The Equality of Being

I once read a book about ants when I was a design assistant at Mulberry Neckwear. I was profoundly impressed by the information I gleaned from that book. Ants, it turns out, are capable of herding other creatures. Some ants herd aphids and harvest their body dew, much like humans milk cows. As far as I can tell, that means that ants are capable of using tools, which many people think is divinely limited to the human species and that that's what makes us "superior" to all other creatures.

I brought the subject of ants and their interesting habit of aphid milking at work where I then entered into a heated debate with a designer who was intensely offended that I would suggest that ants might actually have intelligence, that maybe humans aren't so sovereign after all. It offended him on a very deep level that I could compare ants to humans. (You see what a long tradition I have of offending people? It's almost like my life's mission to alienate and offend. And here I have always thought of myself as a kind person. Sheesh. The evidence to the contrary is everywhere.)

My main thought was that there's a lot we don't and can't know about other creatures, about their brain activity, about what thought processes they do or don't have. We barely know anything about our own and are still grappling with the idea that maybe our emotions are largely chemical, rather than spiritual. That's a big one for people to get. So if we barely know how to measure our own intelligence (yeah, I know, there's the whole IQ thing, but that only tells us about a certain kind of intelligence), then how can we be so sure that other beings aren't also intelligent? We can't communicate with them, but we can see they communicate with each other. What makes humans so sure of their superiority?

Part of what got me thinking about this this morning is that though I don't eat the flesh of animals, I eat a lot of eggs. In fact, I farm five hens, I keep them cooped up and every single day I go out and steal their eggs. We see eggs as human food. But sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable about this arrangement of mine. Those eggs are no different than the ones I carry around in my ovaries. Except that their eggs are a lot fresher than mine and much more likely to create an offspring without birth defects. So actually, their eggs are superior to mine. As I thought about the breakfast of eggs I might have, I had a flash of an image in my head. It's a part of what my brain does that made a psychologist conclude that I have some shadings of OCD and also convinced him that I have PTSS (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome).

In my head I flashed on chickens taking my tiny little almost microscopic eggs and cracking them open over a frying pan. No thoughts accompanied this image. It wasn't a thought, it was life in reverse flickering through my head. It happens all the time. After I realized that that image has flashed in my head a zillion times, I started thinking about it. Another image followed that one. The image of fish scraping out the cache of eggs from my ovaries and serving it on toast. Would that be so wrong? Humans consider it perfectly alright to remove viable little fish eggs from fish "ovaries" all the time, it doesn't matter that those eggs are the seeds of life. Then I thought about how obsessed humans are with their own ovaries, with each other's ovaries, and with all the little seeds that could-would-should-by-god-become-a-being.

Yet our eggs in our ovaries, or in our wombs after they've been fertilized, are no different than the eggs my hens keep laying with the instinctual expectation that this primal act will lead to reproduction: every being's imperative on this earth. Humans don't tend to think of the children of other animals as being valuable life forms. When we all talk about how important "life" is, though we don't say it, what we mean is "human life". Because, really, we shit on every other life form here on earth. Humans don't seem to value much life at all.

Although I am a vegetarian, I am comfortable with the food chain. I'm comfortable with the fact that we all have to eat something else that is or was living in order to survive. I eat plants and proteins stolen from animals. I don't eat their flesh because I was raised as a vegetarian and it makes me sick. Plus the texture makes me retch. And honestly, I'm uncomfortable ingesting the muscle of another being. Still, I don't think it's wrong to eat other animals or to use them to our dietary benefit.

What I do think is wrong is to assume that that's their only purpose on this planet and that all living things are here to serve mankind. That's arrogant and not true. We are merely a part of this planet. We don't actually own it. (Though we're working really hard to destroy it.) What I think is that it's important for all of us to respect the animals we use and eat. I think it's good that I must continually realize that what I'm really doing when I steal my hen's eggs is stealing their direct future. I think it's fine for me to do it, but I think it's important that I treat those girls with respect and understand that what I'm doing is stealing life to feed to my own. I think it's good for me to realize that if some other animal did it to me, it wouldn't be wrong. Surprising, (and most likely painful), but not wrong.

So in the end, what I believe in is the equality of being. We are not all equal in abilities, just by being born. Some people, like me, will always suck at playing basketball. I'm not equal in skill or understanding to all other people, nor they me, just by being a human. What we are, is of equal worth. We all play a part here. We all have responsibilities. But even if your achievements are comparatively very small, because that's what you have to give, you are still worth the same that everyone else is. And this includes all beings. I don't believe an ant is less worthy to be alive than me. But if it gets in my kitchen I might kill it to protect my food source, as that is part of my instinct to survive.

I might steal my hen's eggs, but I don't believe I have a "God given right" to do it or that because they are merely hens that their eggs are inferior to mine. They are providing me with an invaluable source of protein without actually having any say in it. So I treat them really well and am conscious of what I'm really doing. I do them the honor of acknowledging what my actions might mean to them. I'm not such a simpleton that I imagine them hanging around in their chicken run ruminating on their stolen eggs. But I do know that they have the same urge that I had to procreate, to eat, to survive. How intelligent are they? Most people believe chickens are among the dumbest creatures alive, but I would like to suggest that maybe we don't actually have the tools to measure the intelligence of other beings, since we barely understand ourselves.