Why look at animals

It would be better to attempt a worthy response, an answer, than a commentary on something so complete. The deci A review is by its nature a meta-text, and so texts already in meta-mode, even if they are not so much about themselves as self-conscious, are resistant to review.

The decisive theoretical break came with Descartes. Descartes internalised, within man , the dualism implicit in the human relation to animals.

In dividing absolutely body from soul, he bequeathed the body to the laws of physics and mechanics, and, since animals were soulless, the animal was reduced to the model of a machine… Eventually, Descartes' model was surpassed. In the first stages of the industrial revolution, animals were used as machines. As also were children. Later, in the so-called post-industrial societies, they are treated as raw material. Animals required for food are treated like manufactured commodities… This reduction of the animal, which has a theoretical as well as an economic history, is part of the same process as that by which [hu]m[a]n[s] have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units… The conceptual framework in which the Neo-Darwinists and the Creationists debate is of such limited imagination that the contrast with the immensity of the process whose origin they are searching is flagrant.

They are like two bands of seven-year-olds who, having discovered a packet of love-letters in an attic, try to piece together the story behind the correspondence. Both bands are ingenious, but the passion of the letters is beyond their competence.

Monbiot is one of those who goes deep and far beyond such elegant namings of the problem as Berger performs here. It may be possible to read this book, shed tears, and carry on calmly, accepting the exploitation and expurgation? If you read this and need help, reading about La Via Campesina might be useful. As time passes, I find myself ever more tightly stretched between urgent passion for high technology and the city, and the suspicion that I must become a farmer… View all 6 comments.

Nov 28, Julian Worker rated it really liked it. The following passage is very revealing. The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters. The marginalisation of animals is now being followed by the marginalisation of the social classes who used to be most familiar with animals.

Nov 12, David rated it really liked it Recommended to David by: david-giltinan sbcglobal. Shelves: read-in , anthologies-and-collections , unexpectedly-terrific. It almost feels as if I'm abusing my "unexpectedly terrific" shelf these days, but this book, another in the Penguin "Great Ideas" series, which I discovered recently in the local foreign language bookstore here in Madrid, really does merit its place.

Like all the books in the series, it is appealingly? Perhaps shamefully, I had never heard of John Berger before stumbling across this collection of his work It almost feels as if I'm abusing my "unexpectedly terrific" shelf these days, but this book, another in the Penguin "Great Ideas" series, which I discovered recently in the local foreign language bookstore here in Madrid, really does merit its place.

Perhaps shamefully, I had never heard of John Berger before stumbling across this collection of his work. A little googling points to a fairly extensive body of work, which I look forward to exploring further. The book comprises eight essays, one poem, and a concluding vignette of the philosopher Ernst Fischer, a personal friend of the author. As the title essay suggests, most of the pieces deal with the relationship between humans and animals; they range from the gently playful "A Mouse Story" a man, a mousetrap, and several murine protagonists , to more elegaic pieces such as "The White Bird" and "Field", both of which use the commonplace a wooden bird carved by a peasant of the Haute Savoie, a field near the author's home as starting point for more general rumination on aesthetics.

The poem "They are the Last" is a surprisingly moving appreciation of cows. Perhaps because of the quality of the writing, each of these pieces has a low-key charm which I enjoyed thoroughly. But the meat of the book no pun intended lies in the three longer essays: "Why Look at Animals?

Although Berger's purpose is undoubtedly didactic, precisely what I found appealing about these essays is the lack of any kind of preaching tone. In contrast to, say, someone like Peter Singer, whose general air of moral superiority I personally find completely offputting, and whose preachy tone diminishes the cogency of his arguments, Berger's approach is far more low-key. And because of that, more effective, at least for this reader.

Whereas the extremity of some of Singer's arguments just makes me fling him aside after a while, Berger writes with a sly charm that is beguiling, with the result that I found these essays thought-provoking, and not easily dismissed. Which, I imagine, would please the author. I did not expect to like this collection of essays nearly as much as I did.

Try them for yourself - you might feel the same way. Whereas the slim volumes that they have assembled are actually pretty appealing, even if some Orwell's essay on "Books v Cigarettes" or on "The Decline of the English Murder", for example , though not without a certain charm, seem to stretch the definition of "great ideas" more than a little View all 3 comments.

Apr 03, Abeer Abdullah rated it it was amazing Shelves: non-fiction , philosophy , wherethesunneversets , earthandveganism. This is such a wonderful book. It presents a perspective that's both very foreign and very familiar to me, at it's core its naked humanity which is something I understand but have not seen since childhood. It made me think of man's relationship to nature in a way I've never thought of before, I'm not a person who is exposed to nature in the slightest sense seeing as how I live in a city built on a desert and always feel that I have been so alienated from my culture, a culture derived entirely fr This is such a wonderful book.

It made me think of man's relationship to nature in a way I've never thought of before, I'm not a person who is exposed to nature in the slightest sense seeing as how I live in a city built on a desert and always feel that I have been so alienated from my culture, a culture derived entirely from the desert. This book doesnt seem to really presume what the effects of man's isolation are, it clearly ties it back to capitalism but it isnt preachy or presumptuous, it doesnt solve or even hypothesize, it just draws the world as we know it in a much clearer simpler way that really opened my eyes.

Reading it made me feel like someone had opened my own chest for me and made me look at the nature of my being which I had grown so unfamiliar with. Oct 04, Kate rated it liked it Shelves: for-masters , read-in , nonfiction. Really quite enjoyable, "Why Look at Animals? While drawing from a number of common places which is already somewhat paramount to "Ways of Seeing" , John Berger stretches and deranges them into a new perspective, creating novelty from images that feel largely familiar.

His writing, as Really quite enjoyable, "Why Look at Animals? His writing, as usual, feels somewhat a tad bit too demagogical and spiritual with no real reason to be so, but beneath this layer of what can be seen as arrogance still lies a pretty good book. The last essay in the book, existing separate from "Why Look at Animals? It exists more as a report on the last days of Ernst Fischer, which were spent with his wife and a couple of friends including, obviously, John Berger.

Aug 24, Frederik rated it really liked it. Beautiful collection of short essays and stories by John Berger on the relationship between men and nature, i. The most emotionally touching was the opening story, "A mouse story". A man is bothered by mouses in his house and uses a mouse trap to capture them. In examining them when captured he finds certain human and familiar characteristics. Just like the mic, the man longs for freedom.

The title essay is an excellent and poignant observation on the zoos. In zoos they constitute the living monument to their own disappearance. The book also contains a separate story, about the last day in the life of Ernst Fisher, Marxist philosopher and friend of the author. Jan 24, Graychin rated it it was ok.

This was an odds and ends collection of John Berger pieces that left me mostly unimpressed. The title essay was a bit of a disappointment, though it offered a couple interesting thoughts e. Feb 27, Martin Hare Michno rated it it was amazing Shelves: non-fiction , visual-culture.

The way in which John Berger saw and thought about life and nature is different to the traditional ways in such an inspiring manner. He seemed to be constantly in love with Earth and its creatures, even his own existence. But yet, his writing is more often thoughtful and calm than it is passionate. You can find visit rules via this link. If in his famous television project Ways of Seeing and the book of the same name, John Berger shows how the society of spectacle works through visual media fine art, mass culture and advertising , in Why Look at Animals?

Although animals were the first models for primitive artists and their cave paintings , and until very recently supplied humanity with food, clothing, and transport, it has taken only two centuries to replace them with machines and expel them from our society. Today, we eat animal foods produced on an industrial scale and outside of our view: we no longer associate a supermarket burger with a real cow.

In fact, they only exacerbate our nostalgia of real interaction with the animal world. Both pets and animals in zoos are kept in an unnatural environment: castrated, fed artificial foods, limited in space and sex. The Industrial Revolution gave us the internal combustion engine, which displaced draught animals from both streets and factories. But while this was undoubtedly an upgrade for both animal rights and human productivity, removing animals from our view was detrimental to our sense of shared everyday reality.

Meanwhile, as urbanization and industrialization spread, the extinction of wildlife continued removing animals from that reality — more than that, it forcibly denied them the chance to share it with us and instead confined them to the artificial reality of the zoo. Berger draws an unsettling parallel:.

This reduction of the animal, which has a theoretical as well as economic history, is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units. Indeed, during this period an approach to animals often prefigured an approach to man.

Noting that at the time of his writing the United States was home to an estimated 40 million dogs, 40 million cats, 15 million cage birds and 10 million other pets, Berger contextualizes our compulsion for domestic animal companionship:. The practice of keeping animals regardless of their usefulness, the keeping, exactly, of pets in the 16th century the word usually referred to a lamb raised by hand is a modern innovation, and, on the social scale on which it exists today, is unique.

It is part of that universal but personal withdrawal into the private small family unit, decorated or furnished with mementoes from the outside world, which is such a distinguishing feature of consumer societies. Equally important is the way the average owner regards his pet. Children are, briefly, somewhat different. The pet completes him, offering responses to aspects of his character which would otherwise remain unconfirmed. He can be to his pet what he is not to anybody or anything else.

Furthermore, the pet can be conditioned to react as though it, too, recognizes this. The pet offers its owner a mirror to a part that is otherwise never reflected. But, since in this relationship the autonomy of both parties has been lost the owner has become the-special-man-he-is-only-to-his-pet, and the animal has become dependent on its owner for every physical need , the parallelism of their separate lives has been destroyed.

But beneath this spiritual role of pets in completing the human self lies a darker dynamic, one in which the notion of caretaking becomes an imbalance of power. In the accompanying ideology, animals are always the observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance. They are the objects of our ever-extending knowledge.

What we know about them is an index of our power, and thus an index of what separates us from them. The more we know, the further away they are. That dynamic was even more pronounced in the public zoo — a 19th-century innovation that came into existence as animals began to disappear from our daily lives.

Emerging as an emblem of colonial power, where the capturing of animals became a trophy in the conquest of exotic lands, the zoo changed not only our relationship with animals, but also our very language.

Berger cites the London Zoo Guide:. Jumbo was an African elephant of mammoth size, who lived at the zoo between and Queen Victoria took an interest in him and eventually he ended his days as the star of the famous Barnum circus which travelled through America — his name living on to describe things of giant proportions. The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters.

Modern zoos are an epitaph to a relationship which was as old as man. Children in the industrialized world are surrounded by animal imagery: toys, cartoons, pictures, decorations of every sort.