Dr. Lake’s Blog

---

March 8, 2019
Comforting Pigs Doomed for the Slaughter

An account appeared this week in the Bakersfield Californian newspaper that tells of the selfless efforts of some good animal rights activists. https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/as-pigs-are-delivered-to-the-slaughterhouse-activists-offer-water/article_11090b32-4f40-56ce-bd54-d162c4c64b80.html.

These people do no more than to greet the arriving truckloads of doomed pigs and show them some kindness in the last moments of their lives. The slaughterhouse, Farmer John, is in full cooperation with the activity. At least they make no effort to stop the activists.

You may ask what good this does. In mere moments these pigs will all be dead. What has it accomplished to give an animal a moment of kindness, like it may have never seen its whole life, in the instant before its death? This is a metaphysical question. Interestingly, the worlds of literature and entertainment sometimes bring this issue to the fore of my brain. Sometimes they give us fanciful stories where the protagonist makes some error in life and suffers terrible consequences, but then magically gets a do-over. Watching the movie or reading the book, we all breathe satisfied relief when it turns out better the second time. If, in real life, we actually got a do-over, would that mean that the terrible suffering the first time didn’t occur? I say, “No. we have two lives here, one in misery, one happy.” It is a small leap from the fictional do-over to the more real, extended life, scenario. This was the situation experienced by Geetha as accounted in Mind Duel. Choked into unconsciousness, she has suffered every bit as much as a murder victim. But she recovers and lives the rest of her life. Did this second chance at life mean that all is okay with how the first part turned out? This second chance, it seems to me, is a wholly independent instance of a consciousness that lives on as compared to the scenario where the choked victim never wakes up. The novel, Mind Duel Africa, considers related concepts when it asks the question whether the suffering of a thousand elephants is negated by the rescue of a thousand others.

Very, very difficult metaphysical questions indeed. I just know that unless you argue that nothing matters because we will all be gone and ultimately unremembered (even if it takes until the sun burns out), this effort at Farmer John to show kindness to doomed pigs is a good thing. What we do today may disappear on the timeline into the past, but we did it. It happened, and that fact exists forever.

Dr. Kim Lake

---

April 8, 2018
Human Evolution and Animal Cruelty

It has forever astounded me that anyone can be meaninglessly cruel to an animal. Maybe I can understand hunting for food or maybe the meat industry making a buck and just not caring about animal suffering. Then there is “sport” – bull fighting, dog fights. But some people go even beyond these activities just to hurt another creature. I witnessed it in my childhood, and we all read the news stories these days. But even any temptation to do so is totally alien to me. I don’t hunt. The gun I own is only for self protection against predators, most likely humans! I tell myself that the fish on the hook surely ate another smaller fish and didn’t care about its victim’s right to life, but I still feel sorry for it.

This is not a good survival trait in a hunter-gatherer world or in even a slightly more primitive society than modern day America. If you felt sorry for the pig on the family farm, your family wouldn’t eat well. And looking all the way back to hunter-gatherer days, a heartless, and even aggressively vicious attitude, made you the tribe hero.

Then advanced societies developed diversification of labor. There was a specialist who did the hunting or farming of cattle, a specialist who was the town butcher. No longer did every man go out on the hunt and every woman chop the poor things up.

The more society evolves, the more removed most people are from the realities of eating meat. Now it’s just hamburger at the ready at the fast-food restaurant. Ask a child where milk comes from, and the answer is likely, “the grocery store”. We have only a small number of generations now behind us where we as a species have been separated from the universal hunter-gatherer history. That not-so-ancient history I think is what accounts for the propensity for a significant number of humans to exhibit calloused and even cruel behavior toward animals. It was an advantageous survival trait in a hard world.

But I would like to believe that those who mistreat animals are a dying breed. Our modern culture is witnessing animal rights movements gaining traction in the mainstream of society. This is only happening because it is a luxury modern civilization has only just recently acquired. And it is not just societal evolution. It is genetic evolution at work. We are truly changing as a species. I would have been a sickly, unpopular kid in the clan 10,000 years ago, speaking for and defending the animals we needed to hunt. Today, I am quite healthy not having to hurt another living thing … personally. I genuinely think it was innate in me from the very beginning of my life to have sympathy for the animals I encountered. I saw other children doing cruel things and was abhorred. I would not have flourished and produced a lot of offspring in that hypothetical 10,000 year ago family. People with the “cross-species sympathy gene” would have been selected against – not so much any more.

So where is the human race headed? If in a hundred years we have laboratory grown synthetic meat as well as superb substitutes for other animal products such as we indeed have for leather, fur, and ivory, then the evolutionary pressures favoring aggressive hostility toward other species will be removed completely. A thousand years on, the waning instances of those genes in the populace will be relegated to the psychopaths who torture small animals on their way to becoming serial killers and school shooters. These aberrant individuals should be strongly selected against by society, their instances dwindling toward zero. I can see a dramatically different future world where human beings are loving stewards of the flora and fauna of Earth. Could we really be so benignly destined?

I often stop myself from thinking that everyone should be more like me. How boring and unproductive a world it would be. I imagine all the wondrous improvements to the human race if we were rid of certain inbred behaviors, then I ponder just how scary are all the possibilities for a future evolved human race. For good or bad, we will, and can’t help but, change as a species. Wish I could have just a little glimpse of the actual future!

Dr. Kim Lake

---

• posted January 8, 2018

---

• posted January 13, 2018

---

• posted January 8, 2018

---

• posted December 31, 2017

---

• posted November 18, 2017

This wonderful presentation addresses some experiences I have had myself. As a child, many of us were natural scientists who experimented as we explored and discovered the new world around us. I recall noting that I could tell if a wall was close even with my eyes closed… echo-location? In my teens, I also discovered the phenomenon with free diving that I could hold my breath much longer underwater in the ocean than when I practiced while sitting on the couch. These fascinating human fringe abilities and much more about whales and dolphins are explored in the full video of James Nestor giving a talk linked here. If you want a quick sample from the nearly 1 hour video, try the excerpt link available on a facebook page by clicking the whale image here …

---

• posted September 26, 2017

---

• posted September 26, 2017

In this case, it is unquestionable that we are torturing this creature. Point 1. The article claims there are “hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. with spinal cord injuries”. Would not many of these be eager for the chance to volunteer. Point 2. The article states “researchers say that it will take at least a decade to fine-tune the technology for use in humans.” Why have we wasted a decade “helping” monkeys?

---

• posted September 23, 2017

In our exploration of the meaning of consciousness, we have crossed species lines. Now, we are wondering just how far back, how deep into the animal kingdom we need to look for understanding. This discovery concerning jellyfish has been published in several outlets, but we like the one linked here in the Washington Post because the account presented describes the logical process and good scientific reasoning of those young researchers who made the discovery.

---

• posted September 23, 2017

We want to give a hat-tip to these people doing good work

Also, they have a Facebook link that is a joy to watch

---

• posted September 23, 2017

We just made a donation to help animals displaced by hurricane Harvey at

---

• posted September 23, 2017

Fly with an eagle and you will appreciate how this animal sees the world quite differently than we do.