#Roman is hedonistic and enjoys his food

[masquenoire]

OOC//What about foods he doesn’t like? Is he picky or will he eat something even if he doesn’t enjoy it?

Roman has a pretty balanced sense of taste. He ate a wide variety of food growing up as a child and was exposed to exotic dishes on a regular basis, meaning that while there are some things he doesn’t like very much, he’ll eat them if he has to. He IS picky however; his dishes must be made with quality, fresh ingredients so cheap food pumped full of sugars and additives isn’t something he’s going to like. Arkham is notorious for this, cutting corners by serving sub-par meals as so not to go over budget and Roman will refuse to eat for days upon coming back, hating the poor quality, lukewarm meals he barely considers fit for pigs, let alone human beings. Nobody has a fun time when Roman gets hauled back to Arkham Asylum, least of all when he’s hangry so staff tend to look the other way when he bribes employees to bring food from outside premises.

[santmat]

Hedonists and Gnostic Cave-dwellers Somewhere in Time By James Bean

The classic Gnostic soul struggled against the cruel hand of fate, astral archons (rulers), principalities, powers, emperors, and bishops. The Gnostic teachings from the Coptic/Greek period have quite an ascetic tone. "The material universe is evil", "be not of this world." Holy texts were studied by Pachomian monks living in caves not far from Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The discovery site of the Gnostic Gospels was near those caves. On the walls of some of those caves are examples of graffiti: crosses and fish symbols. After the Fourth Century, Gnosis mostly disappears from the scene in the Roman Empire due to extreme persecution from those who paid lip-service to phrases like "love your enemies", and' "turn the other cheek", but they had no concept of democracy and freedom of religion -- freedom for all religions. The Library of Alexandria was burned, the Nag Hammadi Library, buried.

In the East however, Gnosis continued to develop and evolve, taking on more of an ecstatic, poetic ethos during the medieval period. The type of Eastern Gnosis I follow isn't so ascetic as Nag Hammadi mysticism. After all, the lower material universe is no longer a "prison" for those who can freely come and go as they please. This changes everything. I know of some mystics that are very otherworldly and yet can also enjoy looking at the stars, feasting on great Indian food, love the ocean or a beautiful sunset. Very out-of-this-world during meditations, and at the same time, we come to see the Light of God everywhere, within everyone, in this outer plane of existence as well, all as a result of those advanced meditation experiences. "His Presence fills the Three Worlds". (Adi Granth) Such extremists we humans are, either hedonists or cave-dwellers. We were meant to go from state to state, from the world of action to the world of contemplation, from the waking state to the dream state to the unconscious state of deep sleep, and there is also the Fourth State beyond. This too can be divided into several levels or states: astral, causal or akashic, mental, etheric, and spiritual, the True State (Timeless, Sat, Haq, "Spirit and Truth". Full circle we come. The spiritual state can also be perceived as four different stages, ranging from the "drop" (the soul) remaining separate, to "nearness", and all the way to that of Oneness or merging into the Divine Ocean (Kaivalaya, Anadi, Anami, Ra-Dha-Swam-I, the "Nameless One in the Eighth").

Know also that the Reality has described Himself as being the Outer and the Inner, Manifest and Unmanifest. He brought the Cosmos into being as constituting an Unseen Realm and a Sensory Realm, so that we might perceive the Inner though our unseen and the Outer through our sensory aspect. (Ibn `Arabi, "Ibn Al `Arabi - The Bezels of Wisdom", Paulist Press) Not an easy balancing act, this concept of having one's feet upon the earth and yet one's third eye-soul ascending through various realms going toward the Great Light during practice each day, yet everyone will make it back there eventually. It's simply a matter of "time" and how receptive we are to this experience during the present life. Some are in a hurry to return while others travel much much much more slowly. It was for the sake of the God-conscious beings that our True Lord created this earth, and began this play of birth and death. (Guru Nanak) To Him We Shall Return I died as mineral and became a plant; I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was a man. Then why fear disappearance through death? When was I less by dying? Next time I shall die To soar -- with angels blessed, But even from angelhood I must pass on; All except God doth perish. When I have sacrificed my angel soul, I shall become what no mind ever conceived. What you cannot imagine, I shall be that. Oh! let me not exist, for non-existence Proclaims in organ-tones, 'To Him we shall return.' -- Rumi "We have come from the Light and will return there again." We're already in heaven if we did but know it. A great Master by the name of Huzur Baba Sawan Singh was once asked, "How long does it take you to go to Sach Khand (the spiritual realm, Sat Lok)"? He closed his eyes for fifteen seconds, and then opened them again, saying, "just that long". This is the real Secret. Thy Light is within the beings, And the beings are all within Thy Light. O supremely Incomprehensible Lord, Thou Art perfectly filling all things. It is the Light that lives in every heart, And Thy Light that illuminates every soul. It is only through the guru's teachings that Light comes to be shown. (Guru Nanak, Peace Lagoon translation of the Adi Granth)

[blacksunscorpio]

How can Jupiter in the first house manifest? Thank you✨

Jupiter in the 1st House

The first house is ruled by Aries which is all about the self. The “I Am”. 

As a result, the self will be the focus and all that that implies. Tremendous emphasis on self- expression, self-development, and mobilizing talents. With Jupiter here, it is a fabulous placement. Jupiter is a natural benefic. He is the Roman Counterpart of Zeus. Happy. Interested in others. Individuals with Jupiter here will make friends easily. They forgive easily. They are often lucky which causes them to enjoy/see the “bright side” of life. They often project a jovial persona and are naturally philosophical, searching, and wisdom-seeking in their whole approach to life. It may also be the first thing people notice about them. They embody Jupiterian qualities and this can be seen through their physical appearance or a larger than life persona. Equally, it can be seen through an outgoing nature. They’ll want to travel, explore, see the world or experience other cultures, places and things. They want to collect artifacts. They want to embrace the higher meaning of everything. They’ll be spontaneous and everything will just seem bigger and more grandiose. I’ve noticed 1st house Jupiterians will be quite popular. They’ll know everyone and everyone will know them. 1st House Jupiterians feel most alive when they are taking on something new. When they are being adventurous and expansive [think of Jupiter in Aries] Jupiter here possesses a dignified air and characteristic quality that is cheerful, colorful and benevolent. They’ll be hard pressed to not leave their mark upon the world. If Jupiter is well aspected there may be many fortunate and lucky things happening to the person. They’ll be the types to travel often or have general wanderlust. Don’t expect them to stay in one place for long. Jupiterian Jobs will often involves these things as well.

Physically

Remember, Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system so as a result people with Jupiter in the 1st house [self] can either be quite tall, big boned, have a tendency towards “plumpness” or be of diesel physical stature [buff/ especially if Mars is involved.] They can have rounded faces or natural ‘smile lines’ around their eyes and mouth. I see dimples here a lot. They will have voices that project or be louder than others by nature. They’ll often laugh a lot or be the funniest person in the room. 

Downsides

Remember, I mentioned in Astro Musings No. 1 that Jupiter can show you where your addictions lie just as Pluto can. Jupiter is also about excess and if ill-aspected can indicate over-indulgence. This person can either indulge in too much food, drink, sex [I know Jupiterians/Sag’s that are more over-sexed than Scorpios, lol], gambling, etc. Can be prone to inadvertent weight gain if they are not careful to mind their diets. There’s a decadence that could make Dionysus and Venus jealous. Hedonistic goings-on and restlessness as well. They make leap before looking and perhaps even be overly generous towards others. This can either exhaust their quite vast resources monetarily and emotionally. They can be quite bold or opinionated and may drown out the thoughts and voices of others in their determination to be heard. They can be TOO nice or want to fix those who are broken [be very careful with expending energy on those who do not ask for it, you don’t have to save everyone.] They can also have a penchant for drama or be exaggerators. I’ve also observed a tendency to promise more than they can deliver. They mean well, of course but there can be a lack of follow through because Jupiter wants it all. There isn’t that Saturnian focus and consistency by nature. You’ll want some good Saturn to balance or some good Pluto/Mercury for focus.  How to handle the harder aspects here is being mindful. Moderation is key. Understand that your opinion is not the only one who matters. Tap into that natural altruistic energy and practice tact and self-control in all aspects of life. Meditation helps reign in that wild-free loving energy into energy that can be applied in the best of ways. Do some crown chakra work or 2nd Chakra work [which Jupiter rules]. Remember the more you plan and strategize, the luckier you will be. You’ll have full control of Jupiter’s blessings and all of his luck.

[wrcns]

↪ introduction to wren d’ansembourg.

BASICS

full name: wren marcel d’ansembourg.  nickname(s): vtáčik ( ‘little bird’ in slovak, used exclusively by his fiancé tomas ).  age: twenty-five.  date of birth: 3 june 1995. zodiac sign: gemini.  place of birth: luxembourg city, luxembourg.  ethnicity: white. nationality: luxembourger.  gender: cis male.  sexual orientation: homosexual.  romantic orientation: homoromantic.  religion: roman catholic, though wren isn’t the most diligent catholic ( re: he hasn’t done anything religious of his own volition in years ).  occupation: when he isn’t running amok around his home in luxembourg trying and failing to do his royal duties, he’s an artist -- a painter, more specifically.  language(s) spoken: luxembourgish, french, german, english ( all fluently ). slovak ( not fluently, at this point the best he can do is string together his favorite swear words to make tomas laugh ). accent: his accent is extremely reminiscent of a german accent, though he’s been told it’s softer than the average german accent -- when he’s speaking english, that is. he’s been told his accents in french and german are negligible and difficult to notice -- especially at the pace he usually speaks ( i.e. - wren has never said anything slowly in his twenty-five years of living and doesn’t plan to START ).

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

face claim: maxence danet-fauvel.  hair color: brown.  eye color: blue. height: 180.34 cm ( 5′11″ ). weight: 83 kg ( 183 lbs ). build: lanky, athletic. tattoos: he has a tattoo of a wren on his left forearm ( here ) ; to date he doesn’t have any other tattoos but he’s constantly doodling things he’d be perfectly willing to get tattooed on himself - tomas has, so far, urged him to think about it a bit more.  piercings: he has three piercings in his right ear -- he wears a ring in the lowest one and studs in the upper pair.  distinguishing characteristics: his height, the fact that he always looks like he needs about six months more sleep at any given moment, the way he talks with his hands, the way he dresses. 

PERSONALITY

label: the odd duck. positive traits: capable, clever, compassionate, considerate, creative, curious, daring, dedicated, earnest, empathetic, generous, independent, loyal, observant, passionate, protective, reliable, selfless, warm. negative traits: competitive, irreverent, sarcastic, self-conscious. aloof, anxious, crude, haughty, hedonistic, impulsive, timid, weird. goals/desires: wren’s admittedly very excited to get married when the time comes, to continue living his life as happily as possible even within the protection program.   fears: genuinely doing anything to disappoint or hurt his family, losing his siblings or tomas.  hobbies: painting, driving his siblings absolutely nuts, dreaming up new pranks to pull on his friends and family, doodling ( on clothes, skin, actual paper - wren’s not picky ), chatting with reporters about nonsense things, going on twitter rants about the dumbest things, spending time with his family ( occasionally ), cuddling with tomas, exploring whatever city he happens to be living in as thoroughly as possible, playing soccer, learning how to make films ( god forbid anyone let this man hang onto a camera for a significant length of time ), looking at memes until his eyes hurt.    quirks: most of his sense of humor is based on memes, he almost always has paint smudges on his hands no matter what he’s doing, he’ll switch between languages when he’s talking without thinking-- especially if he’s speaking english and forgets phrases he’ll try and figure out what they are in the other languages he knows and go from there, he can come off pretty aloof but he’s a genuinely social person -- he just tends to be too-tired on any given day to be really over-zealous.  likes: visiting museums when he has the attention span, painting, planning pranks, learning new skills, playing music ( his guitar skills aren’t all that bad and he genuinely enjoys practicing ), mystery novels, memes -- especially if they’re brand new to him, pestering luca, spending time with tomas, planning dates when he’s in the mood, watching documentaries on super obscure subjects, collecting mismatched socks, hanging out with regular people, collecting art supplies, energy drinks, coffee, good beer, good food, flustering tomas.    dislikes: having to be involved in political matters of any kind, most hard liquor, not being taken seriously when he wants to be, people who take themselves too seriously, france, having to be serious for any length of time usually, anyone who fucks with his family.    

FAMILY

father: emile albert james d’ansembourg.  mother: adélaide marie d’ansembourg.  sibling(s): luca phillipe gabriel d’ansembourg, wendy juliette d’ansembourg, lara jeanne d’ansembourg.  pet(s): he doesn’t have any pets at the moment.  financial status: too rich for his own good.

RELEVANT INFORMATION

PERSONALITY — 

Wren is, first and foremost, a genuinely odd person -- or so he’s been told for the length of his life at present; it’s a title he accepts with the utmost pride and he’s the first person to admit that he’d rather be known as odd than known for anything else. He can be loud and abrasive-- opinionated in ways that would likely get him into more trouble were he not royalty but could likely get him into sticky situations he isn’t even vaguely prepared for as time goes by. He isn’t always nice in any traditional sense -- he has no problem telling people what he thinks of them, will rip them to metaphorical shreds with a broad smile on his face and be that much happier for it. He obsesses over miscellaneous things to an inane degree -- he’ll worry about how mismatched he can get his socks to be for over an hour on any given afternoon and turn around to obsess over any given style of art he’s currently fascinated with depending on the day. Wren is also one of the most loyal people in the world -- at least where his family and loved ones are concerned; essentially, when someone takes the time to get to know him and Wren understands that they love and appreciate him in a way that he needs ( whether he’ll admit it or not ) then he would do anything in the world for them the moment they need him and he tries -- on occasion and not always successfully -- to make that clear to those he thinks need to understand it.

RELEVANT BACKGROUND —

Wren has never been what anyone would label ‘a typical prince’ -- he’d likely be the first person to question what a typical prince was supposed to be and why would it be so terrible if he wasn’t fitting a mold that, in his mind, had been outdated for hundreds of years? A prince in title and status but perhaps not at heart — the inner workings of palace life never interested Wren unless he needed to be aware of them to pull off some halfcocked prank or another on a whim. To those who knew him in the palace he was a troublemaker on his best days and that suited him far better than being the dutiful youngest son that he was convinced no one believed he could be even if he’d had the desire to begin with.

In his mind, there was no sense in forcing himself to be a shell of the person he hoped to be and if that meant that he was seen as bizarre or odd or too “other” to be taken seriously, well, that was something Wren - by his teenage years - had come to accept rather happily. He was much more at home tucked away in his room with his face inches away from his laptop screen going down some internet rabbit hole or another -- his obsessions were long lasting, his hyperfixations even more so and it was never quite a surprise to anyone when he would emerge from his room looking as though he hadn’t slept in days but perfectly ready to talk anyone’s ear off about whatever subject had caught his attention for the time being.

As he got older he tried to strike a balance between embracing all of his hobbies and relationships outside of being a prince and making at least half an effort, even if it was a poor one, at being a “proper prince”. It wasn’t something he was gifted at -- politics of most sorts tended to give him a headache on his good days and he could waste breath on arguments for hours simply to have advisors admit that he was right in the long run -- something Wren would enjoy deeply simply for the satisfaction of it all. He wasn’t the sort of prince anyone would look to to guide a country and he was thankful, consistently, that it wasn’t his responsibility in the long run to do so. It was almost an accident -- too good to be true, in his mind -- when he met someone at a political function and bonded with them and when he met his current boyfriend it was exactly the way he felt.

He wasn’t always the sort of man anyone would look twice at or pay attention to for more than a wild story or acerbic quip but things were different from the moment they met and Wren found himself struck by the feeling of being seen in a way he felt so rarely that it was, in essence, a connection he couldn’t ignore. He half-expected their relationship to fizzle out as they got to know one another more deeply -- perpetually concerned that he would ultimately be too weird for anyone to take seriously where a long term relationship was concerned but as time went on and the world seemed to fracture around them one of the few things Wren had to cling to was his relationship with the man he loved. Politics became a subject Wren abhorred that much more as alliances formed and their countries were not overtly friendly or directly allied and Wren’s stress over their relationship ending because of him shifted to a deep concern that their relationship might end whether they wanted that or not. It terrified Wren in a way he’d never felt prior and in a fit of something just short of desperation he proposed in the hopes that nothing in the world would ultimately drive them apart.  

HEADCANONS —

— Wren has been out-- to both his family and close friends-- as gay since he was fourteen years old. It’s never been something he stresses about or something he feels the need to hide in any concrete way but he’s certainly not the sort of person to go yelling about his various ex-boyfriends or flings to the world at large. Where extremely personal matters are concerned Wren can be intensely private, though that need for privacy can, on occasion, be cast aside in his mind in favor of pulling off a particularly glorious prank or giving the media some piece of insane half-truth to froth at the mouth over which he’s found nothing short of delightful to play with in his adulthood.

— In the grand scheme of interests he has, art is paramount. It’s one of the only things Wren has ever been interested enough in to study properly and arguing his case to be allowed to attend art school in earnest is something he’s extremely proud of having accomplished. Painting, sketching, sculpting, photography -- art of almost any sort is enough to catch and hold Wren’s attention but painting is usually his go-to form of practicing where his own art is concerned, as the materials are usually far easier to come by when he’s traveling or in this case when he’s going to be essentially in protective custody for the foreseeable future.

— Wren and his boyfriend -- now fiancé -- have been dating for going on three years and Wren is as in love with him now as he feels like he always has been. He feels he can be most earnestly himself around his partner and takes advantage of that at every turn -- occasionally in the form of staging elaborate but ultimately harmless and loving pranks on him simply to give himself something to do and relieve any tension either of them happen to be carrying. Their relationship is an easy one and even with the political tension in the world that brought their engagement to bear -- it’s still perhaps the most settled and at ease with his choices Wren has ever felt in his life.

[ishkah]

Beyond Compassion and Humanity; Justice for Non-human Animals by Martha Nussbaum

-

This is a great essay vegans can draw on for a virtue ethics answer to the question of why do we hold the principle that it's almost always wrong to breed sentient life into captivity?

So for myself and this strain of virtue ethicists it would be because you know you could leave room for other animals to enjoy happy flourishing, being able to express all their capabilities in wild habitat.

Therefore not wanting to parasitically take away life with meaning for low-order pleasure in our hierarchy of needs which we can find elsewhere.

The distinction between this philosophy and consequentialism would simply be if you wished to act this way because fundimentally it’s about who you want to be and who you want to let animal be:

It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain [and interests], but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is. . .[and] that the dignity of living organisms not be violated.

Counter-intuitively the author does still cling to a hedonistic view of the right to take life, but hopefully not for much longer:

If animals were really killed in a painless fashion, after a healthy and free-ranging life, what then? Killings of extremely young animals would still be problematic, but it seems unclear that the balance of considerations supports a complete ban on killings for food.

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BEYOND “COMPASSION AND HUMANITY”

Justice for Non-human Animals

MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM

Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals… The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the forms of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case. I shall not attempt to explain these considered beliefs. They are outside the scope of the theory of justice, and it does not seem possible to extend the contract doctrine so as to include them in a natural way.

—JOHN RAWLS, A Theory of Justice

In conclusion, we hold that circus animals…are housed in cramped cages, subjected to fear, hunger, pain, not to mention the undignified way of life they have to live, with no respite and the impugned notification has been issued in conformity with the…values of human life, [and] philosophy of the Constitution… Though not homo-sapiens [sic], they are also beings entitled to dignified existence and humane treatment sans cruelty and torture… Therefore, it is not only our fundamental duty to show compassion to our animal friends, but also to recognise and protect their rights…If humans are entitled to fundamental rights, why not animals?

—NAIR V. UNION OF INDIA, Kerala High Court, June 2000

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“BEINGS ENTITLED TO DIGNIFIED EXISTENCE”

In 55 B.C. the Roman leader Pompey staged a combat between humans and elephants. Surrounded in the arena, the animals perceived that they had no hope of escape. According to Pliny, they then ―entreated the crowd, trying to win their compassion with indescribable gestures, bewailing their plight with a sort of lamentation.‖ The audience, moved to pity and anger by their plight, rose to curse Pompey, feeling, writes Cicero, that the elephants had a relation of commonality (societas) with the human race. [1]

We humans share a world and its scarce resources with other intelligent creatures. These creatures are capable of dignified existence, as the Kerala High Court says. It is difficult to know precisely what we mean by that phrase, but it is rather clear what it does not mean: the conditions of the circus animals in the case, squeezed into cramped, filthy cages, starved, terrorized, and beaten, given only the minimal care that would make them presentable in the ring the following day. The fact that humans act in ways that deny animals a dignified existence appears to be an issue of justice, and an urgent one, although we shall have to say more to those who would deny this claim. There is no obvious reason why notions of basic justice, entitlement, and law cannot be extended across the species barrier, as the Indian court boldly does.

Before we can perform this extension with any hope of success, however, we need to get clear about what theoretical approach is likely to prove most adequate. I shall argue that the capabilities approach as I have developed it—an approach to issues of basic justice and entitlement and to the making of fundamental political principles [2] —provides better theoretical guidance in this area than that supplied by contractarian and utilitarian approaches to the question of animal entitlements, because it is capable of recognizing a wide range of types of animal dignity, and of corresponding needs for flourishing.

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KANTIAN CONTRACTARIANISM: INDIRECT DUTIES, DUTIES OF COMPASSION

Kant’s own view about animals is very unpromising. He argues that all duties to animals are merely indirect duties to humanity, in that (as he believes) cruel or kind treatment of animals strengthens tendencies to behave in similar fashion to humans. Thus he rests the case for decent treatment of animals on a fragile empirical claim about psychology. He cannot conceive that beings who (in his view) lack self-consciousness and the capacity for moral reciprocity could possibly be objects of moral duty. More generally, he cannot see that such a being can have dignity, an intrinsic worth.

One may, however, be a contractarian—and indeed, in some sense a Kantian— without espousing these narrow views. John Rawls insists that we have direct moral duties to animals, which he calls ―duties of compassion and humanity. [3] But for Rawls these are not issues of justice, and he is explicit that the contract doctrine cannot be extended to deal with these issues, because animals lack those properties of human beings ―in virtue of which they are to be treated in accordance with the principles of justice‖ (TJ 504). Only moral persons, defined with reference to the ―two moral powers,‖ are subjects of justice.

To some extent, Rawls is led to this conclusion by his Kantian conception of the person, which places great emphasis on rationality and the capacity for moral choice. But it is likely that the very structure of his contractarianism would require such a conclusion, even in the absence of that heavy commitment to rationality. The whole idea of a bargain or contract involving both humans and non-human animals is fantastic, suggesting no clear scenario that would assist our thinking. Although Rawls’s Original Position, like the state of nature in earlier contractarian theories, [4] is not supposed to be an actual historical situation, it is supposed to be a coherent fiction that can help us think well. This means that it has to have realism, at least, concerning the powers and needs of the parties and their basic circumstances. There is no comparable fiction about our decision to make a deal with other animals that would be similarly coherent and helpful. Although we share a world of scarce resources with animals, and although there is in a sense a state of rivalry among species that is comparable to the rivalry in the state of nature, the asymmetry of power between humans and non-human animals is too great to imagine the bargain as a real bargain. Nor can we imagine that the bargain would actually be for mutual advantage, for if we want to protect ourselves from the incursions of wild animals, we can just kill them, as we do. Thus, the Rawlsian condition that no one party to the contract is strong enough to dominate or kill all the others is not met. Thus Rawls’s omission of animals from the theory of justice is deeply woven into the very idea of grounding principles of justice on a bargain struck for mutual advantage (on fair terms) out of a situation of rough equality.

To put it another way, all contractualist views conflate two questions, which might have been kept distinct: Who frames the principles? And for whom are the principles framed? That is how rationality ends up being a criterion of membership in the moral community: because the procedure imagines that people are choosing principles for themselves. But one might imagine things differently, including in the group for whom principles of justice are included many creatures who do not and could not participate in the framing.

We have not yet shown, however, that Rawls’s conclusion is wrong. I have said that the cruel and oppressive treatment of animals raises issues of justice, but I have not really defended that claim against the Rawlsian alternative. What exactly does it mean to say that these are issues of justice, rather than issues of ―compassion and humanity? The emotion of compassion involves the thought that another creature is suffering significantly, and is not (or not mostly) to blame for that suffering. [5] It does not involve the thought that someone is to blame for that suffering. One may have compassion for the victim of a crime, but one may also have compassion for someone who is dying from disease (in a situation where that vulnerability to disease is nobody’s fault). ―Humanity I take to be a similar idea. So compassion omits the essential element of blame for wrongdoing. That is the first problem. But suppose we add that element, saying that duties of compassion involve the thought that it is wrong to cause animals suffering. That is, a duty of compassion would not be just a duty to have compassion, but a duty, as a result of one’s compassion, to refrain from acts that cause the suffering that occasions the compassion. I believe that Rawls would make this addition, although he certainly does not tell us what he takes duties of compassion to be. What is at stake, further, in the decision to say that the mistreatment of animals is not just morally wrong, but morally wrong in a special way, raising questions of justice?

This is a hard question to answer, since justice is a much-disputed notion, and there are many types of justice, political, ethical, and so forth. But it seems that what we most typically mean when we call a bad act unjust is that the creature injured by that act has an entitlement not to be treated in that way, and an entitlement of a particularly urgent or basic type (since we do not believe that all instances of unkindness, thoughtlessness, and so forth are instances of injustice, even if we do believe that people have a right to be treated kindly, and so on). The sphere of justice is the sphere of basic entitlements. When I say that the mistreatment of animals is unjust, I mean to say not only that it is wrong of us to treat them in that way, but also that they have a right, a moral entitlement, not to be treated in that way. It is unfair to them. I believe that thinking of animals as active beings who have a good and who are entitled to pursue it naturally leads us to see important damages done to them as unjust. What is lacking in Rawls’s account, as in Kant’s (though more subtly) is the sense of the animal itself as an agent and a subject, a creature in interaction with whom we live. As we shall see, the capabilities approach does treat animals as agents seeking a flourishing existence; this basic conception, I believe, is one of its greatest strengths.

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UTILITARIANISM AND ANIMAL FLOURISHING

Utilitarianism has contributed more than any other ethical theory to the recognition of animal entitlements. Both Bentham and Mill in their time and Peter Singer in our own have courageously taken the lead in freeing ethical thought from the shackles of a narrow species-centered conception of worth and entitlement. No doubt this achievement was connected with the founders’ general radicalism and their skepticism about conventional morality, their willingness to follow the ethical argument wherever it leads. These remain very great virtues in the utilitarian position. Nor does utilitarianism make the mistake of running together the question “who receives justice?” With the question “who frames the principles of justice?” Justice is sought for all sentient beings, many of whom cannot participate in the framing of principles.

Thus it is in a spirit of alliance that those concerned with animal entitlements might address a few criticisms to the utilitarian view. There are some difficulties with the utilitarian view, in both of its forms. As Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen usefully analyze the utilitarian position, it has three independent elements: consequentialism (the right choice is the one that produces the best overall consequences), sum-ranking (the utilities of different people are combined by adding them together to produce a single total), and hedonism, or some other substantive theory of the good (such as preference satisfaction). [6] Consequentialism by itself causes the fewest difficulties, since one may always adjust the account of well-being, or the good, in consequentialism so as to admit many important things that utilitarians typically do not make salient: plural and heterogeneous goods, the protection of rights, even personal commitments or agent-centred goods. More or less any moral theory can be consequentialized, that is, put in a form where the matters valued by that theory appear in the account of consequences to be produced. [7] Although I do have some doubts about a comprehensive consequentialism as the best basis for political principles in a pluralistic liberal society, I shall not comment on them at present, but shall turn to the more evidently problematic aspects of the utilitarian view. [8]

Let us next consider the utilitarian commitment to aggregation, or what is called ―sum-ranking. Views that measure principles of justice by the outcome they produce need not simply add all the relevant goods together. They may weight them in other ways. For example, one may insist that each and every person has an indefeasible entitlement to come up above a threshold on certain key goods. In addition, a view may, like Rawls’s view, focus particularly on the situation of the least well off, refusing to permit inequalities that do not raise that person’s position. These ways of considering well-being insist on treating people as ends: They refuse to allow some people’s extremely high well-being to be purchased, so to speak, through other people’s disadvantage. Even the welfare of society as a whole does not lead us to violate an individual, as Rawls says.

Utilitarianism notoriously refuses such insistence on the separateness and inviolability of persons. Because it is committed to the sum-ranking of all relevant pleasures and pains (or preference satisfactions and frustrations), it has no way of ruling out in advance results that are extremely harsh toward a given class or group. Slavery, the lifelong subordination of some to others, the extremely cruel treatment of some humans or of non-human animals—none of this is ruled out by the theory’s core conception of justice, which treats all satisfactions as fungible in a single system. Such results will be ruled out, if at all, by empirical considerations regarding total or average well-being. These questions are notoriously indeterminate (especially when the number of individuals who will be born is also unclear, a point I shall take up later). Even if they were not, it seems that the best reason to be against slavery, torture, and lifelong subordination is a reason of justice, not an empirical calculation of total or average well-being. Moreover, if we focus on preference satisfaction, we must confront the problem of adaptive preferences. For while some ways of treating people badly always cause pain (torture, starvation), there are ways of subordinating people that creep into their very desires, making allies out of the oppressed. Animals too can learn submissive or fear-induced preferences. Martin Seligman’s experiments, for example, show that dogs who have been conditioned into a mental state of learned helplessness have immense difficulty learning to initiate voluntary movement, if they can ever do so. [9]

There are also problems inherent in the views of the good most prevalent within utilitarianism: hedonism (Bentham) and preference satisfaction (Singer). Pleasure is a notoriously elusive notion. Is it a single feeling, varying only in intensity and duration, or are the different pleasures as qualitatively distinct as the activities with which they are associated? Mill, following Aristotle, believed the latter, but if we once grant that point, we are looking at a view that is very different from standard utilitarianism, which is firmly wedded to the homogeneity of good. [10]

Such a commitment looks like an especially grave error when we consider basic political principles. For each basic entitlement is its own thing, and is not bought off, so to speak, by even a very large amount of another entitlement. Suppose we say to a citizen: We will take away your free speech on Tuesdays between 3 and 4P.M., but in return, we will give you, every single day, a double amount of basic welfare and health care support. This is just the wrong picture of basic political entitlements. What is being said when we make a certain entitlement basic is that it is important always and for everyone, as a matter of basic justice. The only way to make that point sufficiently clearly is to preserve the qualitative separateness of each distinct element within our list of basic entitlements.

Once we ask the hedonist to admit plural goods, not commensurable on a single quantitative scale, it is natural to ask, further, whether pleasure and pain are the only things we ought to be looking at. Even if one thinks of pleasure as closely linked to activity, and not simply as a passive sensation, making it the sole end leaves out much of the value we attach to activities of various types. There seem to be valuable things in an animal’s life other than pleasure, such as free movement and physical achievement, and also altruistic sacrifice for kin and group. The grief of an animal for a dead child or parent, or the suffering of a human friend, also seem to be valuable, a sign of attachments that are intrinsically good. There are also bad pleasures, including some of the pleasures of the circus audience—and it is unclear whether such pleasures should even count positively in the social calculus. Some pleasures of animals in harming other animals may also be bad in this way.

Does preference utilitarianism do better? We have already identified some problems, including the problem of misinformed or malicious preferences and that of adaptive (submissive) preferences. Singer’s preference utilitarianism, moreover, defining preference in terms of conscious awareness, has no room for deprivations that never register in the animal’s consciousness.

But of course animals raised under bad conditions can’t imagine the better way of life they have never known, and so the fact that they are not living a more flourishing life will not figure in their awareness. They may still feel pain, and this the utilitarian can consider. What the view cannot consider is all the deprivation of valuable life activity that they do not feel.

Finally, all utilitarian views are highly vulnerable on the question of numbers. The meat industry brings countless animals into the world who would never have existed but for that. For Singer, these births of new animals are not by themselves a bad thing: Indeed, we can expect new births to add to the total of social utility, from which we would then subtract the pain such animals suffer. It is unclear where this calculation would come out. Apart from this question of indeterminacy, it seems unclear that we should even say that these births of new animals are a good thing, if the animals are brought into the world only as tools of human rapacity.

So utilitarianism has great merits, but also great problems.

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TYPES OF DIGNITY, TYPES OF FLOURISHING: EXTENDING THE CAPABILITIES APPROACH

The capabilities approach in its current form starts from the notion of human dignity and a life worthy of it. But I shall now argue that it can be extended to provide a more adequate basis for animal entitlements than the other two theories under consideration. The basic moral intuition behind the approach concerns the dignity of a form of life that possesses both deep needs and abilities; its basic goal is to address the need for a rich plurality of life activities. With Aristotle and Marx, the approach has insisted that there is waste and tragedy when a living creature has the innate, or ―basic,‖ capability for some functions that are evaluated as important and good, but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions. Failures to educate women, failures to provide adequate health care, failures to extend the freedoms of speech and conscience to all citizens—all these are treated as causing a kind of premature death, the death of a form of flourishing that has been judged to be worthy of respect and wonder. The idea that a human being should have a chance to flourish in its own way, provided it does no harm to others, is thus very deep in the account the capabilities approach gives of the justification of basic political entitlements.

The species norm is evaluative, as I have insisted; it does not simply read off norms from the way nature actually is. The difficult questions this valuational exercise raises for the case of non-human animals will be discussed in the following section. But once we have judged that a central human power is one of the good ones, one of the ones whose flourishing defines the good of the creature, we have a strong moral reason for promoting its flourishing and removing obstacles to it.

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Dignity and Wonder: The Intuitive Starting Point

The same attitude to natural powers that guides the approach in the case of human beings guides it in the case of all forms of life. For there is a more general attitude behind the respect we have for human powers, and it is very different from the type of respect that animates Kantian ethics. For Kant, only humanity and rationality are worthy of respect and wonder; the rest of nature is just a set of tools. The capabilities approach judges instead, with the biologist Aristotle (who criticized his students’ disdain for the study of animals), that there is something wonderful and wonder-inspiring in all the complex forms of animal life.

Aristotle’s scientific spirit is not the whole of what the capabilities approach embodies, for we need, in addition, an ethical concern that the functions of life not be impeded, that the dignity of living organisms not be violated. And yet, if we feel wonder looking at a complex organism, that wonder at least suggests the idea that it is good for that being to flourish as the kind of thing it is. And this idea is next door to the ethical judgment that it is wrong when the flourishing of a creature is blocked by the harmful agency of another. That more complex idea lies at the heart of the capabilities approach.

So I believe that the capabilities approach is well placed, intuitively, to go beyond both contractarian and utilitarian views. It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain, but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is.

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By Whom and for Whom? The Purposes of Social Cooperation

For a contractarian, as we have seen, the question ―Who makes the laws and principles? is treated as having, necessarily, the same answer as the question ―For whom are the laws and principles made? That conflation is dictated by the theory’s account of the purposes of social cooperation. But there is obviously no reason at all why these two questions should be put together in this way. The capabilities approach, as so far developed for the human case, looks at the world and asks how to arrange that justice be done in it. Justice is among the intrinsic ends that it pursues. Its parties are imagined looking at all the brutality and misery, the goodness and kindness of the world and trying to think how to make a world in which a core group of very important entitlements, inherent in the notion of human dignity, will be protected. Because they look at the whole of the human world, not just people roughly equal to themselves, they are able to be concerned directly and non-derivatively, as we saw, with the good of the mentally disabled. This feature makes it easy to extend the approach to include human-animal relations.

Let us now begin the extension. The purpose of social cooperation, by analogy and extension, ought to be to live decently together in a world in which many species try to flourish. (Cooperation itself will now assume multiple and complex forms.) The general aim of the capabilities approach in charting political principles to shape the human-animal relationship would be, following the intuitive ideas of the theory, that no animal should be cut off from the chance at a flourishing life and that all animals should enjoy certain positive opportunities to flourish. With due respect for a world that contains many forms of life, we attend with ethical concern to each characteristic type of flourishing and strive that it not be cut off or fruitless.

Such an approach seems superior to contractarianism because it contains direct obligations of justice to animals; it does not make these derivative from or posterior to the duties we have to fellow humans, and it is able to recognize that animals are subjects who have entitlements to flourishing and who thus are subjects of justice, not just objects of compassion. It is superior to utilitarianism because it respects each individual creature, refusing to aggregate the goods of different lives and types of lives. No creature is being used as a means to the ends of others, or of society as a whole. The capabilities approach also refuses to aggregate across the diverse constituents of each life and type of life. Thus, unlike utilitarianism, it can keep in focus the fact that each species has a different form of life and different ends; moreover, within a given species, each life has multiple and heterogeneous ends.

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How Comprehensive?

In the human case, the capabilities approach does not operate with a fully comprehensive conception of the good, because of the respect it has for the diverse ways in which people choose to live their lives in a pluralistic society. It aims at securing some core entitlements that are held to be implicit in the idea of a life with dignity, but it aims at capability, not functioning, and it focuses on a small list. In the case of human-animal relations, the need for restraint is even more acute, since animals will not in fact be participating directly in the framing of political principles, and thus they cannot revise them over time should they prove inadequate.

And yet there is a countervailing consideration: Human beings affect animals’ opportunities for flourishing pervasively, and it is hard to think of a species that one could simply leave alone to flourish in its own way. The human species dominates the other species in a way that no human individual or nation has ever dominated other humans. Respect for other species’ opportunities for flourishing suggests, then, that human law must include robust, positive political commitments to the protection of animals, even though, had human beings not so pervasively interfered with animals’ ways of life, the most respectful course might have been simply to leave them alone, living the lives that they make for themselves.

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The Species and the Individual

What should the focus of these commitments be? It seems that here, as in the human case, the focus should be the individual creature. The capabilities approach attaches no importance to increased numbers as such; its focus is on the well-being of existing creatures and the harm that is done to them when their powers are blighted.

As for the continuation of species, this would have little moral weight as a consideration of justice (though it might have aesthetic significance or some other sort of ethical significance), if species were just becoming extinct because of factors having nothing to do with human action that affects individual creatures. But species are becoming extinct because human beings are killing their members and damaging their natural environments. Thus, damage to species occurs through damage to individuals, and this individual damage should be the focus of ethical concern within the capabilities approach.

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Do Levels of Complexity Matter?

Almost all ethical views of animal entitlements hold that there are morally relevant distinctions among forms of life. Killing a mosquito is not the same sort of thing as killing a chimpanzee. But the question is: What sort of difference is relevant for basic justice? Singer, following Bentham, puts the issue in terms of sentience. Animals of many kinds can suffer bodily pain, and it is always bad to cause pain to a sentient being. If there are non-sentient or barely sentient animals—and it appears that crustaceans, mollusks, sponges, and the other creatures Aristotle called ―stationary animals‖ are such creatures—there is either no harm or only a trivial harm done in killing them. Among the sentient creatures, moreover, there are some who can suffer additional harms through their cognitive capacity: A few animals can foresee and mind their own deaths, and others will have conscious, sentient interests in continuing to live that are frustrated by death. The painless killing of an animal that does not foresee its own death or take a conscious interest in the continuation of its life is, for Singer and Bentham, not bad, for all badness, for them, consists in the frustration of interests, understood as forms of conscious awareness. [11] Singer is not, then, saying that some animals are inherently more worthy of esteem than others. He is simply saying that, if we agree with him that all harms reside in sentience, the creature’s form of life limits the conditions under which it can actually suffer harm.

Similarly, James Rachels, whose view does not focus on sentience alone, holds that the level of complexity of a creature affects what can be a harm for it. [12] What is relevant to the harm of pain is sentience; what is relevant to the harm of a specific type of pain is a specific type of sentience (e.g., the ability to imagine one’s own death). What is relevant to the harm of diminished freedom is a capacity for freedom or autonomy. It would make no sense to complain that a worm is being deprived of autonomy, or a rabbit of the right to vote.

What should the capabilities approach say about this issue? It seems to me that it should not follow Aristotle in saying that there is a natural ranking of forms of life, some being intrinsically more worthy of support and wonder than others. That consideration might have evaluative significance of some other kind, but it seems dubious that it should affect questions of basic justice.

Rachels’s view offers good guidance here. Because the capabilities approach finds ethical significance in the flourishing of basic (innate) capabilities—those that are evaluated as both good and central (see the section on evaluating animal capabilities)—it will also find harm in the thwarting or blighting of those capabilities. More complex forms of life have more and more complex capabilities to be blighted, so they can suffer more and different types of harm. Level of life is relevant not because it gives different species differential worth per se, but because the type and degree of harm a creature can suffer varies with its form of life.

At the same time, I believe that the capabilities approach should admit the wisdom in utilitarianism. Sentience is not the only thing that matters for basic justice, but it seems plausible to consider sentience a threshold condition for membership in the community of beings who have entitlements based on justice. Thus, killing a sponge does not seem to be a matter of basic justice.

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Does the Species Matter?

For the utilitarians, and for Rachels, the species to which a creature belongs has no moral relevance. All that is morally relevant are the capacities of the individual creature: Rachels calls this view ―moral individualism.‖ Utilitarian writers are fond of comparing apes to young children and to mentally disabled humans. The capabilities approach, by contrast, with its talk of characteristic functioning and forms of life, seems to attach some significance to species membership as such. What type of significance is this?

We should admit that there is much to be learned from reflection on the continuum of life. Capacities do crisscross and overlap; a chimpanzee may have more capacity for empathy and perspectival thinking than a very young child or an older autistic child. And capacities that humans sometimes arrogantly claim for themselves alone are found very widely in nature. But it seems wrong to conclude from such facts that species membership is morally and politically irrelevant. A mentally disabled child is actually very different from a chimpanzee, though in certain respects some of her capacities may be comparable. Such a child’s life is tragic in a way that the life of a chimpanzee is not tragic: She is cut off from forms of flourishing that, but for the disability, she might have had, disabilities that it is the job of science to prevent or cure, wherever that is possible. There is something blighted and disharmonious in her life, whereas the life of a chimpanzee may be perfectly flourishing. Her social and political functioning is threatened by these disabilities, in a way that the normal functioning of a chimpanzee in the community of chimpanzees is not threatened by its cognitive endowment.

All this is relevant when we consider issues of basic justice. For a child born with Down syndrome, it is crucial that the political culture in which he lives make a big effort to extend to him the fullest benefits of citizenship he can attain, through health benefits, education, and the reeducation of the public culture. That is so because he can only flourish as a human being. He has no option of flourishing as a happy chimpanzee. For a chimpanzee, on the other hand, it seems to me that expensive efforts to teach language, while interesting and revealing, are not matters of basic justice. A chimpanzee flourishes in its own way, communicating with its own community in a perfectly adequate manner that has gone on for ages.

In short, the species norm (duly evaluated) tells us what the appropriate benchmark is for judging whether a given creature has decent opportunities for flourishing.

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EVALUATING ANIMAL CAPABILITIES: NO NATURE WORSHIP

In the human case, the capabilities view does not attempt to extract norms directly from some facts about human nature. We should know what we can about the innate capacities of human beings, and this information is valuable, in telling us what our opportunities are and what our dangers might be. But we must begin by evaluating the innate powers of human beings, asking which ones are the good ones, the ones that are central to the notion of a decently flourishing human life, a life with dignity. Thus not only evaluation but also ethical evaluation is put into the approach from the start. Many things that are found in human life are not on the capabilities list.

There is a danger in any theory that alludes to the characteristic flourishing and form of life of a species: the danger of romanticizing nature, or suggesting that things are in order as they are, if only we would stop interfering. This danger looms large when we turn from the human case, where it seems inevitable that we will need to do some moral evaluating, to the animal case, where evaluating is elusive and difficult. Inherent in at least some environmentalist writing is a picture of nature as harmonious and wise, and of humans as wasteful overreachers who would live better were we to get in tune with this fine harmony. This image of nature was already very sensibly attacked by John Stuart Mill in his great essay ―Nature,‖ which pointed out that nature, far from being morally normative, is actually violent, heedless of moral norms, prodigal, full of conflict, harsh to humans and animals both. A similar view lies at the heart of much modern ecological thinking, which now stresses the inconstancy and imbalance of nature, [13] arguing, inter alia, that many of the natural ecosystems that we admire as such actually sustain themselves to the extent that they do only on account of various forms of human intervention.

Thus, a no-evaluation view, which extracts norms directly from observation of animals’ characteristic ways of life, is probably not going to be a helpful way of promoting the good of animals. Instead, we need a careful evaluation of both ―nature‖ and possible changes. Respect for nature should not and cannot mean just leaving nature as it is, and must involve careful normative arguments about what plausible goals might be.

In the case of humans, the primary area in which the political conception inhibits or fails to foster tendencies that are pervasive in human life is the area of harm to others. Animals, of course, pervasively cause harm, both to members of their own species and, far more often, to members of other species.

In both of these cases, the capabilities theorist will have a strong inclination to say that the harm-causing capabilities in question are not among those that should be protected by political and social principles. But if we leave these capabilities off the list, how can we claim to be promoting flourishing lives? Even though the capabilities approach is not utilitarian and does not hold that all good is in sentience, it will still be difficult to maintain that a creature who feels frustration at the inhibition of its predatory capacities is living a flourishing life. A human being can be expected to learn to flourish without homicide and, let us hope, even without most killing of animals. But a lion who is given no exercise for its predatory capacity appears to suffer greatly.

Here the capabilities view may, however, distinguish two aspects of the capability in question. The capability to kill small animals, defined as such, is not valuable, and political principles can omit it (and even inhibit it in some cases, to be discussed in the following section). But the capability to exercise one’s predatory nature so as to avoid the pain of frustration may well have value, if the pain of frustration is considerable. Zoos have learned how to make this distinction. Noticing that they were giving predatory animals insufficient exercise for their predatory capacities, they had to face the question of the harm done to smaller animals by allowing these capabilities to be exercised. Should they give a tiger a tender gazelle to crunch on? The Bronx Zoo has found that it can give the tiger a large ball on a rope, whose resistance and weight symbolize the gazelle. The tiger seems satisfied. Wherever predatory animals are living under direct human support and control, these solutions seem the most ethically sound.

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POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE, CAPABILITY AND FUNCTIONING

In the human case, there is a traditional distinction between positive and negative duties that it seems important to call into question. Traditional moralities hold that we have a strict duty not to commit aggression and fraud, but we have no correspondingly strict duty to stop hunger or disease, nor to give money to promote their cessation. [14]

The capabilities approach calls this distinction into question. All the human capabilities require affirmative support, usually including state action. This is just as true of protecting property and personal security as it is of health care, just as true of the political and civil liberties as it is of providing adequate shelter.

In the case of animals, unlike the human case, there might appear to be some room for a positive-negative distinction that makes some sense. It seems at least coherent to say that the human community has the obligation to refrain from certain egregious harms toward animals, but that it is not obliged to support the welfare of all animals, in the sense of ensuring them adequate food, shelter, and health care. The animals themselves have the rest of the task of ensuring their own flourishing.

There is much plausibility in this contention. And certainly if our political principles simply ruled out the many egregious forms of harm to animals, they would have done quite a lot. But the contention, and the distinction it suggests, cannot be accepted in full. First of all, large numbers of animals live under humans’ direct control: domestic animals, farm animals, and those members of wild species that are in zoos or other forms of captivity. Humans have direct responsibility for the nutrition and health care of these animals, as even our defective current systems of law acknowledge. [15] Animals in the wild appear to go their way unaffected by human beings. But of course that can hardly be so in many cases in today’s world. Human beings pervasively affect the habitats of animals, determining opportunities for nutrition, free movement, and other aspects of flourishing.

Thus, while we may still maintain that one primary area of human responsibility to animals is that of refraining from a whole range of bad acts (to be discussed shortly), we cannot plausibly stop there. The only questions should be how extensive our duties are, and how to balance them against appropriate respect for the autonomy of a species.

In the human case, one way in which the approach respects autonomy is to focus on capability, and not functioning, as the legitimate political goal. But paternalistic treatment (which aims at functioning rather than capability) is warranted wherever the individual’s capacity for choice and autonomy is compromised (thus, for children and the severely mentally disabled). This principle suggests that paternalism is usually appropriate when we are dealing with non-human animals. That conclusion, however, should be qualified by our previous endorsement of the idea that species autonomy, in pursuit of flourishing, is part of the good for non-human animals. How, then, should the two principles be combined, and can they be coherently combined? I believe that they can be combined, if we adopt a type of paternalism that is highly sensitive to the different forms of flourishing that different species pursue. It is no use saying that we should just let tigers flourish in their own way, given that human activity ubiquitously affects the possibilities for tigers to flourish. This being the case, the only decent alternative to complete neglect of tiger flourishing is a policy that thinks carefully about the flourishing of tigers and what habitat that requires, and then tries hard to create such habitats. In the case of domestic animals, an intelligent paternalism would encourage training, discipline, and even, where appropriate, strenuous training focused on special excellences of a breed (such as the border collie or the hunter-jumper). But the animal, like a child, will retain certain entitlements, which they hold regardless of what their human guardian thinks about it. They are not merely objects for human beings’ use and control.

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TOWARD BASIC POLITICAL PRINCIPLES: THE CAPABILITIES LIST

It is now time to see whether we can actually use the human basis of the capabilities approach to map out some basic political principles that will guide law and public policy in dealing with animals. The list I have defended as useful in the human case is as follows:

The Central Human Capabilities

Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.

Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.

Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.

Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason—and to do these things in a ―truly human‖ way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-beneficial pain.

Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us and to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial to our development.)

Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience and religious observance.)

Affiliation. (A) Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech.) (B) Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. (This entails provisions of non-discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin.)

Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.

Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.

Control over One’s Environment. (A) Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation; protections of free speech and association. (B) Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.

Although the entitlements of animals are species specific, the main large categories of the existing list, suitably fleshed out, turn out to be a good basis for a sketch of some basic political principles.

In the capabilities approach, all animals are entitled to continue their lives, whether or not they have such a conscious interest. All sentient animals have a secure entitlement against gratuitous killing for sport. Killing for luxury items such as fur falls in this category, and should be banned. On the other hand, intelligently respectful paternalism supports euthanasia for elderly animals in pain. In the middle are the very difficult cases, such as the question of predation to control populations, and the question of killing for food. The reason these cases are so difficult is that animals will die anyway in nature, and often more painfully. Painless predation might well be preferable to allowing the animal to be torn to bits in the wild or starved through overpopulation. As for food, the capabilities approach agrees with utilitarianism in being most troubled by the torture of living animals. If animals were really killed in a painless fashion, after a healthy and free-ranging life, what then? Killings of extremely young animals would still be problematic, but it seems unclear that the balance of considerations supports a complete ban on killings for food.

Bodily Health. One of the most central entitlements of animals is the entitlement to a healthy life. Where animals are directly under human control, it is relatively clear what policies this entails: laws banning cruel treatment and neglect; laws banning the confinement and ill treatment of animals in the meat and fur industries; laws forbidding harsh or cruel treatment for working animals, including circus animals; laws regulating zoos and aquariums, mandating adequate nutrition and space. Many of these laws already exist, although they are not well enforced. The striking asymmetry in current practice is that animals being raised for food are not protected in the way other animals are protected. This asymmetry must be eliminated.

Bodily Integrity. This goes closely with the preceding. Under the capabilities approach, animals have direct entitlements against violations of their bodily integrity by violence, abuse, and other forms of harmful treatment—whether or not the treatment in question is painful. Thus the declawing of cats would probably be banned under this rubric, on the grounds that it prevents the cat from flourishing in its own characteristic way, even though it may be done in a painfree manner and cause no subsequent pain. On the other hand, forms of training that, though involving discipline, equip the animal to manifest excellences that are part of its characteristic capabilities profile would not be eliminated.

Senses, Imagination, and Thought. For humans, this capability creates a wide range of entitlements: to appropriate education, to free speech and artistic expression, to the freedom of religion. It also includes a more general entitlement to pleasurable experiences and the avoidance of non-beneficial pain. By now it ought to be rather obvious where the latter point takes us in thinking about animals: toward laws banning harsh, cruel, and abusive treatment and ensuring animals’ access to sources of pleasure, such as free movement in an environment that stimulates and pleases the senses. The freedom-related part of this capability has no precise analogue, and yet we can come up with appropriate analogues in the case of each type of animal, by asking what choices and areas of freedom seem most important to each. Clearly this reflection would lead us to reject close confinement and to regulate the places in which animals of all kinds are kept for spaciousness, light and shade, and the variety of opportunities they offer the animals for a range of characteristic activities. Again, the capabilities approach seems superior to utilitarianism in its ability to recognize such entitlements, for few animals will have a conscious interest, as such, in variety and space.

Emotions. Animals have a wide range of emotions. All or almost all sentient animals have fear. Many animals can experience anger, resentment, gratitude, grief, envy, and joy. A small number—those who are capable of perspectival thinking—can experience compassion. [16] Like human beings, they are entitled to lives in which it is open to them to have attachments to others, to love and care for others, and not to have those attachments warped by enforced isolation or the deliberate infliction of fear. We understand well what this means where our cherished domestic animals are in question. Oddly, we do not extend the same consideration to animals we think of as ―wild. Until recently, zoos took no thought for the emotional needs of animals, and animals being used for research were often treated with gross carelessness in this regard, being left in isolation and confinement when they might easily have had decent emotional lives. [17]

Practical Reason. In each case, we need to ask to what extent the creature has a capacity to frame goals and projects and to plan its life. To the extent that this capacity is present, it ought to be supported, and this support requires many of the same policies already suggested by capability 4: plenty of room to move around, opportunities for a variety of activities.

Affiliation. In the human case, this capability has two parts: an interpersonal part (being able to live with and toward others) and a more public part, focused on self-respect and non-humiliation. It seems to me that the same two parts are pertinent for non-human animals. Animals are entitled to opportunities to form attachments (as in capability 5) and to engage in characteristic forms of bonding and interrelationship. They are also entitled to relations with humans, where humans enter the picture, that are rewarding and reciprocal, rather than tyrannical. At the same time, they are entitled to live in a world public culture that respects them and treats them as dignified beings. This entitlement does not just mean protecting them from instances of humiliation that they will feel as painful. The capabilities approach here extends more broadly than utilitarianism, holding that animals are entitled to world policies that grant them political rights and the legal status of dignified beings, whether they understand that status or not.

Other Species. If human beings are entitled to ―be able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature,‖ so too are other animals, in relation to species not their own, including the human species, and the rest of the natural world. This capability, seen from both the human and the animal side, calls for the gradual formation of an interdependent world in which all species will enjoy cooperative and mutually supportive relations with one another. Nature is not that way and never has been. So it calls, in a very general way, for the gradual supplanting of the natural by the just.

Play. This capability is obviously central to the lives of all sentient animals. It calls for many of the same policies we have already discussed: provision of adequate space, light, and sensory stimulation in living places, and, above all, the presence of other species members.

Control over One’s Environment. In the human case, this capability has two prongs, the political and the material. The political is defined in terms of active citizenship and rights of political participation. For non-human animals, the important thing is being part of a political conception that is framed so as to respect them and that is committed to treating them justly. It is important, however, that animals have entitlements directly, so that a human guardian has standing to go to court, as with children, to vindicate those entitlements. On the material side, for non-human animals, the analogue to property rights is respect for the territorial integrity of their habitats, whether domestic or in the wild.

Are there animal capabilities not covered by this list, suitably specified? It seems to me not, although in the spirit of the capabilities approach we should insist that the list is open-ended, subject to supplementation or deletion.

In general, the capabilities approach suggests that it is appropriate for nations to include in their constitutions or other founding statements of principle a commitment to animals as subjects of political justice and a commitment that animals will be treated with dignity. The constitution might also spell out some of the very general principles suggested by this capabilities list. The rest of the work of protecting animal entitlements might be done by suitable legislation and by court cases demanding the enforcement of the law, where it is not enforced. At the same time, many of the issues covered by this approach cannot be dealt with by nations in isolation, but can only be addressed by international cooperation. So we also need international accords committing the world community to the protection of animal habitats and the eradication of cruel practices.

-

THE INELIMINABILITY OF CONFLICT

In the human case, we often face the question of conflict between one capability and another. But if the capabilities list and its thresholds are suitably designed, we ought to say that the presence of conflict between one capability and another is a sign that society has gone wrong somewhere. [18] We should focus on long-term planning that will create a world in which all the capabilities can be secured to all citizens.

Our world contains persistent and often tragic conflicts between the well-being of human beings and the well-being of animals. Some bad treatment of animals can be eliminated without serious losses in human wellbeing: Such is the case with the use of animals for fur, and the brutal and confining treatment of animals used for food. The use of animals for food in general is a much more difficult case, since nobody really knows what the impact on the world environment would be of a total switch to vegetarian sources of protein, or the extent to which such a diet could be made compatible with the health of all the world’s children. A still more difficult problem is the use of animals in research.

A lot can be done to improve the lives of research animals without stopping useful research. As Steven Wise has shown, primates used in research often live in squalid, lonely conditions while they are used as medical subjects. This of course is totally unnecessary and morally unacceptable and could be ended without ending the research. Some research that is done is unnecessary and can be terminated, for example, the testing of cosmetics on rabbits, which seems to have been bypassed without loss of quality by some cosmetic firms. But much important research with major consequences for the life and health of human beings and other animals will inflict disease, pain, and death on at least some animals, even under the best conditions.

I do not favor stopping all such research. What I do favor is (a) asking whether the research is really necessary for a major human capability; (b) focusing on the use of less-complex sentient animals where possible, on the grounds that they suffer fewer and lesser harms from such research; (c) improving the conditions of research animals, including palliative terminal care when they have contracted a terminal illness, and supportive interactions with both humans and other animals; (d) removing the psychological brutality that is inherent in so much treatment of animals for research; (e) choosing topics cautiously and seriously, so that no animal is harmed for a frivolous reason; and (f) a constant effort to develop experimental methods (for example, computer simulations) that do not have these bad consequences.

Above all, it means constant public discussion of these issues, together with an acknowledgment that such uses of animals in research are tragic, violating basic entitlements. Such public acknowledgments are far from useless. They state what is morally true, and thus acknowledge the dignity of animals and our own culpability toward them. They reaffirm dispositions to behave well toward them where no such urgent exigencies intervene. Finally, they prompt us to seek a world in which the pertinent research could in fact be done in other ways.

-

TOWARD A TRULY GLOBAL JUSTICE

It has been obvious for a long time that the pursuit of global justice requires the inclusion of many people and groups who were not previously included as fully equal subjects of justice: the poor; members of religious, ethnic, and racial minorities; and more recently women, the disabled, and inhabitants of nations distant from one’s own.

But a truly global justice requires not simply that we look across the world for other fellow species members who are entitled to a decent life. It also requires looking around the world at the other sentient beings with whose lives our own are inextricably and complexly intertwined. Traditional contractarian approaches to the theory of justice did not and, in their very form, could not confront these questions as questions of justice. Utilitarian approaches boldly did so, and they deserve high praise. But in the end, I have argued, utilitarianism is too homogenizing—both across lives and with respect to the heterogeneous constituents of each life—to provide us with an adequate theory of animal justice. The capabilities approach, which begins from an ethically attuned wonder before each form of animal life, offers a model that does justice to the complexity of animal lives and their strivings for flourishing. Such a model seems an important part of a fully global theory of justice.

-

NOTES

This essay derives from my Tanner Lectures in 2003 and is published by courtesy of the University of Utah Press and the Trustees of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

The incident is discussed in Pliny Nat. Hist. 8.7.20–21, Cicero Ad Fam. 7.1.3; see also Dio Cassius Hist. 39, 38, 2–4. See the discussion in Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 124–125.

For this approach, see Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and ―Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice, Feminist Economics 9 (2003): 33–59. The approach was pioneered by Amartya Sen within economics, and is used by him in some rather different ways, without a definite commitment to a normative theory of justice.

All references are to John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), hereafter TJ.

Rawls himself makes the comparison at TJ 12; his analogue to the state of nature is the equality of the parties in the Original Position.

See the analysis in Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch. 6; thus far the analysis is uncontroversial, recapitulating a long tradition of analysis.

See Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, introduction to Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 3–4.

See the comment by Nussbaum in Goodness and Advice, Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Tanner Lectures (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), discussing work along these lines by Amartya Sen and others.

Briefly put, my worries are those of Rawls in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), who points out that it is illiberal for political principles to contain any comprehensive account of what is best. Instead, political principles should be committed to a partial set of ethical norms endorsed for political purposes, leaving it to citizens to fill out the rest of the ethical picture in accordance with their own comprehensive conceptions of value, religious or secular. Thus I would be happy with a partial political consequentialism, but not with comprehensive consequentialism, as a basis for political principles.

Martin Seligman, Helplessness: On Development, Depression, and Death (New York: Freeman, 1975).

Here I agree with Thomson (who is thinking mostly about Moore); see Goodness and Advice.

Peter Singer, ―Animals and the Value of Life,‖ in Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays on Moral Philosophy, ed. Tom Regan (New York: Random House, 1980), 356.

James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

Daniel B. Botkin, ―Adjusting Law to Nature’s Discordant Harmonies,‖ Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum 7 (1996): 25–37.

See the critique by Martha Nussbaum in ―Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid: Cicero’s Problematic Legacy,‖ Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (1999): 1–31.

The laws do not cover all animals, in particular, not animals who are going to be used for food or fur.

On all this, see Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, ch. 2.

See Steven Wise, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2000), ch. 1.

See Martha C. Nussbaum, ―The Costs of Tragedy: Some Moral Implications of Cost-Benefit Analysis,‖ in Cost-Benefit Analysis, ed. Matthew D. Adler and Eric A. Posner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 169–200.

[thisbitchinthecorner]

41AD Day 9- Chestnuts

For @drawlight

41AD

In a small Roman restaurant, an angel and a demon sit across from each other, each slightly anxious over being seen together in the public forum. Petronius flittered from table to table, delighting in seeing Aziraphale with an exquisite flame-haired man.

“So what is an oyster anyway?” Crowley asked, attempting to initiate conversation.

“They’re delicious little creature from the sea! Quite nice with a glass of wine, if you ask me.” Aziraphale replied merrily.

“Well, I can get behind the wine at least.”

“Oh come now! At least give it a try!” Aziraphale pouted.

The waiter set down a plate of slimy looking creatures sitting inside shells. The waiter threw a handful of salt and squeezed a half a lemon over them. Aziraphale looked delighted, while Crowley looked unsure.

“See, you take one like this and tip it into your mouth.” Aziraphale said encouragingly.

“Very well, but if I discorporate, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Salutaria!” Aziraphale said as he sipped the mollusk from the shell with utter enthusiasm.

Crowley nearly choked as the slippery mass slid slowly down his throat. He swallowed hard and forced a smile.

“Lovely, is it not?” Aziraphale cooed as he lifted another shell.

“Oh, it’s absolutely something. What was that about wine?” He motioned to the waiter to bring them both a glass. He was most relieved to be rid of that salty taste.

“Have another, I doubt I can finish all of these by myself!” Aziraphale encouraged as Crowley finished his glass of wine, hailing for another.” How’s your temptation going? Making the world a little more devious?”

“It’s going better than expected. These Romans have some very hedonistic tendencies. And you, hows the old good deeds fairing?”

“Not so well. This emperor, well, I’m afraid he isn’t right in the head so to speak. Makes my job extremely difficult.”

“I’m sure it will get sorted and turn out in the end. Another drink?”

“How can I say no? Another oyster?”

“I’m saying no.” Crowley replied to which they both laughed, the first time they had shared such a genuine moment.

“This is nice, not dining alone. I’m enjoying the company.” Aziraphale mentioned as casually as he could muster given the entire bottle of wine he had consumed.

“I can’t say I’ve ever dined with anyone before. Save for perhaps Jesus, when we went on our journey around the world.” Crowley mused, remembering the young man.

“I rather liked him. He was kind in an unkind world. Pity I didn’t get to spend much time with him. I wish I could have gotten to know him better, but Gabriel warned me to keep my distance.” Aziraphale hiccuped.

“Gabriel is the worst.” Crowley shouted, startling the other restaurant occupants.

“He’s not...I mean...oh yes, he is the worst.”

“I really hate that smug bastard. All holier than thou and believes himself superior to everyone else. Where does he get off acting like that?” Crowley grumbled into his cup of wine, lamenting the old days.

“I know! He treats me like I’m an idiot, as if I haven’t been on Earth since the beginning. And I didn’t realize that you knew Gabriel.”

“Yes I know him.” Crowley said quietly, lost in memories. “You are not at all what I expected. That is to say, you’re not like the other angels.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale said, trying not to sound disappointed.

“No no! I mean that as a compliment! The other angels are cold, unfriendly and would never...”

“Invite a demon to dinner.”

“Especially that. But you, you’re everything they’re not, and I’m glad for it.”

“You’re not what I expected either. I rather enjoy your company, despite what I’ve been told about demons.”

“Gentlemen, might I interest you in some roasted chestnuts? They might a fine end to any meal.” The waiter presented a small plate containing 4 large, golden nuts, still steaming with heat.

“Thank you good sir.” Aziraphale said, excited to be presented with more food. “I don’t know how to eat these.” He whispered to Crowley.

“Can’t be that difficult!” The demon mused.

“Agh!” Aziraphale crunched down on the nut, immediately regretting that decision. “I’m afraid that tastes terrible!” He spat out the outer shell in disgust.

“Now you know how I felt eating that oyster!” Crowley laughed. “Let me have it, try pulling this layer off. There, now try it.”

Aziraphale popped the pealed nut in his mouth and gingerly chewed. “Oh, that’s much better. Thank you.” His eyes glowed in the candle light.

“Thank you.” Crowley said as he watched the angel devour another chestnut.

“For what?”

“For asking me to dine with you.”

“Thank you for coming.” Aziraphale smiled.

“Don’t eat them all! At least let me have that one.” Crowley reached for the last of the chestnuts, concealing it in his hand discreetly.

“One final glass of wine before we part ways?” Aziraphale asked hopefully.

“Of course.” Crowley slipped the chestnut into a small pouch he had inside his tunic. A keepsake, so to speak, of their first shared meal together. I would very much so like to do this again. He thought to himself. But next time, I pick the restaurant.

[apenitentialprayer]

Symbolism of a Hedonistic Heracles

In Graeco-Roman literature and art, Herakles was not only a figure of power and strength. There was also a comedic Herakles, a libidinous figure, whose gluttony, drunkenness and sexual prowess were humorously exaggerated [...]. In Aristophanes' Frogs, Dionysus dressed as Herakles is accosted by a landlady who asks for payment for sixteen loaves of bread, twenty portions of meat, and generous portions of garlic, fish, cheese, and sausages - all evidence of Herakles' enormous gluttony [...]. Herakles' gargantuan appetite extended not only to food, but to sex. Apollodorus records one legend that Herakles slept with all fifty daughters of King Thespios in the course of fifty nights, in the king's hopes that the hero would impregnate all of them [...]. In Gandharan art, Herakles is similarly shown as a libidinous figure, someone often overpowered by his urges for women and drink. He is one of several figures from Greek myth -among them Apollo and Daphne, Aphrodite and Eros, and various other mythical beings such as marine monsters- who appear on shallow dishes used in Gandharan courts. Behrendt (2007, pp. 9-11) argues that these dishes "may have been used for ritual offerings of wine, perhaps to ensure a blissful afterlife for the dead" in Dionysiac rituals adopted by Gandharans. Galli (2011, p. 300) speculates that another possible use was to hold toiletries for wealthy women. One dish portrays Herakles accompanied by both alcohol and women [...]. Here Herakles leans in close and embraces the two women next to him. A tame lion, as on the wrestling weight, sits to the side. This dish portrays a comedic, light-hearted Herakles, enjoying wine and women -the luxuries of the courtly life- as he does in Greek myth. Whether these dishes belong in the women's sphere of bathing or the transgressive femininity of the Dionysiac cult, they connote the intimacy, privacy, and eroticism of the women's sphere. In a woman's private space of her own bath, she could admire (and perhaps be titillated by) the images of seduction and eroticism on these toilet-trays [...]. How can we best understand Gandharan depictions of the drunken Heracles? Brancaccio and Liu (2009) argue for a Dionysian strand in Gandharan courtly culture. Not only was viticulture introduced into India at this time, but Dionysian art forms, such as Sanskrit drama and theatrical masks, developed under the Kushans as well. That Greek drama was popular earlier in Bactria can be seen at Ai Khanoum, which had a full Greek theater. Dionysian themes of drink and drama were one aspect of Bactrian cosmopolitan style, but also appear in Buddhist art, such as on a stair risers leading up to the entrance of a stupa. Brancaccio and Liu (2011, p. 230) surmise that the baccanalian scenes of drunken revelry on these stair risers represent the life before embracing the dharma. Herakles, associated with drink in the Graeco-Roman world, was a likely part of the culture of wine in the Gandharan world. Herakles connects the powerful image of kingship with the drinking and revelry that can take place because of the peace won with Heraklean strength and protection.

- Jonathan Homrighausen (“When Herakles Followed the Buddha: Power, Protection, and Patronage in Gandharan Art”) 

[centroreligioso-blog]

Top 10 Cults

Cult roughly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the mainstream, with a notably positive or negative popular perception. Many cults are destructive or suicidal though others, whilst being controversial, do not commit extreme acts. This is a list of the top ten cults. In no particular order: 1. Church of Bible Understanding

Stewart TraillThe Church of Bible Understanding (formerly known as the Forever Family) is a destructive cult started in 1971 by former atheist and vacuum repairman Stewart Traill in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The cult targeted teens as young as 13 by drawing on their weaknesses. Throughout the 1970s, the cult expanded to many other parts of the United States.Traill, born in Quebec in 1936 is the son of a Presbyterian minister, who teaches that he is the reincarnation of Elijah, and that he knows the date of the return of Christ. Members of the cult live in a commune and donate 90% of their income to the cult. Traill amassed a fortune and owns four planes and a half million dollar mansion. According to former members, Traill controls every aspect of members’ lives through harsh criticism, shame, and public humiliation.Ron Burkes, a staff member at a residential treatment center for former cult members says this: “[Traill] has one of most effective means of shutting down critical thinking I’ve ever seen. Of the hundreds of people I’ve treated, COBU is definitely in the top five in terms of harm and psychological damage.” The cult also runs a mission in Haiti, where some former members claim Haitian children are indoctrinated in exchange for food and clothing. According to an article originally appearing in the Manassas Journal Messenger, COBU receives government funds for its Haiti Mission as part of President Bush’s Faith Based Initiative.

2. Manson Family

The Manson Family was a cult started by Charles Manson. Manson was born to Kathleen Maddox, an unwed sixteen year old girl, in 1934. It is said that his mother, an alcoholic, sold him to buy beer. When he was returned to her she had him sent to a boarding school. After a number of years living with his religious aunt and uncle, he returned to his mother who rejected him. After a number of robberies, he was put in jail for the first time. One month before his parole hearing in 1952, he raped a boy in jail by holding a razor to his throat. Two years later he was paroled. Manson began to pimp a young woman he met and eventually took her, and a second woman to New Mexico to work for him as prostitutes. He was caught and tried under the Mann Act (a 1910 act that prohibited white slavery and trafficking for immoral means).In 1967 he was released (having spent more than half of his life in institutions). Upon release, he requested permission to move to San Francisco which was granted. When he arrived he became part of the Hippie movement centered around the Haight-Ashbury region and he set himself up as a guru. He moved in with 23 year old student Mary Brunner and convinced her to allow other women to join them. Eventually eighteen other women were living with them – this was the beginning of the family.

By 1968, Manson had established a home for the “family” at a ranch owned by George Spahn. Manson convinced one of the family members, Lynette Fromme, to sleep with Spahn in order to get free rent. Manson began teaching his followers that social uprisings were coming – using the assassination of Martin Luther King as evidence. He also told them that the social turmoil he had been predicting had also been predicted by The Beatles. The White Album songs, he declared, told it all, although in code; in fact, he maintained, the album was directed at the Family itself, an elect group that was being instructed to preserve the worthy from the impending disaster.In 1969, on August 8, Manson told Family members at Spahn Ranch, “now is the time for Helter Skelter.” That evening the family, under the direction of Manson, would commit the famous murder of Sharon Tate, leading to other murders over the two day period.

3. Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo, is a Japanese religious group founded by Shoko Asahara. The group gained international notoriety in 1995, when it carried out a Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subways. In 2000 the organization changed its name to “Aleph” (the first letter of the Hebrew and Arabic alphabet), changing its logo as well. In 1995 the group had 9,000 members in Japan, and as many as 40,000 worldwide. As of 2004 Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph membership was estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 people.The movement was founded by Shoko Asahara in his one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward in 1984, starting off as a Yoga and meditation class known as Aum-no-kai and steadily grew in the following years. It gained the official status as a religious organization in 1989. It attracted such a considerable number of young graduates from Japan’s elite universities that it was dubbed a “religion for the elite”. Aum’s PR activities included publishing. In Japan, where comics and animated cartoons enjoy unprecedented popularity among all ages, Aum attempted to tie religious ideas to popular anime and manga themes – space missions, extremely powerful weapons, world conspiracies and conquest for ultimate truth.

Aum Shinrikyo had started as a quiet group of people interested in yogic meditation, but later transformed into a very different organization. According to Asahara, he needed “to demonstrate charisma” to attract the modern audience. Following his decision, Aum underwent a radical image change. The rebranded Aum looked less like an elite meditation boutique and more like an organization attractive to a broader, larger population group. Public interviews, bold controversial statements, and vicious opposition to critique were incorporated into the religion’s PR style. The cult started attracting controversy in the late 1980s with accusations of deception of recruits, and of holding cult members against their will and forcing members to donate money. A murder of a cult member who tried to leave is now known to have taken place in February 1989.At the end of 1993 the cult started secretly manufacturing the nerve agent sarin and later VX gas. They also attempted to manufacture 1000 automatic rifles but only managed to make one. Aum tested their sarin on sheep at a remote ranch in Western Australia, killing 29 sheep. Both sarin and VX were then used in several assassinations (and attempts) over 1994-1995. Most notably on the night of 27th June 1994, the cult carried out the world’s first use of chemical weapons in a terrorist attack against civilians when they released sarin in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto. This Matsumoto incident killed seven and harmed 200 more. However, police investigations focused only on an innocent local resident and failed to implicate the cult. 11 cult members have been sentenced to death, although none of the sentences have been carried out, nor the time and date for the executions to take effect has been publicly established.

4. Restoration of the 10 Commandments

The full name of this cult is the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a breakaway group from the Roman Catholic Church that formed in Uganda in the late 1980s. As the name implies the group strongly emphasized the Ten Commandments. This emphasis meant they even discouraged talking: out of fear of breaking the commandment about giving false witness. They also believed that their strict adherence to the Ten Commandments would be advantageous after the apocalypse.This proved significant as the group had a strong emphasis on the apocalypse, highlighted by their booklet A Timely Message from Heaven: The End of the Present Time. New members were required to study it and be trained in it, reading it as many as six times. They also taught that Mother Mary had a special role in the apocalypse, and communicated to the leadership. They saw themselves as like Noah’s Ark, a ship of righteousness in a sea of depravity.The group tended to be secretive and as mentioned above, was literally silent. Therefore it was relatively unknown to the outside world until 2000, although in 1998 the school they ran was sanctioned by the government due to unsanitary conditions and violation of child labor statutes.In March of 2000, around 300 followers died in a fire in what is considered a cult suicide. Investigations conducted after the fire discovered mass graves, raising the death toll to over 1,000. This may mean it was larger than the Jonestown murder/suicide in 1978, but some speculate the death toll was around 800. There are also allegations that the event was more of a mass murder by the leadership.

5. Raëlism

Founder, Claude Vorilhon (right)Raëlism or Raelian Church is a UFO religion founded by a purported contactee named Claude Vorilhon, who is known recently for supporting Clonaid’s claim that an American woman underwent a standard cloning procedure, which led to the birth of her new daughter Eve in December 26, 2002. National authorities, mainstream media, and young adults have increasingly investigated the church’s activities as a result of controversial statements by Clonaid’s head Brigitte Boisselier the day after.Members of the Raëlian Church consist of people who have been baptized by Raëlian clergy in quarterly ceremonies, and among the converts are members of Raëlian-founded free love groups such as the Order of Angels and Raël’s Girls. The organization—which preaches a sensual philosophy and a physicalist explanation of the origin of life—could have as many as sixty-five thousand members.

Raëlians emphasize secular and hedonistic ideas, rather than worshiping a supreme metaphysical deity.[30] The Raëlian Church members follow a UFO religion that favors a strong version of physicalism – the belief that everything consists only of physical properties. Raëlians deny the existence of the ethereal soul and a supernatural god, and believe that the mind is a function of matter alone. This ties into their belief that mind transfer is possible and that it will be possible to create an identical human clone in terms of mind and personality—as long as the clone and the original are not alive at the same time.

6. Scientology

The Church of Scientology is a cult created by L Ron Hubbard (Elron) in 1952 as an outgrowth of his earlier self-help system called Dianetics. Scientology and the organizations that promote it have remained highly controversial since their inception. Journalists, courts and the governing bodies of several countries have stated that the Church of Scientology is an unscrupulous commercial enterprise that harasses its critics and abuses the trust of its members. Journalists, governments, religious groups and other critics worldwide have often referred to the organization as a cult.

Reports and allegations have been made, by journalists, courts, and governmental bodies of several countries, that the Church of Scientology is an unscrupulous commercial enterprise that harasses its critics and brutally exploits its members. In some cases of US litigation against the Church, former Scientologists were paid as expert witnesses and have since stated that they submitted false and inflammatory declarations, intended to be carried in the media to incite prejudice against Scientology, and deliberately harassed key Scientology executives, by knowingly advancing unfounded opinions, either to get a case dropped or to obtain a large settlement.Although Scientologists are usually free to practice their beliefs, the organized church has often encountered opposition due to their strong-arm tactics, directed against critics and members wishing to leave the organization.

7. Order of the Solar Temple

Joseph Di MambroThe Order of the Solar Temple also known as Ordre du Temple Solaire (OTS) in French, and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition or simply as The Solar Temple was a secret society based upon the new age myth of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar. OTS was started by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret in 1984 in Geneva as l’Ordre International Chevaleresque de Tradition Solaire (OICTS) and renamed Ordre du Temple Solaire. It is believed that other members were also involved who have remained unknown to the public.In October 1994 Tony Dutoit’s infant son (Emmanuel Dutoit), aged three months, was killed at the group’s centre in Morin Heights, Quebec. The baby had been stabbed repeatedly with a wooden stake. It is believed that Di Mambro ordered the murder, because he identified the baby as the Anti-Christ described in the Bible. He believed that the Anti-Christ was born into the order to prevent Di Mambro from succeeding in his spiritual aim.

A few days later, Di Mambro and twelve followers performed a ritual Last Supper. A few days after that, apparent mass suicides and murders were conducted at two villages in Switzerland, and at Morin Heights — 15 inner circle members committed suicide with poison, 30 were killed by bullets or smothering, and 8 others were killed by other causes. Many of the bodies when found were drugged, possibly to prevent the members from objecting. The buildings were then set on fire by timer devices, purportedly as one last symbol of the group’s purification.In western Switzerland, 48 members of a sect died in another apparent mass murder-suicide. Many of the victims were found in a secret underground chapel lined with mirrors and other items of Templar symbolism. The bodies were dressed in the order’s ceremonial robes and were in a circle, feet together, heads outward, most with plastic bags tied over their heads; they had each been shot in the head. It is believed that the plastic bags were a symbol of the ecological disaster that would befall the human race after the OTS members moved on to Sirius.A mayor, a journalist, a civil servant and a sales manager were found among the dead in Switzerland. Records seized by the Quebec police showed that some members had personally donated over $1 million to the cult’s leader Joseph Di Mambro. There was also another attempted mass suicide of the remaining members which was thwarted in the late 1990s. It is believed that The Solar Temple group continues to exist, with thirty surviving members in Quebec at the St-Anne-de-la-Pérade center, with from 140 to 500 members remaining worldwide.

8. Heaven’s Gate

Heaven’s Gate is a destructive, doomsday cult centered in California. 21 women and 18 men voluntarily committed suicide in three groups on three successive days starting on March 23, 1997. Most were in their 40’s; the rest covered an age range of 26 to 72. Two months later, two additional members, Charles Humphrey and Wayne Cooke attempted suicide in a hotel room a few miles from the Rancho Santa Fe mansion; Cooke succeeded. Humphrey tried again in the Arizona desert during Feb 1998 and was successful.They followed a syncretistic religion, combining elements of Christianity with unusual beliefs about the nature of UFOs. They interpreted passages from the four gospels and the book Revelation as referring to UFO visitation. In particular, they emphasized a story in Revelation which described two witnesses who are killed, remained dead for 3 1/2 days, were revived and taken up into the clouds. They look upon earth as being in the control of evil forces, and perceived themselves as being among the elite who would attain heaven. They held a profoundly dualistic belief of the soul as being a superior entity which is only housed temporarily in a body. Applewhite said that bodies were only “the temporary containers of the soul…The final act of metamorphosis or separation from the human kingdom is the ‘disconnect’ or separation from the human physical container or body in order to be released from the human environment.”

Members called themselves brother and sister; they looked upon themselves as monks and nuns; they lived communally in a large, rented San Diego County (CA) home which they called their monastery. Most members had little contact with their families of origin or with their neighbors. Many followed successful professional careers before entering the group. Some abandoned their children before joining. They were free to leave at any time. They dressed in unisex garments: shapeless black shirts with Mandarin collars, and black pants. They were required commit themselves to a celibate life. Eight of the male members, including Do, submitted to voluntary castration. This seems to have been a form of preparation for their next level of existence: in a life that would be free of gender, sexual identity and sexual activity.Thirty-eight group members, plus Applewhite, the group’s leader, were found dead in a rented mansion in the upscale San Diego community of Rancho Santa Fe, California, on March 26, 1997. The mass death of the Heaven’s Gate group is said to be one of the most widely-known examples of cult suicide. In preparing to kill themselves, members of the group drank citrus juices to ritually cleanse their bodies of impurities. The suicide was accomplished by ingestion of phenobarbital mixed with vodka, along with plastic bags secured around their heads to induce asphyxiation. They were found lying neatly in their own bunk beds, with their faces and torsos covered by a square, purple cloth. Each member carried five dollar bills and a few quarters in their wallets. All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike tennis shoes, and armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team”. The suicides were conducted in shifts, and the remaining members of the group cleaned up after each prior group’s death.

9. Branch Davidians

The Branch Davidians are a religious sect who originated from a schism in 1955 from the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, themselves former members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church who were disfellowshipped during the 1930s. From its inception in the 1930s, the splinter movement inherited Adventism’s apocalypticism, in that they believed themselves to be living in a time when Christian prophecies of a final divine judgment were coming to pass. They are best known for the 1993 siege of their Center near Waco, Texas, by the ATF and the FBI, which resulted in the deaths of eighty-two of the church’s members, including head figure David Koresh. However, by the time of the siege, Koresh had encouraged his followers to think of themselves as “students of the Seven Seals” rather than as “Branch Davidians,” and other Branch Davidian factions never accepted his leadership.Some former members of Koresh’s group alleged that he practiced polygamy with underage brides, physically abused children, and stockpiled illegal weapons, legal authorities investigated these charges. On February 28, 1993, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) conducted a raid on Mount Carmel, a property of the Davidians. The raid resulted in the deaths of six Davidians and four ATF agents after a firefight broke out. Following this confrontation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) laid siege to Mount Carmel for 51 days, during which time the FBI and ATF conducted around-the-clock operations including psychological warfare (psyops) on the occupants of the complex.

The government’s siege on the Branch Davidians ended on April 19 when federal agents released CS tear gas into the compound. During the assault, several fires broke out and spread quickly through the buildings, killing approximately 79 Branch Davidians, 21 of whom were children. Autopsies confirmed that many of the victims, including David Koresh, had died of single gunshot wounds to their heads.The government put some of the survivors on trial. All were acquitted of conspiring to murder federal agents but some were convicted of aiding and abetting voluntary manslaughter.

10. Unification Church

The Unification Church (Mooneyism) is a new religious movement started by Sun Myung Moon in Korea in the 1940s. The beliefs of the church are explained in the book Divine Principle and draw from the Bible as well as Asian traditions and include belief in a universal God; in the creation of a literal Kingdom of Heaven on earth; in the universal salvation of all people, good and evil as well as living and dead; that Jesus did not come to die; and that the Lord of the Second Coming must be a man born in Korea early in the 20th century who must marry and have children.In the United States in the 1970s, the media reported on the high-pressure recruitment methods of Unificationists and said that the church separated vulnerable college students from their families through the use of brainwashing or mind control. Moon dismissed these criticisms, stating in 1976 that he had received many thank-you letters from parents whose children became closer to them after joining the movement. Moon and his wife were banned from entry into Germany and the other 14 Schengen treaty countries, on the grounds that they are leaders of a sect that endangered the personal and social development of young people. The Netherlands and a few other Schengen states let Moon and his wife enter their countries in 2005. In 2006 the German Supreme Court overturned the ban.

In 1993, Chung Hwa Pak released the book Roku Maria no Higeki (Tragedy of the Six Marys) through the Koyu Publishing Co. of Japan. The book contained allegations that Moon conducted sex rituals amongst six married female disciples (“The Six Marys”) who were to have prepared the way for the virgin who would marry Moon and become the True Mother. Chung Hwa Pak had left the movement when the book was published and later withdrew the book from print when he rejoined the Unification Church. Before his death Chung Hwa Pak published a second book, The Apostate, and recanted all allegations made in Roku Maria no Higeki. Bonus. Jonestown

On 18 November 1978, more than 900 people died in the largest mass murder/suicide in American history. Most of the deaths occurred in a jungle encampment in Guyana, South America, where members of a group called Peoples Temple lived in a utopian community and agricultural project known as Jonestown. Most died after drinking a fruit punch laced with cyanide and tranquilizers, although some may have been injected; two residents died of gunshot wounds. Earlier that day a few other residents of the group had assassinated a U.S. congressman along with three members of the media and a departing Jonestown resident. And in Guyana’s capital city of Georgetown, yet another member of the group killed her three children and then herself after receiving word of the deaths in Jonestown. In all, 918 Americans lost their lives that day.

Since that time, Jonestown and its leader Jim Jones have entered American discourse as code for the dangers of cults and cult leaders. The expression “drinking the Kool-Aid”—which means both blindly jumping on the bandwagon, and being a team player—is one manifestation of this. The story of Jonestown, and of its parent organization Peoples Temple, however, is more complicated than sound-bites comparing strict parents to Jim Jones, or pundits relating religious violence (such as the suicide air strikes of 11 September 2001) to Jonestown. Instead, Jonestown serves as a lesson in how a combination of media, government, and citizens can create a climate of persecution and fear. It also provides an example of how uncritical acceptance of the status quo and social and geographic isolation can lead to violence and even death.