Last week the United Kingdom classified cephalopods, such as octopuses and squid, and decapods, such as lobsters and crabs, sentient beings. These creatures feel pain and suffering, and are accorded some protection under animal welfare laws, as are vertebrates, or animals with a backbone. I was elated by this news, as I really can’t tolerate seeing anyone eating octopus, as I tell them they might as well be eating their beloved dog, and the octopus is likely quite a bit more intelligent than the dog and perhaps, in terms of brain to body ratio, us. Or at least some of us. Probably me.
But my bigger question, my concern, is why do we assume any living thing is not a sentient being? It is certainly easier to justify eating them, wantonly slaughtering them and committing genocide or extinction of entire species if we automatically put “just” in front of the animal. “Just” a fish, “just” a buffalo, “just” a bird, a dumb animal. We have been fed this line of thinking for so many generations it has become ingrained. It’s even government-sponsored, teaching children the importance of animal protein in the all-holy food pyramid, and subsidizing an entire industry. The horrors and dangers (remember mad cow disease?) are periodically re-exposed and promptly forgotten.
So we have these thoughts, and that makes me go to my most basic of questions:
Whose thoughts are you thinking, and why are you thinking them?
There are some very good thoughts out there that we’ve been repeating for countless generations, such as killing people is bad and don’t litter. These aren’t my original thoughts nor are they yours, and they’re not even our great great great grandparent’s thoughts. But they seemed to work for us socially and individually. However, there are these troubling exceptions. Killing people is bad, yes, but if more than a dozen people agree that a person is bad, it is right to kill that person. Littering is bad, but we have this garbage problem so we’ll just designate entire functioning ecosystems as “dumps” so it’s okay to put it there. As long as both of these agreed upon bad actions are confined and controlled, then… not so bad.
Clearly religions and governments have been in the thought distribution and consumption business for a while, some more successfully than others. The fastest growing religion in the word, Mormonism, is a highly developed version of thought control, pretty much a one-stop shop for your individual will. In addition to finding out how to think about the spiritual stuff, you can find out how to think about who to marry, what to eat, what to drink, how many children to have, what to do with your money, and above all, what and who not to do anything with! Oh, the ease of not dealing with your own pesky thoughts! Both China and the former U.S.S.R. lost their touch in thought selling, and North Korea may be failing as well, although it’s difficult to keep a population thinking the right thoughts if you lose vast numbers of said population to famine and disease. The Kim regime should have seen that one coming!
And here at home, the thought sellers are scrambling to keep up with each other. In a particularly inspired moment along the lines of a gift with purchase promotion, some sellers promoted their thoughts with the pertinent artfully curated research, so when questioned about thoughts, the respondent could correctly claim that they had “done their own research.” You have to admit, this is clever.
I like to repeat things I’ve heard on MSNBC or NPR, my favorite flavors of thoughts, as much as anyone. It’s that perfect blend of just a little righteous indignation, some minor irritation and a hefty scoop of self-justifying comfort. This thought fits in so well with all my other thoughts, it’s like a mental matching dinnerware set! And I’ll share this so you can think it too, because if so many of us think it, it must be the right thing to think!
What I want to try to keep doing more often is to question objectively, and although it can be lonely and uncomfortable, it is a start toward a more authentic mind. I invite you to do two things: first, when I do start spouting these recycled thoughts, ask me “just whose thoughts are you thinking?” and secondly, also ask this of yourself. I like to imagine it will catch on, maybe become a trend that could end up changing the human-driven course of events as we all start not just being sentient but acting like it.