by Terry Morgan
“And then you went even further”
Ah yes, the Professor thought. They were still edging slowly but surely to the big questions, but he would wait.
In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)
They left the old tree log and strolled on, Carl absent-mindedly kicking at small stones along the path as the Professor looked at the sky and waited for the next question. Grey clouds were gathering and a stiff breeze picked up as they turned the far corner and headed south.
“Uncle,” Carl said. “Do animals know fulfilment? Did the deer and wild boar who were killed for meat know fulfilment? Do chickens that make eggs have rights?"
This was certainly not the expected next question. "Animals do not ask such questions of themselves,” the Professor replied. “They just get on with trying to stay alive."
"So, are they content?” Carl asked.
The Professor sighed. “Why is your generation so fixated on understanding feelings and emotions, Carl? Is it because you fear you may have lost some? Are you, perhaps, concerned that feelings like contentment and fulfilment are a thing of the past?”
In reply, Carl shrugged.
“Tell me, Carl. What does fulfilment mean to you?”
“We were taught that it means you have everything you need.”
“Taught? In school? What has the world come to, Carl? Do human emotions now require teaching?”
“It was part of a lesson on human emotion and interaction. We were taught that to be fulfilled and satisfied you had to have everything your heart desires.”
“I see. So, do you now have everything your heart desires?”
“No.”
“What’s missing?”
“I don’t know, uncle.”
“Did they teach you what to do if it went missing or had never arrived in the first place?”
Carl looked at his feet.
“What you were taught is just not good enough, Carl. It sounds as if it is the quantity and quality of personal possessions that leads to fulfilment. Fulfilment has nothing at all to do with what you own. Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote that to be fulfilled is to be what you are and to become what you are capable of becoming.”
Carl looked up. “Yes, that’s better,” he said. “But how can we be fulfilled if we have no job?”
They were half way around the perimeter fence. Time was running out and still the Professor felt Carl was circling the real question. He took a breath and thought, instead, about pigs, cows and chickens.
“Asking me whether contentment and fulfilment forms part of an animal's needs is odd to say the least. Especially as most of your contemporaries think meat and eggs are made in factories and have never formed part of a cow or a chicken.”
Carl nodded seriously. “I saw a video on farming, recently,” he said.
The Professor thought he, too, might have seen that: a single farm producing a million tons of meat and half a million eggs per year. To meet the ever-growing demand for more and more food for human consumption the number of mega factory farms had tripled in fifty years. Animals were no longer being cared for as individuals with as much a right to life as a human but were bred, grown and then butchered on a scale that was almost impossible to imagine. If an example was needed of the utter disrespect humans had for life this was it. Consumers didn’t want to know how food was produced. They just needed as much of it as they could consume and to buy it as cheaply as possible. Turning a blind eye to where it came from and how it was produced eased what little conscience they had.
After watching the video and the automated butchering process the Professor had turned it off to sit and calculate the amount of food required to feed a million chickens that were then fed to humans. He’d become a vegetarian forty years ago.
“Can I assume you’ve never seen cows, sheep and chickens living in meadows of long fresh grass? That you’ve only seen them living on conveyor belts or hanging upside down by their feet from processing machines?”
“It was a chicken farm, uncle. Automated.”
“Of course,” he replied. “So, you won’t have witnessed the air of contentment about animals that are free to roam, or noticed that chickens scratching naturally in the undergrowth are quite different creatures to their cloned cousins in factories. Are you aware that they are all individuals each with an ability to express their differences if treated with dignity and respect?”
Carl looked puzzled.
“Given space, fresh air and a more natural environment I would say that animals do experience a feeling of contentment that shows itself in their mannerisms and their habits. It should come as no surprise, for instance, that they are often friendlier towards humans but I doubt if they ask themselves whether they feel fulfilled in the way you were taught. Their only possessions are their lives which they would normally fight to protect in all their natural ways though they are utterly powerless in a factory.”
“So, do those factory chickens suffer?”
“Those chickens do not consider their plight. They know nothing of what life could be. What I’m saying is that the quality of their lives would be enhanced by living naturally. Personally, I find producing cheap food for billions of unthinking humans by processing even more billions of live animals in factories utterly distasteful.
“But if those chickens are suffering then who will have caused it? Humans. Human suffering is also self-inflicted. We are a cruel species, Carl. But if you are trying to get me to discuss what I once wrote about human suffering then you must read what I wrote and not how others chose to interpret it. What I wrote was that to try to eliminate human suffering by always giving them what they want without demanding something in return only leads to greater distress and suffering. But I can see, like the others, you struggle to understand. Do you want me to explain?”
Carl nodded.
"Then think about that deer in the forest, long ago,” he said. “She is shot in the chest by hunters with an arrow. She is seriously wounded but she manages to crawl away. Perhaps she will die. But who helps her? Who intervenes? No-one. In your words she is now suffering. In your opinion and if she were human, she would be deserving of intervention to save her life. But deer do not help each other except as herds. Nevertheless, she is suffering, she is struggling, she cannot walk, she cannot feed. You and I know that the injury threatens her life. But does she experience pain as you would if your body was pierced by an arrow and you were bleeding. Probably, but we don't know for sure. Discomfort and stress? Certainly. Does she consciously understand she may die? If you think she does then you are assuming she has the same ability as you to rationally consider imminent death. That cannot be right. Instead, she relies on her instincts - conscious but unthinking awareness of her predicament forced on her by pain, physical discomfort and stress.
"Might it be instinct that made her crawl away to hide until the hunters passed by? If so, there is still only one instinct at play there - the one that all deer have - to run away from perceived danger. That she could crawl into a thick bush out of sight was luck. Did she recover? We will never know. But, if she dragged herself away to lick her own wounds and lived, then it was her natural instincts that saved her."
"I still do not understand," Carl said.
"That is because you are programmed by human thinking. Animal instincts are not understood by the most highly evolved animal there is - a human. Your brain is struggling to understand something that is totally alien.”
"But I like the deer,” Carl said. “I would want to help it."
The Professor shook his head. “Leave it alone," he said. "The deer will become stronger if you do not intervene. Leave it alone to lick its own wounds. Leave it alone to pass on its survival instincts to its offspring."
"But if it dies how can it pass on what it has learned?"
"It can’t. But if it had something special about it that helped it survive, then that’s when things are passed on. It ran away – instinct inherited
from its predecessors. It hid – inherited instinct. It licked its wounds – instinct. That’s survival of the fittest. But it must still die someday. Death is inevitable. But deer are a good example of natural population control. Given too many and too little food, they die out. With too few and plenty of food, they increase in numbers. It's a natural balance.
“Humans, though, interfere in the natural balances that affect their species. We reproduce and deliberately intervene to save babies and mothers. We intervene in injury, sickness and old age. The painful outcome of interference is visible all around us. We can no longer cope with numbers. Weakness, injury, sickness or old age, no longer, necessarily, means dying. What I wrote was that we need to examine our desire to intervene because there lies the real hardship and suffering.”
Carl nodded uncertainly.
"And another thing, Carl. Out of pity, might you want to save that injured deer? Might it be because you liked its big brown eyes that looked at you in fear when you were close to it. Might you have interpreted the fear you saw in those eyes as a plea for help as if it were human? Because that is foolish ignorance. You are now comparing its eyes, its emotions, its feelings, with your own. And what about the billions of other animals, birds and insects that are facing death right at this very moment? Do you want to round up all sick and injured animals and take them somewhere where they can be cared for? Would we not be inundated with sick and injured animals just as human hospitals are packed with the sick and the elderly? Where do you stop? Where do you draw the line with your constant desire to keep things alive because you, yourself, fear pain, death and suffering?"
"But we never draw a line with humans."
"That is exactly my point. And what is the downside of that misplaced and self-defeating desire to end all human suffering and prolong life beyond what is natural?”
“Too many people,” Carl said.
“That’s it,” he said looking back as he walked off. “And then you complain of a lower quality of life and ask questions about suffering, happiness and fulfilment. Are humans not the most stupid of all animals? Are we not well on the way to self-destruction and the destruction of everything else as well?”
Time was moving on and still the Professor waited for the big question, but Carl seemed only to be trying to digest what had gone before.
The Professor looked at his nephew wondering again about his background, his upbringing, his mother, Lavinia, and what influence, if any, Stefan had had. Broken families and chaotic households were common. Was it any wonder that young people, especially jobless young men like Carl, were confused and even suicidal? The other helpless victims, of course, were the elderly who were abandoned by sons and daughters, the very people who should be there to care for them in their old age.
Carl was deep in thought.
“Have we progressed, Carl?” the Professor asked. “Are we better humans now? Do we still care for each other? Despite our apparent wealth, are we as compassionate as we once were?” He took a few more steps. “Why do we abandon ageing parents for the state to care for or to cope alone?” He took another few steps. “Why, exactly, have you come to see me, Carl?"
Carl’s face twisted as if he was toying with an unasked question.
"I wanted to know more about you and why you are here and…...” He changed the subject. “And I don’t know what to do. I thought you might know.”
It sounded feeble to Carl but it was too late now, he’d said it. And he’d still not asked the one question at the top of his list. He bit his lip. The Professor shook his head.
For all their worldly ways and information on anything at their fingertips, 21st century humans seemed more uncertain than ever. To him it was proof of an increase in mental frailty, itself caused by living in a society that protected people from the reality of life with all its risks, dangers and pitfalls. Thirty years ago, they’d been called ‘snowflakes’ – weak, fragile particles that melted instantly when taken away from the safe, familiar environment where they’d formed.
“No longer able to cope when faced with the uncomfortable views of others, historic facts, death or even petty domestic issues, they run to seek words of comfort from counsellors armed with diplomas but with no more knowledge or experience of life than anyone else,” he’d once said at a conference on biological psychology.
His point had been lost in the debate and amongst yet more accusations of extremism but if he was asked again, he’d have repeated it. The inability to cope with adversity had been eroded by a feather-bedded society that had become too remote from the harshness of life itself.
“Why do you think I can help, Carl?” he said. “Isn’t a gap of sixty-years asking too much? Am I not just a wrinkled old scientist with nasty opinions who understands nothing of modern society?”
“You were my age once. Could you try?”
“What’s the problem?”
“My friends want me to fight the newcomers. What should I do?”
The Professor stopped walking.
So that was it. Or part of it. Or one of the still unasked questions.
‘Newcomers’ was the modern term for the most recent influx of millions of immigrants who had left homes in Africa and Asia to avoid drought, famine, poverty and internal conflict. Out of humanity, they’d been offered shelter wherever they ended up. In reality, it had become a problem of sheer numbers and it couldn’t be stopped without reacting as if they were an invading army.
As with many other mega cities who had accepted the influx and tried to accommodate them, seventy five percent of the population of the city beyond the fence were designated as newcomers. Lax border security, human rights legislation and high breeding rates were the main causes. If a country was known for its humanity and willingness to help then they arrived. They were desperate but they knew their rights.
But with no new jobs being created, unemployment amongst the young, whether locals or newcomers, was at an all-time high and no viable solutions was in sight. Carl was undoubtedly one of them and the problem would only get worse.
Jobs could only be created if it was economical to recruit but machines were more affordable. Not only were there now massive, automated factories, farms and food processing plants but automated shops, automated distribution centres and transport and places that only employed supervisors to watch banks of screens. In hospitals, even routine surgery could be performed remotely. The only jobs that had increased substantially over the last thirty years were in nursing and caring for the elderly – jobs mostly done by women. Young males like Carl were missing out in hundreds of thousands. Was it any wonder they were angry and wanted to fight?
"Ah, the newcomers," the Professor said. "I thought there was something else on your mind.” He paused for a moment. “Let me first ask you, Carl. What’s your surname?”
Carl looked puzzled. “I have my mother’s name - Strand,” he said.
“Well then, Carl Strand, it sounds to me like your ancestors on your mother’s side might have been one of the Vikings that came over in boats from Scandinavia a thousand years ago. Rapists, plunderers and arsonists amongst them if rumours are to be believed. It might also explain your fair hair. The point is, are you yourself not a newcomer?”
Carl seemed to find it slightly amusing. A faint smile flickered on his pale face. "I suppose I am also a newcomer,” he said, “but I am not as new a newcomer as some and our ancestors only arrived in small groups not in waves of hundreds of thousands."
That was true. "So, how and why do you intend to fight the newcomers?”
"Why?” Carl repeated. “Because we feel we are a minority in what was once our own country."
“What is a minority? You are a human being, are you not? The newcomers are of the same species are they not? And you have already admitted you are probably the offspring of past immigrants. So, are you really saying you feel too small and insignificant a part of a mixed community?"
Carl scratched his head and
thought about that. His uncle had a strange way of asking questions at times. He didn’t speak like others he knew. It was taking a bit of getting used to.
"Yes, I suppose that is it," he said eventually. “We feel unimportant and ignored and upset.”
They had stopped walking again. The Professor shook his head. "Feeling unimportant and insignificant is a sign of weakness, Carl. If you feel that way then you must do what other animals do. You must either fight to raise your position within your herd or learn to cope with being an outcast with a lower status.”
“I see.” It sounded hopeless. Impossible.
“But beware. Those who have already fought for dominance may go for the simple solution of eliminating you altogether. They are, after all, much more selfish than you.”
He let that sink in for a moment before adding, “And explain to me this weak-sounding word 'upset'? It is a word you have mentioned before.”
Carl nodded. "Oh yes. We were taught at school not to say we are angry, uncle. To say you are angry causes friction. Anger must be controlled. So, we say we feel upset or unhappy instead."
The Professor had read of this strange demand being placed on young men. Anger, they’d been told, mostly by their women teachers, was not good. It must be controlled. Quite how it should be controlled when the entire system was breaking down, unemployment was rife, the drugs culture was out of control and civil disobedience on the increase was never explained.
"So 'upset' means that all is not quite right, that life is not as perfect as you would like it or how you expected it to be. You are unhappy, distressed, discontented, depressed and feeling desperately unfulfilled. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Anger seems a perfectly good word to describe all of that, Carl. Can I give you permission to use it in my company?”
Carl frowned. "Yes, I suppose it’s anger.”
