Anthropomorphism and the holocaust misattribution

I feel like i may have just written a badly arranged animal rights piece for my extra credit reflection paper (Comparative psychology). and that this may scare anyone who reads it but.... i've been thinking about these for almost the whole semester and well, i dunno. he said write about anything.

it's my last semester, why not ey? and, AND, i'm going to use this as evidence for me trying to have stronger opinions.

I may have taken it too seriously. i didn't think i would tie it to the holocaust. but meh, life never really goes the way we want it.

what can you do.

judge me if you will.

Reflection Paper

So, taking this class has been pretty interesting so far. Comparative psychology is really quite something, and we can, very clearly, see that our lecturer (you) are really passionate about what you do (especially anything honey bee related) and that really made class interesting and fun for us. We enjoyed all the videos you showed us. The one with the honeybees strapped in and had to stick their proboscis out (bomb-detection) was so cute. The assignments were also really interesting, but there were so many choices.There were so many things I wanted to do, and I may have been too ambitious. 

 I realized, from this class, that I am really interested in things like Theory of mind and self-awareness, and this relates to other things like pro-sociality, emotions and empathy. The latter two weren’t really covered so much but as I was researching for the assignment I found a load of stuff relating to these (see Bekoff,’s 2006 book, I think). I couldn’t include it in my assignment as I had originally planned to but reading was very interesting (again, I apologise for handing it in so late and for the spelling errors). Apparently, animals having emotions is actually quite a new thing and it’s not really an accepted idea, which is really strange. Still, I get how it can be argued both ways. Animal emotion is a little hard to prove, the most they can go is through negative and positive affect (like the experiment with honey bees where they shake them and they behave more “pessimistically” or “optimistically” in response to neutral stimuli depending on how they were treated before). I somehow feel like that isn’t accurate enough because emotion encompasses so much more. Hopefully sometime in the future someone will think of something better?

 I read somewhere (I think it was in Bekoff’s book, but it was on Googlebooks) where the author says that “it is not a question of whether animals experience emotion, but why the emotions have evolved” something like that. And I found that really interesting. The author also goes on to say things like animals do experience emotions, just differently from humans (I can’t remember the exact words, but I agreed with it). I know that humans tend to anthropomorphise, especially animal lovers (like me), but I find the notion of humans being the only organisms capable of “feeling” quite ridiculous and elitist. Emotions are one thing, but some actually question whether or not animals can feel pain, and this quite pisses me off. I’m pretty sure they can feel pain. Maybe this is a way people rationalize animal testing or hurting others because if they can’t feel pain then it makes it “ok”. But, I don’t agree with it. Who are we to say that we are so much more evolved that only we can experience emotions? Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up watching cartoons where the main characters are animals but I really don’t think we should think of them as so much less. Elephants mourn the dead, dolphins help.. I suppose it can be argued using the evolutionary standpoint but, still. Sometimes I feel that animals are capable of showing a lot more love and etc. than we are. So what I’m saying is, is anthropomorphizing really such a bad thing?

Maybe if we anthropomorphized a bit more, we’d see more beauty in the world and practice more (haha) empathy in a way, because we’d be attributing human values, emotions and etc. into other things and animals. Also, mean-ness and ill-intentions grow, it’s learned sometimes. I feel like by anthropomorphizing, people may be better of. Maybe it’d help them see that animals and humans, and people in general aren’t so different after all. We’d stop dehumanizing others and maybe there’d be more peace. I can’t say for sure, but it’s just my opinion, and I hope I’m articulating it properly. Obviously, I agree with the idea that animals do experience emotions, but that it may be different from the way we do (it would be incredible if we could find evidence for this).

Disclaimer: This is what I’ve been thinking about as I did my research, and throughout the class. For the record, I may have interpreted the writings wrongly, maybe researchers aren’t saying exactly this per se. And in any case, there are still two sides to everything. Animal testing, whether I like it or not, does help, but the same can be said about Hitler’s experiments. We learned a lot more about biology and etc. from his experiments, no matter how twisted they were. Just food for thought.

also, seeing as this post is about animals. i just want to post this here, or i'll never get the chance. IS THIS NOT THE COOLEST THING EVER?! so incredible.

i will leave you with this

cutest thing ever.

completely irrelevantly, i'm actually really quite proud that i have so many reaction gifs now, and that i can finally use them for something. very excellent.

(additionally, it occurs to me that i misinterpreted some things in the class. and that anthropomorphism was not meant to be taken in this way. HA.)