This Thanksgiving I was with my girlfriend's family. Turkey was served. I held back tears for a little and finished my food. But I couldn't hold them back very long. I ended up going down to the basement to cry. I cried off and on for over an hour. My girlfriend held me. Eventually we went back upstairs but my mood never really improved. My girlfriend's mom was hurt. I just cannot do this anymore. I told myself I would get through thanksgving for my girlfriend's sake but I just couldn't stop crying.
In California, I met several birds who had been rescued from farms. These birds grew up in truly hellish conditions. Most chickens live in crowded amonia filled sheds. Here is a very short, very grisly video of the conditions on factory turkey farms. They never, or almost, never got to enjoy feeling safe in the sun. All of the birds I met were rescued because they were in especially terrible shape, even by the standard of birds trapped on factory farms. Despite what they endured they seemed to enjoy many parts of their lives. Several birds seemed actively consistently happy. People, including non-human people, can recover from a lot even if their scars never fully heal.
It is just so sad to see the body of a bird and think:
There was still time to say we were sorry. There was probably still time to give you a decent life. A life where you could have felt happy and safe at least some of the time. Maybe in a different world we could have sat in the sun together. We could have been friends. I had a miserable childhood but I eventually got to lead a real life. But instead of apologizing and making amends we killed you. Now you will never get to experience the life you deserved. I am so sorry...
Tears must flow.
Several activists I know have taken the liberation pledge. The pledge is pretty simple.
one | Publicly refuse to eat animals - live vegan.
two | Publicly refuse to sit where animals are being eaten.
three | Encourage others to take the pledge.
I don't really believe in taking pledges and try to avoid promises if I can. I trust my future self. But right now I am in compliance with the pledge and expect I will be in the future. Pledge takers commonly wear a bracelet made from a bent fork. Its time to bend a fork.
My comments here don’t really have anything to do with how I experience grief, or how I think other people experience grief, etc.
Here’s the thing: “grief”, as a phenomenon (broadly speaking), is not just an “experience”. After all, the experience of grief, per se, is—what? The interplay of electrochemical signals in the nervous system, and other such physiological manifestations, yes? But suppose we deploy our old thought-experimental friends, the evil neuroscientists; and we have them re-wire a person’s brain so that these physiological manifestations—the elements of the “grief” experience—are triggered in him by all manner of mundane stimuli: eating a satisfying breakfast, seeing a purple truck in the street, listening to jazz, etc.
Would you say that our hapless victim is experience genuine grief, in such circumstances? This, of course, is a tricky question to answer; just what does “genuine” mean? How about this one: is his grief meaningful, in the same way that grief at the loss of a loved one is meaningful?
In fact, would we even call this person’s breakfast-induced weeping “grief”? Or would we say, perhaps: “he is exhibiting an anomalous response, physiologically / psychologically identical with grief, but unlinked to any of the usual cognitive / experiential antecedents of grief reactions” (or something along these lines)?
Perhaps another way to put the matter is: grief is, ordinarily, a signal (in part to others, in part to yourself). It is, to a certain extent, socially mediated (that is, the experience of grief is shaped by certain social expectations, cultural norms, etc.). Its significance lies, in large part, in the role that it plays in various interpersonal interactions. None of these things have much directly to do with individually idiosyncratic experiential qualities of grief.
Indeed, we can see this in action, right here in the OP! The post author did not just have an experience of a certain sort; he wrote about it, and he posted what he wrote on a public forum. What’s more, the post is not simply “the sharing of an experience”; it is clearly written with the aim of persuading the reader, of changing minds. This is not surprising; grief, like most emotions, exists for a reason (evolutionarily speaking).
So the question of how someone experiences grief is not terribly interesting, in this context. It is not as if I am accusing anyone of lying about the emotions they are having (or have had), after all. But one may actually have an emotion that is nonetheless devoid of any real meaning, by virtue of lacking the sort of connection to the world that ordinarily gives said emotion its significance.