The Democratization of Basic Instincts

Charles Danten

After the Renaissance, in the XVIth century, at the dawn of the industrial revolution, a “mutation of sensibilities” begins which will result in the XIXth century in a major change of the animal condition. Until then, confined to the wealthy classes, the passion for pets spread to the rising classes of the bourgeoisie, and even to the working classes. (1) 

A Terrible Plague 

Before that, men lived like animals, in tune with their animality, without any clear demarcation between one and the other; pigs, cows, chickens, dogs, and cats, everyone crammed together in the same house, in the same yard, and in the same street. Manifest violence, both towards humans and animals, was widespread, in all social strata. The men all carried knives in their belts, which they did not hesitate to draw at the slightest pretext. Fear was everywhere. One had to be constantly on one’s guard. (2)

 

Compulsory Schooling

The stick alone being ineffective, even counter-productive since it incited to revolt, the authorities of the time chose a gentler way to manage impulses and increase social cohesion: compulsory schooling. This major renovation in the way of training the animal inside is a Prussian invention that forced all citizens to submit to a long process of socialization that guaranteed good behavior while preventing dissension. Its institution was painful, as parents of that time were strongly opposed to it; children were often led to school by soldiers at gunpoint. (3) Today, ironically, only the gun, and even then, could prevent parents from bringing their children to school for indoctrination. 

The Weaponization of Writing 

According to French social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, to instill good behavior, everyone had to learn to read and write, so the production of books suddenly intensified on a massive scale: 

Writing seems to favor the exploitation of men before their enlightenment. [...] The primary function of written communication is to facilitate enslavement. [...] The systemic action of European states in favor of compulsory education, which developed during the 19th century, went hand in hand with the extension of military service and proletarianization. The fight against illiteracy was thus confused with the reinforcement of the control of citizens by the Power. For it is necessary that all know how to read so that the latter can say: no one is supposed to ignore the law. (4)

The Civilizing Process 

 “The authority of the state and of the teacher must be transferred from the outside to the inside of the subject,” emphasizes the Prussian theologian Hermann Francke (1663-1727), one of the founders of the present-day educational system, “... that is why it is important to integrate the rules of power into the personality of the pupil as early as possible so that he will be self-disciplined.” (5) 

Thus, the principles of virtue and good behavior must penetrate deep into the student’s psychology, internalized, somatized to the point of making him think that he is free to do as he wishes. (6) 

If misbehavior was still punished by the stick (fear) or positive punishment, it was thought at that time, as it still is today, that passive domination, by the carrot (pleasure) was the ideal instrument of control. 

 

“Excessive severity hardens or embitters the pupil, strive to be a father not a disciplinarian; as an instrument of pedagogical control, affection is far more effective than corporal punishment; use gentle rather than open violence, that way, genuine obedience is not merely outward, but comes from deep within the soul. It is not rendered out of [hard] coercion but with a willing heart,” argues Hermann Francke. (7) 

In this training scheme, various handouts and treats quickly lead to dependence and submission to established rules. Replacing open violence with its anodyne, affection, what H. Francke calls “gentle violence,” (8) is much more efficient and revolt-proof. Anyone who doesn’t obey or act as is required receives no gratification or feel-good sensations. It’s as simple as that. In this form of training, the victim cannot revolt because there are no physical blows. All he feels is a void, or a vague, unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach. This makes this kind of invisible control much more perverse and crueler by its subtlety and sophistication than open violence. 

In older democracies, where this training scheme has been perfected, citizens in general no longer have to be forced to comply with established rules. Obedience is second nature. Instincts are regulated with state-of-the-art domination, with a minimum of open violence, thereby creating the illusion that everyone is free to come and go as he pleases, to the point of loving it and asking for seconds in the spirit of this quote falsely attributed to Aldous Huxley, but often repeated: 

The perfect dictatorship would be a dictatorship that would have the appearance of democracy, a prison without walls from which the prisoners would not think of escaping. A system of slavery where, thanks to consumption and entertainment, the slaves would have the love of their servitude. (9)

 

Civilization and Its Discontents 

This kind of educational scheme based on affection and gentle violence quickly causes a disruption of the emotional regulator, or “emotionstat,” and a progressive emotional dependence that leads to infantilization and feelings of emptiness and loneliness. In short, a chronic anxiety develops that pushes one to compulsive indulgence in a never-ending vicious circle, which can culminate in bizarre and unpredictable ways. 

 While some will cope with this chronic anxiety by channeling it into various forms of escapes like cell-phone addiction, zootherapy, hoarding, smoking, bulimia, binge drinking, compulsive shopping, hypersexuality, others will simply channel it into various psychosomatic diseases like chronic urinary problems (interstitial cystitis), colitis, heart, skin problems, and self-mutilation. (10) 

This portrait can be transposed on a larger scale to nations and civilizations. Extreme or neoliberal capitalism, an Orwellian type of “inclusive” capitalism — defined by the morally unrestricted exploitation of goods, people, animals, services, and capital under the mantle of democracy, humanism, philanthropy, goodness, and love — which could be considered as another form of flight from anxiety, has certainly led us into a planetary depression. Never-ending commercial expansion, war, social chaos, sexual dystopia, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and a growing gap between the rich and the poor are a few psychosomatic expressions of this deep depression. In the same line of thought, the 9/11 attacks, for example, can be seen as a bizarre outcome of this illness, a form of self-mutilation of the same nature as genocides. 

 

The Bestiary, the Shadow and the Light of the Human Saga 

Naturally, this radical change in the exercise of power and the management of our instincts transposes itself on the human-animal relationship. The master implanted within deals with the outside world, notably animals, in the only way he knows how, preferably using various forms of affection. Hence, the enhancement of our virtues by positive and negative conditioning and the repression of our defects by positive punishment translate on the outside by a greater fondness for those species which flatter us via their latent symbolism, and an increased brutality towards those which shame us via their latent symbolism. 

This translates starting in the early XIXth century into an inordinate affection for pets (the light) (11) and the birth and massive proliferation of factory farms in conditions of cruelty that are completely unjustified from a strictly production point of view (the shadow). (12) 

To put it differently, our disturbing impulses are symbolically repressed in depth in factory farms, and our accommodating impulses are exalted on the surface in the homes. 

The demarcation between the two is often fuzzy because training schemes between these two poles — pleasure and fear — can vary considerably between and within species. This makes the relationship to animals — and to people, since they are also trained in this way — sometimes difficult to interpret, since there are so many variations. 

Broadly speaking, pets are situated towards the carrot pole and livestock at the other extreme, towards the stick pole. But within either extreme, the dynamics can vary considerably. The dog, for example, can be at either pole. However, the dog is usually trained with a mixture of fear and pleasure, while the cat, like the citizens of a well-oiled democracy, is trained almost exclusively with the carrot. The phenomenon must be seen on a global perspective rather than a case-by-case one. 

And on a horizontal scale of cruelty and hypocrisy graded from the least cruel and hypocritical to the cruelest and most hypocritical, the glorified relationship with pets is skewed to the cruelest and least authentic end of the scale. Here, as we shall see in a future article, goodness is the instrument of power and its most evil manifestation. 

Thus, according to this version of things, by its manifest violence and cruelty, the condition of farm animals would be a living dramatization of an openly totalitarian model of society, and, by its latent violence and cruelty, the condition of companion animals would be a living dramatization of a democratic model of society. The fact that these two categories of animals are present in a democracy indicates that within this political structure, totalitarianism is indeed still alive, but in a “declawed” or passive form, invisible to the naked eye, but ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity. 

This Theory Raises a Number of Troubling Questions 

Is our democracy authentic? Are children educated according to their own needs or are they weaponized for the same purposes as animals? Are women really nicer than men? And what about the people on the left, the so-called liberals and humanists? Are they more human than those of the so-called extreme right? Has humanity evolved to a higher level of consciousness? Does moral and spiritual evolution even exist? Is our current social structure an illusion collectively maintained with lies and deceit? 

If we presuppose, that domestic animals are revelators of authenticity. Their absence by our side would mean nothing, but according to this theory, their presence by our side would be symptomatic of a confused mind that tries to manage its impulses by different means oscillating between affection and fear. 

In this perspective, the human-animal bond would be a way to detect, with surgical precision, the evil that can sometimes hide in its opposite, goodness. Thus, if you want to know the true nature of a person — or on a larger scale, a nation like the US — that looks down at you from the height of his moral and spiritual superiority, with a dog tethered to his feet or a cat on his lap, you will know where that person or nation is located on the scale of goodness. If the animal in question eats industrial kibble, even better, you will then smell for good the putrid odor of sulfur that emanates from its entrails... the devil’s favorite den, these days and ages. 

In short, we try to obey the precepts that are written in some guide of good conduct of our invention; short of solutions and out of desperation, we blindly follow the leaders who best embody the human ideal that we covet. 

In the meantime, the real problems are relegated to the back burner: how our brain works, how we fall victim to its traps, how our buried past leads us by the nose and how we refuse to question our founding creed. In the end, our moral and spiritual evolution is not the result of understanding, but of mimicry and escape. 

 

References and Notes 

1. K. Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England (1500-1800), Penguin, 1983. 

 2. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, Wiley-Blackwell, 2000. 

3. John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education, 2002; Dumbing us down, 2008; Weapons of Mass Instruction, 2011, New Society Publishers: www.johntaylorgatto.com. 

4. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques, Plon, 1955, p. 344. 

5. James Melton, Absolutism and the eighteenth-century origins of compulsory schooling in Prussia and Austria, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 40. 

6. A more in-depth explanation of somatization of behavior is beyond the scope of this article. For those who are interested in this question see: Antonio R. Damasio, “The Somatic Marker Hypothesis,” Descartes' Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Harper Collins, 1994, p. 174. 

7. James Melton, work cited, p. 42. 

8. Ibid. 

9. http://wiki.gentilsvirus.org/index.php?title=Thread:Discussion:FV:Huxley1958:LeMeilleurDesMondes/Citation_faussement_attribu%C3%A9e_%C3%A0_Huxley&lqt_method=edit&lqt_operand=783 

10. “Troubles du contrôle des impulsions,” Catalogue and Index of French Medical Sites. http://www.chu-rouen.fr/ssf/psy/troublesducontroledesimpulsions.html. 

 11. Kathleen Kete, The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth-Century France, University of California Press, 1994. 

12. Jean-Pierre Digard, “L’élevage industriel,” Les Français et leurs animaux : Ethnologie d’un phénomène de société, Fayard, Pluriel Ethnologie, p. 41.

Animal Hoarding and Other Similar Pathologies

Charles Danten

Collectors keep dozens, sometimes a hundred or a thousand animals in their homes, in filthy conditions. American scientist Gary Patronek has estimated that there are about two thousand animal collectors in the United States - a figure he says is far from the truth. (1)

The vast majority of hoarders are women, on average fifty-five years old, single, divorced, or widowed. The stereotype of the old cat lady is wrong as half of the collectors Patronek counted were employed, some in professions as mundane as teaching and real estate. Among them, Patronek even counted four veterinarians. 

Cats are the favorite victims of collectors, followed by dogs, birds, reptiles, small mammals (ferrets, rats, hamsters), horses, cows, goats, and sheep. Many of them have a real menagerie in their house and on their property.

In every home, there is an accumulation of miscellaneous items such as newspapers, laundry, books, and garbage cans. Some collectors meticulously preserve dead animals. Many others have sexual relations with their animals. (2)

Researchers liken this habit to obsessive-compulsive disorder. "There are far more similarities than differences between obsessive-compulsive disorder and animal collecting," notes researcher Gary Patronek, "the interaction between a living thing and a person gives it a level of intensity that does not exist with a pile of newspapers. (...) Collectors use these animals to fulfill their emotional needs, while denying those of their pets (...) Psychologists suspect a link between animal collecting and attachment disorders." (3) 

If the object of the passion varies, according to the inclinations and the means of each one, its origin is on the other hand the same: an unspecified psychological insufficiency. Thus, the collected object is more or less accessory, provided that the collector finds his fulfillment. 

According to scientists Maria Vaca-Guzman and Arnold Arluke, "collectors do not lack arguments and excuses to justify their mania and make it more socially acceptable. This is how they clear their name and protect their self-esteem:" (4)(5)(6)

The Good Samaritan Argument

Some will use the Good Samaritan argument, claiming that these animals would have died anyway, and that by adopting them they are saving them from certain death. In their logic, death is considered an unthinkable option, any other possibility, no matter how horrible, is considered preferable. In other words, the Good Samaritan absolves himself of blame by giving his obsession a noble purpose. The "rescuers" who collect wild or domestic animals in non-killing shelters fall into this category. 

The Love Argument

Many claim to love their animals, deeply, as much or more than their own children. Naming their animals after their children or being loved by their pets is the ultimate proof of their love, and that all is well in the best of worlds. Collectors consider their pets to be an integral part of the family. They say things like: 

We take good care of our pets, the proof is they are happy and they love us back (...) this is heaven for them (...) they play ball... they love it... they don't have mange and they love to be here... did you see how this dog flicks his tail? This dog wants to play ball. It's elephant man syndrome. Appearances are deceiving. It is not by things like this (conditions of captivity) that one should judge suffering. (7) 

Other Arguments of Denial

Some deny the facts or minimize their consequences. Others try to divert attention by pointing the finger at those who take them to task and by calling them names (ad hominem attacks); they look for scapegoats by saying for example: it is society's fault if animals are mistreated; it’s the breeders who produce too many animals; owners don’t have them neutered or are not sufficiently responsible for the animals under their thumb; some will plead ignorance, lack of know-how, good intentions, a physical or psychological handicap of some kind that prevents them from taking good care of the object of their devotion; the lack of intellectual freedom caused by a difficult life that pushes them to act in this way, against their will. Others confess to being under the influence of a mysterious force that the media calls "extreme love." (8) 

The most affected, and the most resistant, employ the full arsenal of excuses and justifications. Strategies of denial commonly evoked, to different degrees, by all animal owners, including animal activists who seem to be as unaware as everyone else that sometimes it can be cruel to be good. (9)

***

This psychological profile carries over to those who are fixated on money, accolades, knowledge, and ideas; fraudsters, corporations, and investors who accumulate money for no other reason than to enrich themselves; nations who hoard information, nuclear warheads, and soldiers; institutions and intellectuals who accumulate books endlessly in private or public libraries; breeders who herd millions of animals into unsanitary, unspeakably cruel factory farms, and authorities who hoard children in factory schools to be indoctrinated into the logic of consumerism are also unaware collectors. 

« Hoarding," in the broadest sense, a generic term which can be applied to all neurotic forms of accumulation, is an escape, a means like any other to ease the tensions inherent to the human condition. Pollution and destruction of biodiversity, moral decay, gender dystopia, race-mixing, multiculturalism are the equivalent on a planetary scale of the filthy conditions typical of animal collectors' houses. 

According to this version of things, the current pet craze is a hidden form of collective hoarding.

References

1. Gary J. Patronek, "Hoarding of animals: An Under-estimated Public Health Problem in a Difficult to Study Population," Public Health Reports, 114 : 81-87, 1999.

2. Ibid. 

3. Randy Frost, "People who hoard animals," Psychiatric Times, 2006. 

4. Maria Vaca-Guzman and Arnold Arluke, "Normalizing passive cruelty: The excuses and justifications of animal hoarders,"  Anthro-zoös, 18(4), 2005.

5. Lynn Tryba, "Trash menagerie. The disturbing world of animal hoarding," Psychology today, 2002.

6. Maria Vaca-Guzman and Arnold Arluke, Article cited.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Patrick West, Conspicuous Compassion. Why Sometimes, it Really Is Cruel to be Kind, Civitas, 2004. 

“Furry Babies” Are Lousy Baby Substitutes

When a man is penalized for honesty, he learns to lie

Criss Jami, Salomé

  

During the Renaissance, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humankind underwent a “mutation of sensitivities.” This would eventually lead, in the 19^th century, to an important change in the animal condition. A passion for animals, which had previously been limited for the most part to the lords, would be propagated throughout the rising classes of the bourgeoisie, making its way into the hearts of average people. (1)

This change in the animal condition corresponded to mankind’s efforts to civilize and moralize the general population, a slow process of taming our impulses. (2) Before this crucial step in our spiritual and moral evolution, manifest violence was widespread throughout all social strata, both towards humans and animals. Slavery was considered natural and legitimate; animals, the poor, the insane, blacks, women, and children were generally treated as chattel or cannon fodder. Men all carried knives in their belts and did not hesitate to draw them at the slightest dispute. “Fear reigned everywhere; one had to be on guard all the time,” writes the magisterial, historian, and sociologist Norbert Elias. (3) Food animals were butchered in the middle of the street in horrible conditions. Pitting dogs against bulls or bears was a fairly common pastime for both rich and poor. It was not rare to see an annoyed coachman beat his exhausted horse to death when it refused to advance. (4) It was thus necessary to find ways to heal the evil that was threatening order and eating away at society’s very base.

Animals as Saviors 

For the Christian Church of that period, to love animals as did the saints St. Francis of Assisi and St. Cuthbert was a way “to establish the pure reign of charity among men,” notes French sociologist Éric Baratay. The idea was to eradicate “the taste for blood and cruelty, to improve Man for his brothers and thus to protect humanity itself.” (5) 

Because mistreatment of animals became a sign of poor cha-racter and was then considered a bad example for children, it was believed that the opposite — affectionate contact with pets — would help mankind free itself from its archaic cruelty and insensitivity. According to this evolutionary strategy, as evolutionary biologist Kevin MacDonald would put it, loving animals means loving human beings, and not loving animals is almost proof of inhumanity. It was Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason who said, “Everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty.” (6)

It has long since been forgotten, but humane societies like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), which came about in the 19th century in most Western countries, were originally founded mostly to put an end to violence towards people — the link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans being long established. (7) 

Even the famous French “Gramont” law from 1850, which condemned public mistreatment of domestic animals, had among its aims an anthropocentric one: to improve mankind. (8) This law had equivalents in all Western countries. For example, in 1820, abuse of livestock and “blood sports” were prohibited in several American states. An 1866 New York law, which later became a model for all anti-cruelty laws in America, made it a misdemeanor to maliciously hurt or kill any domestic animal. (9)

The universal idea that affection for animals makes us more human takes on various forms across different cultures, but it is recognizably part of the founding credos of numerous societies. It has become popular wisdom, and we shouldn’t underestimate its power over us. (10)

 

Animal as Doctors

Our appreciation of animals is not based solely on the notion that they make us better human beings; it is also that they add a little spice to our often sad and fastidious lives. We interpret this as a contribution to our physical and mental health, believing that they heal us from various threats to our wellbeing — inactivity, violence, anxiety, stress, solitude, boredom, depression, cancer, and mental illness, to name but a few.

This symbiotic concept, which suggests that people’s physical, moral, and psychological ills may be cured by the reassuring presence of animals, has become known as “zootherapy” or “animal-assisted-therapy” as it is now called, a term “that can refer to institutionalized therapy sessions led by health professionals or another such intermediary as well as simply having an animal at home. The word ‘zootherapy’ is thus a generic term designating the positive impact of animals on people,” (11) and to give you the full story, I will add the impact of people on animals, since it is generally agreed that this form of affection is as good for them as it is for us. 

American Jewish psychiatrist Boris Levinson, who is conside-red the modern day father of this concept, summarized the im-portance that animals could have in people’s lives in several beacon articles published in the sixties and seventies. (12) According to Levinson, who advocated sex with animals, an emotional relationship with an animal is in itself a physiological intervention comparable to a drug. Since the publication of his writings, this line of thinking has become so mainstream that zootherapy is now a modern institution, with many such interventions being carried out as official treatments. They are “administered” by individuals and by organizations, all of whom aggressively promote the perceived benefits of companion animals. 

University of Concordia psychology professor Theresa Bianco, for example, cannot say enough good things about pet therapy: 

There is a substantial body of research showing that people of all ages derive a multitude of psychosocial and health bene-fits from their involvement with pets. […] Moreover, these benefits are not limited to pet ownership, but also extend to therapeutic interventions involving a variety of animal species. In some instances, the mere presence of the animal is sufficient to reduce anxiety. (13)

American veterinarian Marty Becker summed up the vital role animals play in people’s lives at a symposium on animal well-ness: 

Most important, veterinary medicine is embracing the bond as a vital force for not just happy, healthy pets… but happy, healthy people as well. (14)

The present height of the pet phenomenon is thus closely linked to the perceived benefits of animals on people, and of people on animals. Allow me to emphasize the word “perceived,” because while public and manifest mistreatment of animals was indeed prohibited starting in the 19th century, the use of animals for recreative, therapeutic, and spiritual purposes has untold consequences, not only on animals and nature but also on humanity.

Extract from The Globo Trickster Book

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