What do you think of the word "domestication", and the general treatment of children and animals?

Question

I ask this because some folks with more animal liberationist tend to get pretty emotional about the subject, and to me there just seems to be a general trend for people not to want to worry about beings who cannot speak for themselves. It seems that the whole impulse to want to "help the weak" or something is that which can be laughed off real easily, and generally doesn't seem like too good of a thing to worry about.

Comments

i rstrongly ecommend ivan illich's deschooling society. fwtw

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Here are a couple things from Layla AbdelRahim that might be of interest to chew on:

http://moretht.blogspot.ca/2015/12/wild-children-domesticated-dreams.html

http://www.fifthestate.org/archive/391-springsummer-2014/education-domestication-inner-space/

I'd also recommend her book Wild Children, Domesticated Dreams.

I don't know that I agree wither her perspective and conclusions completely (and hence I am still trying to formulate an answer to this...), I really appreciate the way she fuses green anarchism, feminism, her background in anthropology (and her hatred of the academy), and her experience as a mother.

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i read the 5th estate essay, i dig her emphasis on how schools make us break the world down into categories, yet i feel her description of primitive societies to be a tad bit romantic

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rs666: as an a-p, it would be surprising if she did not romanticize primitive peoples. however, this was a bit surprising to me: i read some blog or something where she was arguing with some meat-eater; she came across as one of those really annoying dogmatic vegans, to me. 

just goes to show, when it comes to other folks' ideas/writings, take what you like and leave the rest. don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. [insert similar cliche...]

layla vs lierre keith, for the mma feminist-foodnazi-primitivist world title!

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just wanna give my thumbs up to:

af: "i feel beings do speak for themselves and we've mostly forgotten how to listen."

baa: "experiences with most people regarding children and animals, i notice a strong tendency toward treating them as possessions"

rs666's general association of domestication with the whole psych industry and their ways of dealing with "uncontrollable" youth. fucking odd (oppositional defiant disorder)? seriously? (you know they wanted to call that shit aad: anti authoritarian disorder.)

Answer 1

having a long history of affinity with green anarchist thought, i kinda like the word "domestication", so far as i understand it. i think it is one of the less ambiguous words used by folks critical of civilization, at least at a broad level. however, outside of anti-civ circles, the use of the term often does not include humans. which for me is definitely problematic. virtually all modern humans are domesticated, to some degree or another. 

as for the general treatment of children and non-human animals, in the context described in the question, i feel like that is more related to the concept of charity and (as rs666 mentioned) "helping the weak". while domestication is a large part of what makes children/non-human animals (as well as adult human animals) seen as "weak", i'm not sure what the relationship is between the two (domestication and charity/helping the weak). i'm also not sure about the relationship between those seen as "weak" and those seen as incapable of "speaking for themselves".

as for speaking for oneself, i'd say that is way too generally applied. most children i've known that are older than 2 or so can surely express themselves, at least in terms of what they like/want vs not. even non-human animals have ways of expressing their needs and desires (especially related to humans), and an individual that has any kind of connection with them will typically be able to read those expressions, more or less. communication is not nearly as limited as most humans seem to think it is (and most humans are far worse at it than they think they are, myself obviously included).

and what about non-animal life? plants have been domesticated for as long as animals (human and non) have, and they can't "speak for themselves". i know most people consider any life without a human-detectable central nervous system to be biologically incapable of things like fear, desire, pain, love, joy, etc. and of course that comes from science(tm), so fact it is. i make no such assumptions. and honestly, that is the logic used by ideological vegans to "prove" that their mode of food consumption is "good", and all others are "bad". (just as anti-vegans use science to "prove" their own eating habits are the correct ones).

"helping the weak" really seems to be the crux of this question, and to me it seems largely separate from the issue of domestication. to me that is more a matter of ideology and relationships. 

charity is a capitalist, classist, hierarchichal, non-mutualistic construct. numerous ideologies employ it as part of their package (liberalism, progressivism, many forms of religionism, capitalism, etc). so it should be easy for anarchists to reject it, imo.

i think that like anything else, "helping the weak" needs to be seen within the context of a given situation. as an ideology, fuck that shit. as a personal response to a situation that one is close to, i may well intervene if it seems appropriate given my understanding of the situation and those involved (human and otherwise). that is really no different than how i would treat any situation. the situation may include a being that is less capable, in some relevant way, than the other(s). that is nothing more than additional context to be considered.

[maybe this should be a comment?]

Comments

is any desire to help other living beings then some sort of catholic/liberal hogwash? I'll admit that my thinking when asking this question was a tad moralistic (or very however you want to interpret it), i posted this in part out of my general frustration with how society tends to trap living beings in boxes in both a figurative and literal sense, but does a rejection of moralism imply a total rejection of altruism?

"as for speaking for oneself, i'd say that is way too generally applied. most children i've known that are older than 2 or so can surely express themselves, at least in terms of what they like/want vs not."

i tend to agree for the most part, except i feel that this line of thinking skirts around the complexities in modern society that come with giving a shit about children, which is something that i wanted to address with this question, but i guess it wasn't a great question to begin with. I guess part of the limits of the scope of conversation in this forum is that it's pretty limited to generalities....and HTML lol

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rs666:  "is any desire to help other living beings then some sort of catholic/liberal hogwash?"

i was saying that is the case only when it is ideologically driven, rather than being a dynamic, personal response based on context etc.

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in the service of being a contrarian voice (ha), i'll argue briefly for the idea of having a set of standards that are not entirely individually chosen or contextual.

there is something to be said for having a standards that expect that we can do more than we think we can. the idea that we do things not because we want to but because they're the right thing to do, and that we do it with a sense of power and expansiveness NOT GUILT or ressentiment, is pretty powerful as an idea and practice. i think that mostly people are so against morality (those of us who are) because we so rarely experience it done properly...

but perhaps the idea that it's so hard to do well is its own argument against? i don't know...

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good question, rs666, despite your own objections.... :)

just a quick thought....

regarding young people.....i often tend to help them toward their desires, not because they can't speak for themselves, and not because i view them as weak, but because i see the additional extent to which their lives get controlled by just about everyone from parents to teachers, to any "adult" on the street who feels they must correct or control or dictate the young person's behavior and thoughts.

and i also tend toward helping them because (generally) i still see their desire for freedom more clearly and strongly than i do with most people beyond school age.

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dot:  "the idea that we do things not because we want to but because they're the right thing to do"

what, then, makes them the "right thing to do"?

edited to add:

i wonder if we just have different ideas of what constitutes "context". how would you describe "a set of standards that are not entirely individually chosen or contextual", without them being ideologically driven?

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another thought....i also like to assist children with resistance to authority because i almost always get immediately reminded of my own childhood struggles when i see theirs....it angers me, it propels me to act when i witness the level of control people wield over them (even older kids toward younger ones)....in other words, i resonate with their feelings of feeling trapped and controlled.

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yep FA, did you not see the part about me being contrarian?

i don't know what would make something the right thing to do. maybe saving someone's life? or saving our own life? or killing someone? or all of the above?

indeed, i am questioning the anti-ideology tendency here and in myself. perhaps because anti-ideology can also be an ideology? or maybe just because i'm easily entertained?

many options.

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dot, i can see how anti-ideology can function as ideology, but i think that happens because of our constant exposure to ideology, not the lack of it.

when i spend time walking in the mountains, or watching woodpeckers gather acorns, or staring at a full moon, or laughing with another person, or making music....i usually forget all about ideology, even anti-ideology, and i often have an awareness of what it means to simply live and breath without thoughts of systems, either for or against them.

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i did see that, but i assumed you understood that "contrarian" means contrary to anything OTHER than what I say. :-)

i do hear you on the anti-ideology ideology dilemma. at some point it becomes over analyzed, imo.

edit: oops, ba@ slipped in before this got posted, it was a response to dot.

ba@: finding joy in life, without being encumbered by ideologies, dogmas, systems, etc. yep. wouldn't it be nice if that was even a desire for most folks?

Answer 2

The response I'd started to write was more theoretical, and was focused On domestication as a concept. Looking at the comments to FA's answer, I feel like I have a better perspective of how to respond in this milieu.

First (and as I think I've said before), I come very much from a pro-animal liberation background. That background colors a lot of how I move through the world, even while I don't believe in ideas like animal rights.

Like FA, I find the term helpful (and similarly come from a generally GA perspective), but I find problems with how it is discussed by a lot of anti-civ folks (mostly anarcho-primitivists). As I understand the process, domestication is a slow and very insidious thing. Initial waves of domestication took r thousands of years to happen, and it is not exactly the same as slavery, even if it is undesirable (I suppose we could have a Derrick Jensen flight of fancy about what the tomato plant wants, but that seems like derailment). Dogs, for example, are domesticated in part because they chose to live in closer habitation with humans because if benefited their needs

I seriously doubt the first wolves to start hanging out near human encampments and stealing food saw that as a step towards my best friend who is napping in the other room right now, and I also doubt that my ancestors saw those first non-aggressive canis as a tool for hunting, protection, companionship.

I am also wary of how the term is used in relation to children. I don't see domestication as being the same as acculturation of socialization, which is often how I see the term used in this context by anarchists. All children absorb the teachings of their particular communities or societies or civilizations. Domestication to me goes back (again) to a longer game. I don't know that we can talk of any point in homo sapiens sapiens as a species of being undomesticated.

So that was some of the theory, here is my take on animal lib:

It isn't that mink in fur farms, or chickens in battery cages, or bunnies and chimps being tested on are domesticated that pisses me off, it is that they are being enslaved. Just like people are (still) enslaved. As an anarchist that makes me mad. Really mad. I like to see those cages opened.

I am more hesitant when we start looking at animal sanctuaries, re-homing, etc. but I also don't think it is realistic to expect beings freed from the worst civilization can do t necessarily acclimate to living wild. This is where the process of domestication comes in (cows living wild is not gonna work - though I did encounter some wild chickens once in Redmond, WA near the Eddy Bauer HQ and the Microsoft campus that had regained the ferocity of their velociraptor ancestors, but that is another story). Personally, I have an appreciation for the animal liberations where cages are opened, fences are cut, and the animals can do as the choose.

I think when people veer into talking about animal rights, I tend to be wary, but as far as open cells or open cages? Fuck yes I am for that. I don't think it changes much in the broader sweep of things (though I can think of particular liberations or campaigns that changed the course of industries). I am absolutely in favor of wildness and having a shot at being free, even if it ends in death or some environmental degradation (though this is a weird, uncomfortable spot for me).

 Where there is rub for me is what about animals so domesticated they don't know how to live without human? I am still working on that, I'll get right back at you when I've come up with the solution

(says the guy with a garden, two dogs, some fish, and a turtle living with him.... fwiw the coyotes ate my cat last summer, so, take that domestication!)

(wait... why are there coyotes in a major city? are they DOMESTICATED?)

Comments

fa,

I reread Only a Tsunami Will Do, and while I am in agreement with some of Rita Katrina Andrew's assertions (in regards to second wave feminism, new age garbage, and the left) I find the critique to feel a bit hollow leveled at feminism as a whole. The picture painted of feminists just doesn't reflect the perspectives of most people I know who use that label, people who recognize that oppressed/oppressor are not discreet categories.

It could be a generational thing (RKA identifies as 50 when this was written in 2005, I am now 40, so my cohort is probably a bit younger than hers, though I also know and am friends with folks that age whose feminism is much more nuanced than the picture in this rant paints), or perhaps based on regional differences, but this piece is really unpersuasive to me.

That doesn't mean I am bearing a torch for identity politics, but I've always understood feminism as a set of tools to specifically attack patriarchy, not as the only tools one needs, but ones useful for this particular task. Nor do I really care about the label feminist, and while I don't apply the label to myself ("Hi, I'm ingrate and I'm a feminist!"), I also haven't ever been convinced by arguments to totally abandon the label or the critical tools I acquired from feminism.

(edited on not my phone for clarity... I am blaming technology, but it was actually bad writing)

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Ugh. Wrote the sbove comment on my phone and upon rereading today it is very unclear. Will rewrite for clarity later today... Yes, the irony of typing an anticiv response on a smart phone is not lost on me...

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ingrate: no doubt that the "feminists" one knows will influence one's conceptions and critiques of feminism. my own experience is not too far from what would appear to be rka's, in terms of who i have known that identifies as feminist. and while that essay is clearly a very personal rant, most of it resonates with me deeply. i have met very few folks that identify as feminist, who do not fall into the trap of essentialist, dogmatic identity politics. and i do mean politics. that includes virtually every person i have ever met (and spent some time talking to) who majored in "women's studies" - that academic holy grail of feminism. 

what is it about academics that makes them tend so strongly towards ideological/dogmatic perspectives? but i guess that's another topic...

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I think this is another topic worth exploring, and I also think it is interesting how much our experiences shape our engagement with certain labels, if we were talking about leftists as opposed to feminists, I would make almost the exact same arguments RKA and you are putting forth, but I have personally experienced feminism as, while connected to leftism, also apart from it (kinda like anarchism?). This is a pretty fertile area of exploration...

Regarding academics, I think there is a way that academia silos things into particular fields (women's studies, anthropology, psychology, etc) that leads to a really myopic POV. Since many people in academia have very specialized areas of research this then creates a sort of expertocracy, which reinforces siloing fields of inquiry, which strengthens the authority of the experts, which....

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also, and I know I am not blowing anyone's mind with this, academia is pretty much always structured to reinforce the society it is a part of. Even when individual academics might do transgressive work, the structure of their work and what is acceptably academic research and writing ends up providing more service to the status quo.