Carnivores, animal hierarchies and dogs
Humanity does see animals as edible but this is culturally subjective. Animals are placed in a hierarchy of de-animalisation. Dogs are cute and bugs are gross. Some people hate dogs but less people are happy to eat them scorning the Chinese. Those who eat bugs are dehumanised. People like to play with cats but will never eat them. People eat pork but will never play with them. The correlation is interesting, yet it is more ironic the habituated relation constructed.
Edible animals is entirely habituation. Jews are grossed out from pork because it is embedded in their culture. Grasshoppers as well but they are kosher yet still disgusted because it is not normal. Americans detest eating dogs today because they are man’s best friend. They also don’t eat horses because of their generational utility. Americans eat pigs and Chinese eat dogs. Routinely eating animals will lose their weirdness. What is normal is not perceived in the drastic otherness. There is a primitive stereotype on the Chinese by Americans for eating dogs. Evil Chinese eat cute dogs, let’s nuke them. Disgusted by a mere unordinary routine. Fine eating all sorts of animals except those routinely uneaten.
Societies determine what is permissible to eat and not. A negative society would bemoan eating animals entirely. While vegans are in the minority these days, in time habituated or in an enclosed society it could become more expansive revolting from animal ingestion. The same goes for cannibal groups. The average person cannot comprehend but it is routine in that culture. It is a language game. Anything outside the norm is otherness and scary. Differences emerge over time but the differences becomes ideological variance. The incapacity to eat a human or a dog is relative to the symbiotic nature between nature and nurture. Growing up there was a poisonous feeling to unkosher food but its unpleasant stench diminished with some neurological rethinking. Making excuses for unkosher dairy and then the next step to meat may not have been simple but possible. It is evolutionary but the mind begins to feel differently changing the ingestion.
Dog may be gross and have nothing to do with prior phobia. Not everything is nutritious to everyone. Yet those squeamish to certain foods are neurologically monitored to dislike a certain food. Think about a dog. A dog is man’s best friend in the american mind. If you cannot eat your friend, you cannot eat a dog. There is no issue with murder but there is with eating dogs. We have become so domesticated to other vices like killing and stealing that it does not deeply bother us. It is not as mentally disheartening than eating dog. How society values its society and how it expresses those values will indeed impact societal views. Whether or not there is an innate or inherited distaste for blood is neutralised with consistent exposure. The relational attitude is normalised with more persistent encountering. Eating dog would be normalised if eaten routinely. The mental block slowly erodes into oblivion. The demotivation forms in an initial resistance. Building up walls to reinforce to no eating dog policy.
This challenges the belief that any vices are axiomatic or simply habituated social constructions. Vices were socially ingrained as methods to avoid societal collapse and maximised human life. They are seen as the divine ethic yet these are mere reinforced intuitions. The rational faculty bolsters the ideal but yet makes changes. Murder is wrong for some but not others. There are exceptions whether through revenge, war, foreigners. The justification is about the relation to the party involved. Habituated to not harm family but not dangerous foreigners. Christians killed Jews not even on clerical orders. Crusaders of their own volition massacred Jewish towns. Their educated contempt manifested in taking revenge for christ. This relational attitude only spread in strategies. Exile, pogroms, blood libels. The sole solution in their mercy was conversion so then the relation altered. He was not a christian no longer acquainted existentially with Jews. The devil sign on his forehand erased.
It is not changing the rules to fit a narrative. These relational attitudes are evolutionary. They are traumatic avenues that spark a quick intuition to caution. Alerting the individual this is deeply problematic. Each encounter springs a red siren screaming in agony. A hysteria emerges in the mind freezing him altering his mood tremendously. The same can be said of Jews and Germany. For many, saying the word Germany disgusts them. It raises the horrific disaster crumbling his family. Triggered by the notion he refuses to buy any German product. Animosity towards another subject is not necessarily the subject itself but its representation. German cars represent production to exterminate Jews and German people represent Nazis. Institutional education is the genus of the malice endowed on others. The harsher the dialogue as well as a person’s emotional instigation yields phobic clarity. A younger individual with little ties to the travesty finds little issue with Germans.
Hitler’s dehumanisation of Jews exposed them to harsh conditions. Loaded in cattle cars akin to its animalistic function and funnelled like sheep to the slaughterhouse. They did not simply dehumanise them, they analogised Jews with weak farm animals. The average German citizen even if not a farmer or hunter was aware of cattle’s ineptitude. They followed through on a farming industry with humans. Not even batting an eye. Arendt’s banality of evil has some truth to it. Once the idea is preached consistently in the main media, it takes centerstage in the mind. Propaganda gradually worsening is not caught by the ignorant public. The Nazi brilliance scapegoated Jews. First it blamed them, outcasting them, stealing their land then moving them off then killing them. While many remained silence out of fear. The habituated narrative was the devilish Jew. As the propaganda evolved its periodic development did not phase the citizen. He grew to accept this reality. They deserved it. Those in the language game failed to eclipse the system and relied on the supplied relational image as it swiftly altered in time.
An evolving narrative is similar to doctoring images. If an individual goes undercover on an assignment. He cannot contact his family. The immediate changes made to the photos are unnoticeable but in time he is an unrecognisable person. A similar example is exercising. The first few days will not see any change but at some point results will show. Not from a single change but consistent changes. It is a slow evolutionary process that drastically alters the original version. Enough exposure engulfed in an echo chamber will come to believe its truth. Politics works this way as well. News networks produce a monolithic perspective that their side is correct. Polarisation is the result of narrow-minded ignorance. Failing to consider the other side. Comfortable with view as the only truth. It has to be. The dread that comes from being wrong is daunting. The fear that the entire world will collapse is phobic but mentally real. Stooped in a monistic attitude enrages otherness. Any alternative is riddled with nonsense. Defensive retaliation and triggered hysteria are common reactions.
Images have a visual impact scarring the eyes but words have a terrible affect as well. Sticks and stones may brake my bones but words will never harm me, but they do severely. Words embody images. Words cater the soul cultivating an image. The crusader attacking the Jew is due to the educational lessons. He never saw Jesus’ death at the hands of Jews. It may never have occurred but the story is so real in its narration that he desires to take revenge. Guns are dangerous more than the image, the word in American society in certain areas is a curse word. A type of it should not be named. In the states guns are associated with school shootings freaking people out. In Israel no one bats an eye and feels safer seeing civilians holstering pistols as a sign of protection. Improper and even devilish in New York unless a police officer who has been given that privilege to protect embedded in youth education. Curse words are bad words while others are dubbed bathroom words. Some are insulting, some are used in an insulting context. Shit, Fuck and Bitch mean objects/action. Yet can be used insultingly.
On the other hand there are bathroom words that are not considered swear words like penis, pee pee, sex. Profanity is measured in hierarchical structure how they are perceived. Curse words are words used to insult while bathroom words are sexually related words. Yet words like stupid, shut up and idiot are mean words. They are insulting and while a mother will scold her child for saying a mean word to his younger brother she will not wash his mouth out with soap the same way for saying dumbass or asshole. Society regulates certain words to certain categories. In some households they are defended and others show little concern. What many deem inappropriate is a product of habitation not bad mothering. Cunt is really bad in the states but more acceptable in Northern England and normal conversation in Australia. There is a sensitivity in America to the derogatory slur towards woman but is more freely used in other societies. It may have to due with personalities. A more sarcastically dark humoured bunch will enjoy yelling at another laughing. All the while when typed ostriches are used because how dare the word be able to be scene. The image of word itself carries impeccable weight.
Sceptics who eclipse the situation and perceive difference cannot unsee what they have seen. This is usually in the case of images. The KFC logo is really a big head with a tiny body. Yet even if cannot unsee it you technically can by zooming out. Ambiguous images are those with two possibilities. Seeing a duck and a rabbit can both be seen. They both exist but it depends on where one is looking. Rubin’s Vase projecting a vase and two people facing one another is an illusion whereby both are realised once the second half appears it cannot be unseen. Both still remain. There is a relation to both sides. Interestingly, it is maturity in reflecting on how far we’ve grown. Teenagers laughing at their teacher reading the assigned book aloud reading curse word after curse through the narrative. Smirking at the sexually explicit plot lines. A mature individual habituated to sexual experiences and cursing whether self executed or in the know does not bat an eye. Conservative religious folk will gasp at such literacy. Even though they have matured their lack of exposure and their purity lifestyle is defiled in an immediate traumatic moment. Exposure is the key to normalisation of the ideal.
Transcending emotional ties to ideas is not simple. Even those who realising a new side of things. Teenagers standing up for veganism break from the habituated carnivore norm. Both are emotionally tied to their view. Challenging one another in intellectual debates that are merely straw manning one another never actually trying to understand one another. The only way to recede from emotional output is to be open to any possibility, Do not transition from one idea to another. This does not break the current. The relational attitude is ideologically dogmatic. The religiously laced motivation and universal pride though does not habit the same murderous rage does lower to screaming in childish fits. Apologetically throwing stones at the questioner. The sceptic asks but is riddled with attacks. The defensive mindset is reactionary. People make their ideas their identity. Ideas change with education. Yet this relation is polarised and prevents growth. While one sees an issue one way the other sees it entirety different unable to acknowledge one another disgusted by the possibility of variance. A pluralistic society is theoretically allowed not practically.
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