1. Humans can learn “animal” in exactly the ways Clive Wynne does. By observing very closely the interactions animals have with other members of their own species. Watching how a dog interacts with a person only shows how dogs interact with people. To truly attempt to understand a what a dog might be thinking, or at the very least become better at predicting its behavior, one must observe the dog interacting with other dogs. Learn how the dog asserts itself. How does it attempt to fit into a new group of dogs? A clear understanding of the behaviors dogs exhibit in these situations can then give us an idea of what it really means when a dog growls or barks. Is he barking at the mail man to say, “Go away” or is he barking an alarm to tell his owner that there’s someone approaching the house? Maybe the dog is just excited because he knows that particular mail man carries treats with him.
Clive understood and acknowledged that the divers who rescued the whale genuinely felt that they were being shown gratitude by the whale. But he wouldn't confirming that that is what the whale was actually doing because he doesn’t “speak whale.” Being a scientist, this is a fair point. For him to confirm that the whale was thanking these divers for saving it from the crab traps, he would likely have to spend years observing whales closely enough to witness (many times) a whale A bumping whale B several times, then starring at it for 15 minutes or so after whale B did something to help whale A like removing a crab trap. His point being that it’s impossible to truly know what that whale was doing.
2. I think it is definitely important to have a connection with one’s environment. A feeling of connectedness is what people mean by being “grounded.” I think its important that we all feel grounded in some way. We need to have some deep sense of our place in our world to keep us from feeling overwhelmed by all the things we try to do in our lives. People seem to get busier and busier all the time. We have class, then work, then more class, then sports, then family and we try to juggle all these things every day. While advancing technologies boast abilities and features designed to make people more productive, this constant immersion in digital screens and the constant race to the next appointment pulls people away from the natural environment. When we take time to quiet ourselves and take even just a minute to look away from the screen and watch a squirrel run, stop, look, run some more and scurry up a tree, we can find a sense of calm and tranquility that can’t be found on the Discovery Channel. And taking just that minute to notice a squirrel going about her business, can cause one to notice more squirrels crossing one’s path. Soon enough, if one pays attention, one finds oneself looking for squirrels in the trees and in the grass. I do this myself and that little bit of enjoyment that comes from watching cute squirrels be cute and frantic in their own lives helps me feel just a little less frantic in mine.
I believe that what Clive Wynne means when he says that it diminishes the whale is that it makes it less majestic and more animalistic. Animals have this innocence to them almost like a child. For them to think and feel how we would as human beings, though we are mammals as well, it tears away the idea of this majestic innocent animal. I agree in that this beautiful being able to see the world as I see it is somewhat depressing and it makes me think less of the whale. Not less necessarily but not as impressed as I had been initially in the sense that this creature is just like me except 200x bigger. I was fascinated at the fact the whale looked all the divers in the eyes and engaged with them. I would never have thought them capable of those kind of connections regardless that they are mammals.
ReplyDeleteIn the reading, “The Serpents of Paradise” I believe that the author was connected to his environment in a weird way. He talks about a few different creatures that he comes into contact with directly that he seems to have an empathy for. The mice, the rattlesnake, and the gopher snake. He doesn’t feel the need to kill any of the animals because he is a park ranger and believes that to be wrong. However when he invited the gopher snake into his home that is when he lost me, I do not like snakes at all, what so ever. But that showed me that he did indeed have a connection with these animals and had a great respect for them. In the end I learned that the gopher snake in return had respect for the author as well.
I don't necessarily think trying to figure out the whale's intention diminishes her, but that's probably because it's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that animals can express emotion in ways that aren't at all recognizable to humans. That sort of bias is really hard to eliminate because our emotions are all that we know. I definitely think the emotional connections we have with our pets cloud our judgments when it comes to whether or not they're feeling the same things that we are, though. There's no greater way to manipulate humans than by way of their emotions -- when it FEELS real, it IS real -- so the emotions we experience tend to overpower any semblance of logic or statistic (and animals could be very well aware of that fact.) Clive Wynne confirms the emotional bias himself when he mentions that, when discussing his pet, he can either wear the hat of a scientist or the hat of the owner of his pet. So, ultimately, I don’t think our efforts to relate the intentions of the whale to human emotion or gesture (“thanks”) diminishes the whale so much as it diminishes us humans for not being able to overcome our biases. Edward Abbey seems to undergo the same emotional conflict in Serpents of paradise when he’s overcome by so much fear that he ends up ruining his opportunity to "connect" with the gopher snakes. This is especially obvious to me when he laments, “If I had been as capable of trust as I am susceptible to fear I might have learned something new or some truth so very old we all forgotten it.”
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