Life beyond us: the ethics of care

The moral status of animals is often left unexamined in our society. Without any significant state sanctioned support, the burden of care falls on overstretched individuals or organisations who simply cannot cope. Flippant remarks that bemoan the lack of basic human dignities in our lands as reason enough to not exhaust energy thinking about animals are commonplace. To speak of the environment and others who inhabit it is categorised as idealistic blabber. It is thought of as a case of misplaced priorities. People are being lynched; who has time for animals? The child of an emaciated mind, and of a soul tainted by the sophistry of moral abdication, this question sets up a false dichotomy.

When was the last time an animal came running to us, carefree in its strides, enchanted by the sheer joy of exploring its world, or possessed by an enthralling excitement to live? While no species are safe from the evil that has scratched our hearts, the stray dog in Pakistan must be among the most miserable. Notions of impurity make its alienation severe. They are often found whimpering under bushes, almost always too scared of human touch. While having a great need to be caressed, they stay away. Their eyes long for a touch: round, deep, and as beautiful as moonlight, yet brimming with incredible pain.

Recently, a gentleman in posh Lahore was chirpily on his evening walk when he encountered one such miserable being. The private park he walked in did enough to keep the poor out, but animals would often squeeze in through its iron rods. On that day, probably in search of a morsel to quell a hunger devouring its weakened body, a scrawny dog had ventured inside. To the man’s great fortune, this was an opportune moment to revel in the intoxicating rush of blood that accompanies the exertion of power. Upon seeing this alien intruding, the man must have felt the weight of his entitlement strangle his conscience. Afterall, he had paid good money to inhabit this land. Perhaps, he must have forgotten that this paradisical life of his was rooted in the unceremonious dispossession of land belonging to poor landowners. Local security was called; unflinching in administering morally questionable orders, they quickly shot the inconvenience. All was well again in Eden.

Now, you may object that subordinates have no choice; they are gripped with poverty, deluged under the stressors of an ever-worsening quality of life, or always in fear of being replaced by more compliant workers. You may object that this is not even a matter of choice; it is just coercive power. Perhaps, you are right. But even in times of great harm to oneself, there must remain space for courage; otherwise, what do we have left but the endlessness misery of a life tainted by culpability?

Ironic is the great infusion of religious vocabulary in our everyday conversations. Yet, where is the Prophetic example of exercising kindness? Ours was a culture of love, not a love that exacted retribution, but one that saw unity in being, that saw us all as atoms married on the string of divinity. It was a culture of an overwhelming kindness, a kindness that would shatter open the most calloused of hearts, and a kindness that would look the other way even when brutalised, let alone offended. If arrogant conceptions of spiritual superiority do not allow us to look to the West, to see goodness for what it is, then the very least we may do is to take note of our own history. The Ottomans were historically enthusiastic commissioners of waqfs (religious endowments), shelters, and hospital for animals. Ornate bird houses along with drinking basins were intricately incorporated into urban design, excluding both a profound regard for beauty and an appreciation for a responsibility towards life. Even today, the cheery animals on Istanbul’s streets may yet teach us something about the ethics of care.

James Baldwin reminds us that it is us, who “made the world we are living in and we have to make it over”. The evil we perpetrate stems from a condition of being closed off from the world, of not seeing, feeling, or understanding it. It originates in either the failure to confront and trust what we do not know, or from hastening to fuse the unknown into the known. Sy Montgomery, the Scottish naturalist, implores us to remember that our world is “brimmed even fuller with life” than one may imagine, “rich with the souls of tiny creatures who may love their lives as much as we love ours”.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2021.

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