{"id":760824,"date":"2020-06-24T07:31:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T11:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=760824"},"modified":"2020-06-24T07:34:51","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T11:34:51","slug":"shaun-tan-there-is-evil-in-obliviousness-the-more-i-learned-about-how-we-treat-animals-the-more-depressing-it-got","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=760824","title":{"rendered":"Shaun Tan: ‘There is evil in obliviousness. The more I learned about how we treat animals, the more depressing it got.’"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Shaun Tan: We are amazed at ourselves too much. Some humans are uncomfortable with the idea that animals are cleverer than us, because we are supposed to be their intellectual superiors.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

SIAN CAIN:<\/strong> Shaun Tan has been watching as the owls and possums in Melbourne\u2019s suburbs have become more brazen, and feels troubled by it. For the last few years, he has been picking apart humanity\u2019s complicated relationship with animals while writing and painting his book Tales from the Inner City… Tan is perhaps most renowned as an artist, for the detailed pencil masterpieces seen in his wordless book The Arrival and his odd, bulbous inventions in The Lost Thing, the film adaptation of which won him an Academy award…<\/p>\n

Explaining how Tales came to exist, he says: \u201cI told my publisher, \u2018Look here. This is a book. It\u2019s finished. Do you want it or not?\u2019\u201d Fortunately, they said yes… As Tan read more and more on food production and animal intelligence, he noticed Tales was becoming steadily darker. \u201cThe more I researched each animal, and the more I learned about how we treat them, the more depressing it got. Our relationship with nature is completely dysfunctional,\u201d he says. The best description he can give is that it is \u201cspiritually wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard to say if that is a consequence of contemporary life or if it has been [there] since we started picking up tools and cracking bones open, but the post-industrial relationship with animals is way more troubled than it\u2019s ever been,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I look at indigenous societies, the relationship [with animals] still feels complicated, but it is far more respectful. Even when slaughtering and eating them, they display a level of respect that we don\u2019t show to animals in our society. We\u2019re not being mean to animals \u2013 but there is evil in obliviousness”…<\/p>\n

The problem, he feels, is that humans are chauvinists. Why else, he asks, do we privilege animals that can do things we can do, and ignore other forms of intelligence that we don\u2019t have? He talks about a 2007 experiment where, after showing that chimps had better short-term memory than humans in a public demonstration, the lead researcher anticipated that some would dismiss the animals as \u201csuper-chimps\u201d, adding: \u201cSome humans are uncomfortable with the idea that beasts are cleverer than us, because we are supposed to be their intellectual superiors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are amazed at ourselves too much,\u201d says Tan. \u201cWe bestow value on animals because we see ourselves in them. Dolphins, dogs, horses, pigs \u2013 we admire them in a narcissistic way. And our thought processes are deeply unfair and contradictory. We\u2019ll eat a pig but pat a dog \u2013 that is very hard to rationalise”…<\/p>\n

His story about bears encapsulates both the humour and horror in Tan\u2019s voice. After a class action (Ursidae v Homo sapiens) is filed, humanity finds out that its legal system isn\u2019t the only one: \u201cThere are as many systems as there are species \u2026 Human Law isn\u2019t even very high on this hierarchy (apparently we are just below Walrus Law) and Bear Law actually takes precedence in most cases”… The bears asked us to relinquish our hold on all that never belonged to us in the first place.\u201d Just look to human history for the outcome \u2013 it doesn\u2019t end well for the bears.<\/p>\n

Tan wrote the story after learning about animal law, an emerging field that recognises the rights of nonhuman animals and the environment. \u201cThere is a constant tension in human society between rationality and reality, that the same rules should apply to all people, and the fact that a lot of our systems become an instrument to carrying out someone\u2019s will. The bear story is not that crazy. We have trouble tolerating our own kind; how on earth would we deal with other intelligent species?…<\/p>\n

Writing Tales initially made Tan a vegetarian, but he winces when I ask if he\u2019s stuck to it. \u201cWhen I won the Kate Greenaway, I wondered if people would ask \u2026 Lockdown has made it a bit harder. This is a problem with the human condition: we find it harder to function at the level we would like to when there is so much going on. Even going to the supermarket and seeing empty shelves \u2013 I bet very few people decided to embark on their vegan adventure now. It is difficult to be the best person you can in these circumstances. But there are a bigger set of philosophical questions that I haven\u2019t dealt with, and I think if I did, I\u2019d come to the conclusion that veganism is the most logical thing to be doing at this point in history”.\u00a0 SOURCE…<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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