Re: oldest American skull found!

From: Erik A. Mattila (emattila_at_oco.net)
Date: 10/11/04 

Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 19:13:44 -0700

Icarus wrote:
> Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
>
>
>>"Erik A. Mattila" wrote:
>>
>>>pwilson wrote:
>>>
>>>>Erik A. Mattila emattila@oco.net wrote:
>>>>
>>>>[...]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Yes, and I get the creeps looking at Egyptian mummies too.
>>>>>It's probably the "creeps" because of my own internal
>>>>>conflict - on the one hand it fascinating (and probably
>>>>>perverse) but on the other hand the idea that the "long
>>>>>sleep" has been violated. It's like seeing animals working
>>>>>out their angst in a zoo cage - little behaviors that only
>>>>>serve to make incarceration bearable.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>So you equate the plight of caged animals with the 'plight'
>>>>of mummies on display in a museum?
>>>>
>>>>That's bizzare. And kind of demented.
>>>
>>>But you're not making the connection, wilson. It's
>>>"display." What are zoos? Recreation designed to entertain
>>>folks by plucking animals out of the context of their lives
>>>for the purpose of exhibition. In other words, it's a
>>>spectacle, and it is impoverished and shallow, as spectacles
>>>regularly are.
>>>
>>>Didn't Alfred North Whitehead warn us against this a century
>>>or so ago?
>>
>>I _liked_ going to the zoo when I was a kid... :(
>>
>>I guess the Political Correctness has gone completely out of
>>control lately... It's a New Puritanism, folks, all dressed
>>up in righteous gobbledegook, of course...
>
>
> I doubt the animals mind too much being on display, as long as they
> have their needs met. I don't see anything wrong with people enjoying
> animals as recreation either, especially as it might be educational
> and therefore in the long term good for the environment too. Added to
> that, lots of zoos do conservation work. It's all a cost/benefit
> thing.

How would you measure such a thing, Icarus...what animals enjoy or mind
or so forth? To tell you the truth (and I'm digging back in my memory
quite a few years) I think my ideas about this issue were shaped by
Konrad Lorenz. (King Soloman's Ring; On Agression etc.) Some animals do
well in captivity, some don't. As I recall, Lorenz discussed behavior
that indicated profound discomfort with captivity - even psychotic
behavior. I remember the "Spitting Monkey" at Flieshacker's zoo in SF
when I was a kid. Not really a monkey, but a chimp, that was stark
raving mad. It was a key attraction, and it was almost a badge of honor
among zoo visitors to have been spit on by this primate. But think
about it...could you imagine going to a Loony Bin to watch the patients
perform?

But I just ask myself what a zoo represents in our culture. If you
historize it, it belongs to a long tradition of collecting that in
itself has a social function - exhibition of wealth, power and so on.
So it seems to me that overall the zoo signifies man's mastery over
nature. People enjoying a day at the zoo of course don't think about it
this way.

And museums have the same sort of lineage. In fact there's a common
ancestor to zoos, museums, burlesque theater displays, amusement parks
and so on - the old Wunderkammern of the Early Modern era. (not to
ignore that some ancients also had manageries, but they were not created
and maintained for public display as a spectacle.)

The converse of all this is of course animals at home in their natural
environment, and dead people resting in peace undisturbed as their
families intended.

>
>

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