I suppose after all the natural world stuff that I ought to at least try to think a bit about that philosophy thing.
The latest update is that I do sort of have two papers that I could present but they are not philosophy. They are me thinking about things and saying how the world hasn't thought about these things properly. I mean that they are complaints rather than arguments.
Today a guy who works in the department delivered a paper on how to distribute vaccines better. And it's like another world. I just think that I could never come up with an idea... and believe in it enough...
You know, I live with these three other animals and we bump along together, but I have no idea what they are about. They make some things obvious (feed me, let me out, let me in, stroke me, play with me) but... what's it like for them when I go out? When I move them out the way because I am busy? What does it feel like inside those furry heads? And what about them? Do they care about me?
I do think there's a difference between humans and animals - and it is one of kind and not of degree. It's that we have all the fucking power. They are disenfranchised and silenced and dependent. Even the polar bears and krill are in a sense dependent. We can extinguish the life in everything.
That changes the whole damn landscape.
We can decide what happens to them. We can't make them obey or co-operate, perhaps, but we can kill them. We know, this is the epistemological transformation, that we can kill them. That we can do, essentially, what we like with them. Sure, the law would punish me if I - I can't even type it - did that to my animals, but that's a something that in itself is within human power. Other humans could change the law and say it would be fine for me to do that. We have the whole thing tied up. We have made it them and us and they don't have a snowflake's chance in hell.
My dog is lying next to me. His ears are part cocked and he's staring into the middle distance. For all I know he's imagining the revolution.
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