NYT Says Animal Rights is "Easy to Mock"

Today's New York Times presents Adam Cohen, begging to be mocked with his "What's Next in the Law? The Unalienable Rights of Chimps." I was surprised that the "Editorial Observer" piece was published in its current form because it sounds so ignorant and insulting. But then I realized it's simply a reflection of what the average educated, well-read person in America thinks.

Let's deconstruct:

• The backstory is that Spain's parliament passed a resolution granting legal rights to apes. The resolution calls for "banning research that harms apes," which is like saying they shouldn't be subject to "unnecessary suffering." What is harm? Why not have a complete ban on research on them? Or say they can only be observed and not touched and their sanctuary environment cannot be altered, leaving ethology the only option?
• Cohen writes:

Granting legal rights to apes is, of course, easy to mock — and animal rights activists don’t do themselves any favors. In media accounts, they usually come off as loopy — whether it is Matthew’s supporters insisting that “everyone is entitled to a fair trial, even chimps,” or Pedro Pozas, the secretary-general of the Spanish Great Ape Project, declaring “I am an ape.”

Here are my questions: Why is it easy to mock? What doesn't Cohen understand about the right to not be owned and used by another? What isn't he grasping about the significance of "I am an ape?" Cohen's unwillingness (I'm trying to be kind and assume it's unwillingness rather than obtuseness) to comprehend such a simple concept--that I'm assuming he researched in order to write his article--is puzzling.

• Cohen then writes:

The animal rights movement also suffers from association with its least appealing advocates. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals constantly sets back its cause with boneheaded moves, like the ad it ran juxtaposing photos of penned-up animals with starving Jews in concentration camps.

Boneheaded? What has the world come to when the (arguably) venerable New York Times uses a word like boneheaded? Meanwhile, I coincidentally have been watching "Holocaust," which was a miniseries featuring Meryl Streep, James Woods and Tovah Feldshuh that first aired in 1978, and I was thinking about what we do to sentient nonhumans the entire time I was watching. I couldn't help it. And as I've said many times, what we do to sentient nonhumans is worse because we breed them only to exterminate them, and more important, the reality that appropriate moral outrage over what we do to sentient nonhumans is expressed by only a minuscule percentage of humans is frightening.

• Those who refer to Peter Singer as an animal-rights extremist are telling you in that moment that they don't know much about animal rights.
• Cohen writes that: "Much of the opposition to animal rights is really economic." Much? I'd make that closer to all. It's a business, Mr. Cohen.
• Then comes the speciesist bit that confuses this issue: that great apes are like us, and "deserve some respect" because they are like us. It seems like such an intellectually-limited phenomenon, this inability to go beyond the mirror and consider those who aren't biologically like us but are like us in other important ways. Cohen mentions complex communication skills, emotional bonds and the capacity to experience loneliness and sorrow, as if my dogs don't possess those attributes.
• Oh, and this is after he uses the adjective "goofier" to describe the rhetoric of ape-rights activists. Again, why the insults? So far, we and our call for animal rights are "easy to mock," we come off as "loopy," some of us are "boneheaded," we "care about animals to the exclusion of people" (which is tiresome and demonstrates Cohen knows little about us or our cause), and our rhetoric is goofy. All of this language tells me more about Cohen, and the New York Times, than it does about those humans who realize we aren't the only creatures on the planet capable of suffering and deserving of a life free of the ownership of and exploitation by another.
• For a fleeting moment toward the end of the article, Cohen sounds like he might be on track after all with:

It sounds odd to say that apes have rights — or to call a chimpanzee a “person.” As a legal matter, though, it is not such a stretch. People in irreversible comas have rights. Even corporations are recognized as “persons,” with free speech and equal protection rights, and the ability to sue and be sued.

It would appear that he sees that though it sounds odd, it really isn't. Progress? Perhaps.

• Yes, some progress indeed, it seems, with:

Critics object that recognizing rights for apes would diminish human beings. But it seems more likely that showing respect for apes would elevate humans at the same time.

• Ah, but wait. I revoke my proclamation of progress, as Cohen ends in a place that I admit took me off guard.

If apes are given the right to humane treatment, it just might become harder to deny that same right to their human cousins.

First of all, I think they already have the right to humane treatment, but the definition of humane can include having electrodes cemented to their skulls. Didn't he just sound like he knew what the right in question was?

Finally, what took me off guard was that for Cohen this issue comes back around to humans and how it might benefit us. Cohen makes it very clear: no creature but a human one is worthy of legal rights for their own sake.

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Comments

[Dan]

Mary, I appreciate your effort to be charitable by assuming that Adam Cohen is “unwilling” to comprehend such a simple concept, rather than obtuse. I cannot (or will not) be so charitable. I believe Cohen is obtuse. I doubt that he is obtuse in the sense of being able to grasp simple, and even complex, concepts that are widely accepted by his society (e.g. certain mathematical or linguistic concepts), but he is obtuse in the sense that he is unable to penetrate or think past his cultural prejudices and analyze the issue (or perhaps any ethical issue) with intellectual and emotional honesty.

Cohen’s obtuseness is unfortunately quite common among human apes (Contrary to what Cohen implies, we’re not demi-gods; we’re apes). Humans are generally heavily conditioned and habitual when it comes to thinking about anything, but this is especially true in areas like morality. Arthur Schopenhauer believed, and I agree with him on this, that there are three reasons why the vast majority of people behave morally: 1) the need for social approval; 2) fear of legal consequences; and 3) fear of religious/superstitious consequences. The remaining small percentage of humans behave morally out of genuine empathy and perhaps a sense of justice. This might explain why so few people are morally outraged by our behavior toward nonhumans.

[Mary Martin]

Dan,
I guess being kind (if you can even call it that, at this point) to Cohen is due to me reminding myself that for 15 years I ate the flesh of sentient nonhumans, and then for a subsequent 20 years I gave loads of cash to PeTA (though in my defense at the beginning they really were an animal rights organization), and thereafter I touted free-range cow flesh as an alternative (you know, if you must eat parts of others) to factory-farmed cows. In other words, I was just as hypocritical, misinformed and dim-witted as Cohen sounds.

Maybe it's a Buddhist influence. Though it's easy to see how we're different from each other (when that's convenient), sometimes we don't like to look at the ways we're mirrors for each other. Whenever I have the urge to insult someone, I think: Okay, this person and this situation is in front of me for a reason. What am I supposed to learn? How might I bring compassion to this situation?

Oh, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar . . .

And all this, coming from a person more comfortable with the militant behavior of other ARAs than most vegans.

Go figure.

[Dan]

I think the main difference between Cohen and, say, pre-vegan me, is that I never wrote about or criticized animal rights or other things that I hadn’t give much thought about. In fact, when I read the rationale for animal rights for the first time, it made complete sense to me, and I went vegan – virtually immediately. What I did NOT do was write about it in a bad light (“easy to mock”) or report on it giving the pros and cons from the fence. So, I don’t consider myself a mirror of Cohen, and, as much as it is possible for Cohen and I to have something in common, I do think that people are very often genuinely and profoundly different from one another.

Anyway, my point was to criticize Cohen, who, if he is going to write about AR, ought to research it sufficiently to give it due respect (which is more respect than he gave it). My point in bringing up human moral behavior in general was to address your comment about so few of us having moral outrage with regard to how animals are used and abused – I don’t think we evolved to have much more outrage over it than the other Great Apes.

[Mary Martin]

Dan,
The mirror doesn't imply there can't be profound differences, only that I try to see how we might be similar (and sometimes we're really not and I see your point here for you. Cohen and I might have a similarity where you don't.).

Since I read the NYT first thing every day and often get my material from it (it's become a sport, though I'm worried that it's not that challenging), I am compiling a list for the editors and writing to them regarding the consistent misinterpretation of animal rights by its writers and the perpetual lack of research demonstrated in its articles.

And I do plan to mention the lack of moral outrage, in addition to the mockery of those of us who are outraged. It's an odd thing, to ridicule others for having a moral code that makes perfect sense, is based in both logic and compassion, and aims to decrease exploitation and suffering, isn't it?

[Nick]

I couldn't even finish reading this post. Why is the New York Times always so incredibly hostile to animal rights and veganism? It makes me so angry.

[Dan]

It most certainly is an odd thing (from a rational and empathetic standpoint) to ridicule a moral code that is compassionate and logically consistent with such basic notions as the golden rule, and it shows just how much of a “herd thing” morality is for most people.

I’m glad that you’re compiling that list of poorly researched, ignorant, and biased animal rights journalism of the NYT as well as lack of moral outrage and the mockery of moral outrage. I hope it can pry open some minds there.

[Mike Grieco]

Hi Mary, Cohen's article was published in yesterdays Yukon News.
Thanks for decontructing it. People here also have much to learn and understand when it comes to "animal rights". Then again, many people here do not want to support the rights of animals, after all, it will mean we can't take "their" lives from them if we give "them" rights.

Keep well.