see only Fern's physical traits and therefore, can only ever perceive her with the comprehension that she is different from them, Rosemary is able to perceive Fern's mental and emotional traits - what she has in common with humans. What Rosemary notices is not the biological differences, but Fern's capacity to feel and convey emotions, her ability to act on them just like humans can - hence, her "being mean." Not only does Rosemary acknowledge that Fern can feel and play just like a human, but she remarks that observation "to be the crucial bit." As a child too young to have developed the socially implemented idea of human superiority, she wisely realizes that what her father is focusing on is unimportant - that Fern's emotional capacity, such like their own, is what should be focused on. Rosemary's train of thought reflects the wholesome all-inclusive appreciation for living creatures that children possess and subtly lose as they age. Infants do not knowingly differentiate between the touch of a human and the touch of a pet (excluding close, personal, vital relationships such as parents and siblings, which an infant would distinctly recognize and distinguish from the touch of others). Babies take comfort from the loving presence of a pet in the same way they do from a  kind stranger or extended family member. There are numerous stories of babies born blind and deaf who are only able to be assured through touch and their need to be comforted is just as capable of being satiated by a service pet as another human (again, excluding the distinct relationship that only a mother or father would be able to physically and emotionally provide). Children do not view the human race as superior to animals. In fact, they often elevate a pet's worth above that of another human. As children, before the complexity of societal values is drilled into us, we recognize the most important traits that a being can offer to be the emotional capacity that is extended across all species: the ability to feel and comfort and love. It is only later that we diminish these traits in light of more intellectual ones. 

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RESEARCH ANIMALS SECTION BEGINS (CF. POTTER): MUST BRING BOOK AND READ IT ALL

4-10 P2 Animal Shelter   1 PM

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