20110909

animals my brethren by Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz

Dear Friend:

You asked me why I do not eat meat and you are wondering at the reasons of my behavior. Perhaps you think I took a vow -- some kind of penitence -- denying me all the glorious pleasures of eating meat. You remember juicy steaks, succulent fishes, wonderfully tasted sauces, deliciously smoked ham and thousand wonders prepared out of meat, charming thousands of human palates; certainly you will remember the delicacy of roasted chicken. Now, you see, I am refusing all these pleasures and you think that only penitence, or a solemn vow, a great sacrifice could deny me that manner of enjoying life, induce me to endure a great resignment.

Is it not only too natural that I do not inflict on other creatures the same thing which, I hope and fear, will never be inflicted on me? Would it not be most unfair to do such things for no other purpose than for enjoying a trifling physical pleasure at the expense of others' sufferings, others' deaths?

These creatures are smaller and more helpless than I am, but can you imagine a reasonable man of noble feelings who would like to base on such a difference a claim or right to abuse the weakness and the smallness of others? Don't you think that it is just the bigger, the stronger, the superior's duty to protect the weaker creatures instead of persecuting them, instead of killing them? "Noblesse oblige." I want to act in a noble way.

I recall the horrible epoch of inquisition and I am sorry to state that the time of tribunals for heretics has not yet passed by, that day by day, men use to cook in boiling water other creatures which are helplessly given in the hands of their torturers. I am horrified by the idea that such men are civilized people, no rough barbarians, no natives. But in spite of all, they are only primitively civilized, primitively adapted to their cultural environment. The average European, flowing over with highbrow ideas and beautiful speeches, commits all kinds of cruelties, smilingly, not because he is compelled to do so, but because he wants to do so. Not because he lacks the faculty to reflect upon and to realize all the dreadful things they are performing. Oh no! Only because they do not want to see the facts. Otherwise they would be troubled and worried in their pleasures.

It is quite natural what people are telling you. How could they do otherwise? I hear them telling about experiences, about utilities, and I know that they consider certain acts related to slaughtering as unavoidable. Perhaps they succeeded to win you over. I guess that from your letter.

Still, considering the necessities only, one might, perhaps, agree with such people. But is there really such a necessity? The thesis may be contested. Perhaps there exists still some kind of necessity for such persons who have not yet developed into full conscious personalities.

I am not preaching to them. I am writing this letter to you, to an already awakened individual who rationally controls his impulses, who feels responsible — internally and externally — of his acts, who knows that our supreme court is sitting in our conscience. There is no appellate jurisdiction against it.

Is there any necessity by which a fully self-conscious man can be induced to slaughter? In the affirmative, each individual may have the courage to do it by his own hands. It is, evidently, a miserable kind of cowardice to pay other people to perform the blood-stained job, from which the normal man refrains in horror and dismay. Such servants are given some farthings for their bloody work, and one buys from them the desired parts of the killed animal — if possible prepared in such a way that it does not any more recall the discomfortable circumstances, nor the animal, nor its being killed, nor the bloodshed.

I think that men will be killed and tortured as long as animals are killed and tortured. So long there will be wars too. Because killing must be trained and perfected on smaller objects, morally and technically.

Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp in 1940. During his last 3 years in Dachau he obtained a clerical job in the concentration camp storeroom. This position allowed him to keep a secret diary on stolen scraps of papers and pieces of pencil. He would bury his writings and when Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945 he collected them again. The "Dachau Diaries" were published in 1956. From his Dachau notes he wrote an essay on vegetarianism which was translated into "immigrant" English. A carbon copy of this 38 page essay is preserved with the original Dachau Diaries in the Special Collection of the Library of the University of Chicago.

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As a Science of Apparatuses. Semiotext(e) intervention, series 07, σ. 200

The event, this act that keeps its power within itself, can come only from outside, as that which demolishes the very thing that should keep it at bay. When noise music burst on the scene, THEY said: "That's not music." When '68 irrupted, THEY said: "That's not political." When '77 had Italy by the throat, THEY said: "That's not Communism." Faced with the old Artaud, THEY said: "That's not literature." Then, when the event lasts, THEY say: "Well, it was possible, it's one possibility for music, for politics, for Communism, for literature." And finally, after the initial moment of shock brought about by the inexorable work of power, the apparatus reforms itself: THEY include, defuse, and remap the event; they ascribe it to a possibility, to a local possibility.

Who Wakes by May Sarton

Who wakes now who lay blind with sleep? Who starts bright-eyed with anger from his bed? I do. I, the plain citizen. I cannot sleep. I hold the torturing fire in my head. I, an American, call the dead Negro's name, And in the hot dark of the city night I walk the streets alone and sweat with shame.
Too late to rise, to raise the dead too late. This is the harvest. The seeds sown long ago - The careless word, sly thought, excusing glance. I reap now everything I let pass, let go. This is the harvest of my own indifference. I, the plain citizen, have grown disorder In my own world. It is not what I meant. But dreams and images are potent and can murder. I stand accused of them. I am not innocent.
Can I now plant imagination, honesty,
And love, where violence and terror were unbound -
The images of hope, the dream's responsibility?
Those who died here were murdered in my mind.

Praise by Harry Smart

(from Fool's Pardon )

Praise be to God who pities wankers and has mercy on miserable bastards. Praise be to God who pours his blessing on reactionary warheads and racists.
For he knows what he is doing; the healthy have no need of a doctor, the sinless have no need of forgiveness. But, you say, They do not deserve it. That is the point;
That is the point. When you try to wade across the estuary at low tide, but misjudge the distance, the currents, the soft ground and are caught by the flood in deep schtuck.
then perhaps you will realise that God is to be praised for delivering dickheads from troubles they have made for themselves. Praise be to God, who forgives sinners.
Let him who is without sin throw the first headline. Let him who is without sin build the gallows, prepare the noose, say farewell to the convict with a kiss.