Abstract: In order to protect animals from abuse – we must be candid and HONEST about what abuses are actually routinely taking place right under our noses. Typically, the media lacks this kind of candor and honesty. But HERE we disclose the naked, lamentable TRUTH lurking behind the whitewash media euphemisms.

The term “Human Dishonesty Against Animals” at first blush sounds awkward. One might think, “shouldn’t it be ‘Human Dishonesty ABOUT Animals?’ ” We phrase it as “AGAINST Animals” in order to emphasize the point that this is a deliberate, calculating, intentional and intractable human attempt to demote animals to a lower ‘value’ rating than humans and to denigrate their importance while trivializing their pain and suffering — compared to human suffering. It is a strategic dishonest human exercise in “jaundiced perceptions” engaged in by humans as a matter of self-serving specie-biased convenience, very much like political boundary gerrymandering that seeks to strategically and dishonestly redraw voting district boundaries — solely to dilute the votes of a targeted group in order to rob them of their political voice in government. Human dishonesty regarding non-human animals is calculated to hide the human atrocities committed against animals while either denying or trivializing the horrific, unconscionable pain and suffering animals endure. Clearly this is AGAINST animals – while exalting and prioritizing human’s superiority complex.

The dishonesty we are talking about is the surreptitious ‘slight-of-hand’ manipulations of so-called ‘facts’ when considering the interests of non-human animals versus the interests of human animals. Let’s start with the terms and the euphemisms. Usually we say “humans” versus “animals” — as though humans are not animals, but something ‘higher’ and more important than just ‘animals.’ We human animals tend to absolutely deplore any attempt to connect us with chimps, gorillas or the horseshoe crab, when reaching back through the biological causal chain of events for the origins of life. It’s a kind of condescending inbuilt bias humans have ‘for’ human animals and ‘against’ non-human animals.

Then there’s the torrent of commonplace idioms and phrases humans use which desensitize people to the meaning of the expressions and trivialize the horror of the acts alluded to. Phrases like: “killing two birds with one stone” — “line-up all your ducks in a row’ — “hog tied” — “pig in a blanket” — “I ought to tan your hide” — “tougher than shoe-leather” — “We’ve got bigger fish to fry” — “easy as shooting ducks in a pond” — “red as a lobster” — “a pig in the poke” — “he flopped around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

These phrases desensitize people to the horrors of the acts every time these phrases are used. And they trivialize the suffering behind those acts. It illustrates just how sociopathic humans have become — to be so estranged from any level of Compassion or human decency.

We also see this bias embedded in a phalanx of other terms. When referring to non-human animals humans invariably refer to them as “it.” Most pet owners refer to their pets as “he” or “she.” The term “it” converts the creature into an object, like a rock or a table, as opposed to a sentient “being.” Occasionally one hears someone refer to an infant as an “it” and I always cringe when I hear that too. If there is uncertainty as to the gender of an infant or a non-human animal it is better to call them a “he” or a “she” and risk the 50\50 chance it might be wrong, as opposed to calling them an “it” which has a 100% guarantee that it is wrong. Whenever I hear a pet owner refer to their pet as “s\he” I always feel relieved because I feel more confident that the pet is probably in a good home – because they see their pet as a ‘being’ and not an object.

One couldn’t help but notice the disproportionate amount of attention lavished on the human victims of the BP Gulf Oil Spill Disaster compared to the attention given to the non-human animal victims, who were suffering mind-boggling horrid deaths, while the human fishermen’s suffering was largely confined to financial losses. It’s a self-serving operating assumption of convenience, that “dead animals” are just incidental expendable “road kill” lying on the side of the road — something the Transportation Department should clear away as soon as possible so as not to create a hazard or an eye-sore for human animals. Beings are beings, and suffering is suffering. Suffering does not cease to be suffering simply because it is happening to someone else other than ourselves.

This human dishonesty is particularly apparent when one looks at the criminal statutes and sentencing statutes for incomprehensibly horrific acts of cruelty perpetrated against non-human animals, even when they are someone’s beloved pet — a virtual, actual family member for most pet owners. The law treats animals as mere ‘property’ — “objects” – something humans ‘own’ and ‘possess,’ like a golf bag or a pair of shoes, which the law says one should be free to discard as one pleases. And if a human cruelly tortures and kills another human’s pet, the legal system holds that reimbursing the owner for the market value of the pet constitutes full and “just compensation” for their loss. The perpetrator makes out quite well when s\he tortures and kills a pet that was a pound mutt that is not a pedigree. This twisted mind-set goes beyond just being “dishonest.” It’s flat-out demented and sociopathic — and its deeply embedded in the human culture and legal system, even though pet owners most often see their pet companions as actual ‘beings’ and as actual family members.

There’s so many ways that human dishonesty against animals manifests itself.

There’s the dishonest flim-flam ‘slight-of-hand’ dishonesty that goes on in the Animal Experimentation debates. It especially happens when the argument hones in on WHY it is morally impermissible to experiment on humans. The answer is always the same — “because of the pain, suffering and death it would inflict on the human, where that human is not the targeted beneficiary of the experiment.” Yet this reason would also apply to animals. There’s not a single aspect of that ‘reason’ that does not also apply to animals. Yet, in every Animal Experimentation debate I have ever participated in, there is a staunch refusal to honestly admit that this would apply to non-human animals as well as humans and would make such experimentation equally immoral. What one always hears as a rebuttal at these debates comes in the way of pettifoggery — Machiavellian double-talk — as Ph.D. experimenters argue that “we do not know with any degree of certainty that animals suffer as humans do.” It’s a response only a sociopath or a pickpocket could embrace. We know they have a central nervous system like ours that feels pain, experiences fear and like humans, animals seek to avoid that pain and escape from the source of that fear. And no amount of flim-flam woo woo double-talk is ever going to hide that fact.

This human dishonesty even permeates the local government so-call “Shelters” (“Animal Kill Centers” — the Dog Pound), where sham euphemisms are routinely used to distort and misrepresent what is really going on behind closed doors. Typically you will hear a Pound director stating that they “Euthanized” 2,000 animals that year (for example) — because no homes could be found for them. (fn 1).   On July 12, 2010 CBS News had a story about “400 Canada Geese Killed for Air Safety Reasons.” The subheading for the CBS story read “Mass Euthanization of Geese a Step in Goal of …”. They did NOT “Euthanize” these animals or these Canadian Geese!! They “Exterminated” them. They “Exterminated” perfectly healthy, non-injured, non-suffering animals for human convenience. The ‘human convenience’ is that the Pound keeps picking up animals in the neighborhood in an effort to clear the streets of the rift-raft nuisance ‘items’ neighbors complain about. The ‘human convenience’ is that the humans saved humans the time, the expense and inconvenience of solving the Canadian Geese problem in an intelligent, non-violent, humanitarian manner. One way or another, this ‘rift-raft’ was to be discarded — either to an adopting human or to an incinerator. They chose the unintelligent, violent, ruthless ‘incinerator’ method.

The term “Euthanize” only applies when it is done solely for the benefit of the Euthanized animal to alleviate horrific immediate pain and suffering of that animal, and only where it is a last resort because the animal’s condition is terminal and there is no medical cure for his\her disease or illness. It is worth noting that the fraudulent, deliberate misuse of the term “Euthanize” has deep roots in the Nazi propaganda machine that served Hitler’s Grand Plan for genetic purity (Eugenics Program), as they too sought to clear the streets of the human ‘rift-raft’ — the physically disabled, the mentally disabled, the elderly, the gays, the gypsies and the Jews. Hitler and the Nazi Regime called this the “T4 Euthanasia Program.” (fn 3-6).

This particular human dishonesty about the term “Euthanasia” regarding animals is virtually identical to the Nazi calculated misuse of the term, in that it seeks to conceal (via misrepresentation) the true reality of what is taking place and why, by hiding it behind a sham euphemism that falsifies the reasons for the killing and falsifies the intended beneficiary of the killing, just as the Nazi Regime did. Virtually every respected dictionary and encyclopedia defines Euthanasia as: “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy.” (fn 3 – 5). Sometimes referred to as “Mercy Killing,” it is unmistakably clear that the sole purpose of the mercy killing is to alleviate the pointless, unequivocal and extreme suffering of the creature being killed. There is no OTHER ‘ulterior’ motive — no OTHER intended beneficiary — no OTHER collateral purpose or interest being served when TRUE “Euthanasia” is implemented. And it is only done when the animal’s medical condition is “terminal” — thereby making the suffering pointless.

Killing one being, taking one life solely for the benefit of another (namely the one doing the killing) is NOT, I repeat, is NOT “Euthanasia” in any sense of that term and that term should never ever be used to describe such conduct. Mass extermination is NOT euthanasia.

Killing one being, taking one life solely for the benefit of another (namely the one doing the killing) is called “EXTERMINATION” because that is exactly what it is. It is precisely what Hitler’s Nazi Regime did with humans – he “EXTERMINATED” them for the twisted perceived benefit of society (others) under his demented notion of a genetically pure race of human beings. The killing of these Canadian Geese is no more “Euthanasia” than is the Nazi genocide.

It would appear that all those engaged in this “Extermination Program” and all those in the media reporting about it, are acutely aware of how immoral, unethical, unjustifiable and reprehensible this “Extermination Program” really is, otherwise there would be no need to cover it up with fraudulent, sham euphemisms, as the Nazi’s did. Hitler knew that if he called it what it really was, “Extermination,” there would have been a mass revolt. Hitler deliberately falsified what he was doing by calling it “Euthanasia” knowing that most people deem Euthanasia to be a ‘humanitarian’ act of kindness, rather than a ruthless, senseless genocide. Hitler understood that the public had already fully accepted the misuse of that term (Euthanasia) at the animal control centers, where massive numbers of animals were routinely killed every day. Even though the public knew it was NOT really euthanasia that was going on, they accepted the misuse of that term, and Hitler’s plan was to get the public to react the same way with his planned “T4 Euthanasia Program” aimed at exterminating select categories of the human population. Hitler reasoned, “If you call it ‘euthanasia’ and characterize it as ‘absolutely necessary’ the public will accept it just as they had at the animal control centers. And as it turned out, Hitler was dead right. The public bought the dishonest snow-job, hook, line and sinker.

So the deliberate, calculated misuse of the term “Euthanasia” sets a dangerous, horrific precedent for both human and non-human animals. For this reason, there should be a ‘zero tolerance’ for misuse and misrepresentation of that term — given its horrific Nazi history of abusing the term to justify the extermination of millions of people.

If the Extermination of the Canadian Geese is so defensible and morally justifiable, then come right out and call it exactly what it is — the mass extermination & genocide of perfectly healthy Canadian Geese purely for human convenience reasons, and in no way is it for the benefit of the geese.

Therefore the media and everyone else should STOP calling these mass extermination & genocide crusades “Euthanasia” since that term absolutely does NOT apply. And the fact that this term does NOT apply is not a gray area of uncertainty or a debatable point today any more than it was when Hitler deliberately and strategically abused the term to facilitate his mass extermination & genocide agenda. Take a good hard look at these words — “mass extermination & genocide“ — because that is what humans have been doing — NOT “Euthanasia” as everyone is fraudulently claiming.

Either this action is justifiable when we call it exactly what it is (“mass extermination & genocide“) or it is NOT justifiable when we call it exactly what it is (“mass extermination & genocide“). In either case, falsifying the accounts of what is taking place by deliberately using what, ipso facto, is a patently false, inaccurate term (“Euthanasia“) to misrepresent what is going on is most definitely morally and ethically and logically wrong. If it is too horrible and too ugly and too disturbing to think about what it really is (“mass extermination & genocide“) then clearly it is something humans should NOT be doing. The media and citizens need to employ an honest, ethical standard of human decency and refuse to paraphrase “mass extermination & genocide” as “Euthanasia.”

These few examples are just the tip of the iceberg when we are talking about “Human Dishonesty Against Animals.” These are just a token list out of the vast littany of examples of the many embedded, surreptitious ways the human animal has been dishonest about their non-human counterparts — their brothers and sisters on this planet we all share.

For now, it is sufficient to stress that there are horrific, lamentable consequences that flow from the human social practice of desensitizing ourselves via euphemisms and counterfeit logical schemes that alienate us from our conscience, our compassion and from the Truth. We do this at our own peril.

Footnote 1 Link: “CBS News – “400 Canada Geese Killed for Air Safety Reasons” New York, July 12, 2010    Below is a Comment we submitted to CBS regarding this story.

Footnote 2 Link: “Merriam Webster Dictionary – Euthanasia:  “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy.”

Footnote 3 Link: Encyclopedia Britannica Online – Nazi “T4 Euthanasia Program” (1939-1945)

Footnote 4 Link: Jewish Virtual Library – The T-4 Euthanasia Program

Footnote 5 Link: Middle Tennessee – The T-4 Euthanasia Program

Footnote 6 Link: Disability Social History Project – Nazis, Eugenics, and the T-4 Program

Footnote 7 Link: Encyclopedia Britannica – Euthanasia:  “Act or practice of painlessly putting to death persons suffering from painful and incurable disease or incapacitating physical disorder or allowing them to die by withholding treatment or withdrawing artificial life-support measures. Because there is no specific provision for it in most legal systems, it is usually regarded as either suicide (if performed by the patient himself) or murder (if performed by another). “

(See also, “Rationalism Religion & Dogma – The Three Wicked Sisters” and “Mass Extermination is Not Euthanasia“).

This brief summary stands as the framework for this subject category entitled: “Human Dishonesty Against Animals” This is an open forum and participation by way of Comments on the posted articles is invited and encouraged. At this point in time, no membership, registration or log-in is required to post a Comment.

         On May 7, 2010 Sam Harris posted a blog at the Huffington Post blog site entitled “Toward a Science of Morality.” It was a follow-up article that was addressing an enormous amount of feedback he’d received subsequent to his TED Talk entitled “Science Can Answer Moral Questions.” This article will squarely address Sam’s Huffington Post blog and TED Talk general notion that “Science Can Answer Moral Questions” — where Sam questioned religions’ moral authority, while touting the moral aptitude of science.

Side-Note: Extremely relevant to this article is a related tandem article entitled “Morality Has No Conscience” — where the critical point is made as to why morality today should never even be considered a significant guide for human behavior or a meaningful influence in American life — and why it certainly should not be considered the “First Line of Defense” in regulating, tempering, molding, influencing or guiding human behavior or values. Morality has no conscience. That’s the problem with morality. Morality is strictly an opinion-poll-based weather vane that keeps looking to see which way the wind is blowing in public sentiments. So morality is an unanchored, shiftless chameleon that is swept along in the current generated by the faithless whims and vagaries and vicissitudes of public opinion. Anchoring society values around something as fickle, often truant, capricious, faithless and volatile as morality, with its opinion-poll referendums, is nothing short of insanity. For this reason, morality is fully capable of being completely silent, non-judgmental and callously complacent while unfathomably horrific atrocities are being openly and routinely committed — as happened during the Holocaust. When one considers WHO was swept into the White House by one of the last opinion poll referendums it becomes obvious how whimsical, truant, imprudent and frightening public opinion can be. For morality — clearly virtue and Compassion no longer matter. The article — “Morality Has No Conscience” — is an absolutely crucial addendum to this current article on morality.

Special Note: After receiving a torrent of push-back on his numerous “Science Can Answer Moral Questions” talks — Sam Harris has since modified his position so that he now substitutes the term “reason” for the term “science” — so it now reads: “Reason Can Answer Moral Questions.” As you will soon see, this article had already targeted the epistemological faculty of ‘reason’ as being just as unequipped and incompetent as “science” in its ability to “answer moral questions.” Despite Sam’s significant position change — we have left our ‘science is incompetent’ arguments as they were originally written — so the reader can see WHY Sam was inspired to revise his position as he did.

I share Sam’s belief that much of organized mainstream religion today is little more than sanctimonious dogma rants of a largely political nature. And I strongly agree with Sam’s assertion that mainstream religion, as commonly practiced and understood today, has no special moral authority and that mainstream religion is NOT preeminently capable of addressing the ethical \ moral issues society faces today.

The disagreement I have with Sam’s view that “Science Can Answer Moral Questions” ironically lies at the very center of his premise. And what is even more ironic — I disagree for many of the same reasons that I reject the notion that “Religion Can Answer Moral Questions.” I still maintain a tremendous amount of respect for Sam’s clear insights and his unique ability to articulate ‘the problems’ habitually embedded in the typical mainstream human approach to religion. So as I posit my disagreements, keep in mind that, I do NOT denigrate Sam or his positions nor do I discount his views in their entirety. Even imperfect viewpoints can be vitally important in helping to pinpoint, isolate and articulate the core problems we all recognize and seek to redress.

Before delving into the specifics, I can summarize the problems with several of Sam’s errant premises about science fairly quickly and succinctly. Sam too often uses sweeping generalizations utilizing overly broad brush strokes that make his premises inaccurate. Sam appears to make no distinction between “mainstream” dogmatized religion — religious “fundamentalism” (extremists, black-letter literalists, evangelicals, fanatics) versus the compassion-focused “spiritual” segment of religion (St. Francis, Albert Schweitzer, Mahatma Gandhi, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufiism, Huston Smith, Shunryu Suzuki, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, etc). The result is that Sam tosses the baby with the bath water, as is evident in his “Does God Have a Future?” debate. And this error can be translated as an epistemological error in failing to recognize the fact that there are two totally different epistemological ‘branches’ operating within his broad target category called “religion.” Sam’s error is that he has assumed that all religions have been dogmatized.

Had Sam made this critical distinction, he would have realized that his arguments were consistently accurate and well-placed with respect to the “dogmatic mainstream religions” — the fundamentalist dogmatized branch of religion, while being consistently inaccurate and unwarranted with respect to the empathy and compassion-driven “Religion as Spirituality” epistemological branch (see our article on this blog site entitled “Has Religion Forsaken Spirituality?“). Once again, the nature and character of these errors and their consequences become most obvious and indisputably apparent in the ABC News Nightline Face-Off program entitled “Does God Have a Future?” — where Sam is caught red-handed by the moderator (Dan Harris) and called to task on it, on two occasions, for being overly broad in his sweeping generalizations about and attributions to ‘religion’ as a whole, without making these crucial distinctions.

In summarizing Sam’s errors in this regard, his mistake is compounded by another ‘over inclusive’ generalization, which is his failure to make a critical distinction between “Applied Science” and “Pure Science” when he makes the blanket statement “Science Can Answer Moral Questions.” Pure Science has no “skin” in the game — it has no stake in the outcome. It seeks answers to the mysteries of Life – simply for the sake of knowledge itself. It has no “vested interest” in one answer versus another. Applied Science is just the opposite – by definition. It walks in the door with its prejudices. It comes to the table with a vested interest in the outcome and a heavily biased preference for one answer over another. It is strictly cash-driven and profit-motivated and routinely turns a blind-eye to inconvenient, credible scientific truths that cut against investors’ interests. This crucial distinction between Pure Science and Applied Science is absolutely essential for many reasons, and if Sam had made this distinction he would have realized that his arguments had only a marginal, tenuous application with respect to “Pure Science”, while being utterly inaccurate and unwarranted — and even preposterous — with respect to “Applied Science.”

There are many respected analysts and scholars who would compellingly argue that the notion of “Pure Science” has no actual reality in the world today, and it stands solely as an historical theoretical abstraction, a kind of purist’s theoretical for something that is currently non-existent in reality (like the Wooly Mammoth). Most all scientific research today is either conducted in the private sector or it is conducted at academic institutions via private sector funding and grants in which private sector corporate titans ‘own’ the research effort and dictate what is researched, the scope of the research, and dictate what can be disclosed to the public, and in what direction the research may go. A critical, honest examination would disclose that virtually all of science today is “Applied Science” — a severely denigrated, tainted, manipulative, biased, defective, close-minded pretense — a forgery of the pristine original, otherwise known as “Pure Science” (astronomy, astrophysics and ‘some’ physics may stand as the sole exceptions). This distinction is crucial because “Applied Science” is invariably funded, motivated and driven by the greed-mentality of the for-profit corporate mentality that walks in the door with iron-clad conclusions and prejudices, complete with an acute tunnel vision that is directed solely at profit margins, patent-ownership, damage-control, investor demands and corporate image business issues which utterly eclipse any residual delusional notion of an objective open-minded quest for knowledge.

In terms of objectivity, “Applied Science” can only be described as a barren moonscape that is utterly devoid of open-mindedness and is therefore completely unworthy of the trust and faith Sam invests in it for making important moral decisions. If anything, history has shown that applied science tends to be morally destitute, and in fact, it is often a disingenuous sociopathic instrumentality that frequently goes to great lengths to distort, falsify, doctor and conceal the truth from the public — to prioritize and advance investor interests. Those who fully understand this fatal flaw in science, see Sam’s suggestion as tantamount to “jumping from the frying pan into an arc welder” (from religious fraud to science fraud).

Special Note: On Friday, August 3, 2018 Washington Post Columnist George Will wrote a compelling editorial entitled “America is Sacrificing the Future” — in which he eloquently decried the commandeered takeover of Pure Science by the Applied Science faction. In this article, Will graphically and convincingly portrays the dire consequences that lie ahead if this high-powered goose-step trend continues. Will explains, with his patented clarity, WHY this is such a monumentally important issue. I strongly recommend that everyone read this Will editorial: “America is Sacrificing the Future”. Keep in mind — this blog article you are now reading was posted 8 years before this Will editorial.

While Will staunchly opposes the abandonment of Pure Science in favor of Applied Science and sounds the alarm about the rapidly diminishing landscape of Pure Science — it is important to understand the underlying mechanism that is causing this to happen. The survival of any body of science depends on funding and grants received from any source. Most funding and grant applications require a showing as to WHY a particular area of research is important and what BENEFITS can potentially be derived from that research.

This highly utilitarian criteria injects a ‘profitability’ objective (agenda) and this is precisely what converts Pure Science into Applied Science. So research that could potentially lead to corn growing twice as large, twice as fast — WILL get funding. And research seeking to understand the origins of the universe will NOT. And worse yet — research to understand the potential environmental hazards of designing corn that grows twice as large, twice as fast will NOT receive funding either — precisely because of its potential to ‘kill’ what has already been deemed a highly profitable research endeavor. As Will aptly explains — it is entirely possible that a better understanding of the origins of the universe could very well, inadvertantly, lead to one of the most useful, beneficial scientific discoveries in history. Will correctly points out that very often this is exactly how many of the greatest scientific breakthroughs were made — by accident — through the curiosity of Pure Science.

On another related front — the errors in Sam’s assessment of religion culminates with yet another oversight, namely, the failure to realize that the sum and substance of all his complaints about ALL “religions” — actually translate, ultimately and entirely, into a complaint against “dogmatism” NOT religion per se. Religions that have NOT been dogmatized simply do not exhibit the abominable, undesirable traits Sam ascribes to ALL religions. Had Sam grasped this fascinating and crucial fact, he would have realized that it is the inherent danger and unreliability wrought by “dogmatism” that gave the dogmatic religions their dispicable traits — and that inherent danger and unreliability which is wrought by “dogmatism actually apply to ALL academic, scientific, political, governmental and investigative disciplines across the board, and are NOT uniquely the Achilles Heel of mainstream religion alone. When, for example, you ‘monetize’ religion or science you bastardize it by dogmatizing it with all the prejudices embedded in the greed mentality and its for-profit incentives and motives. This is not rocket science. This is the indisputable path, genesis, trajectory and mentality of Applied Science today — which constitutes most all of science in the new millenium.

There was blistering irony in Sam’s Huffington Post blog (“Toward a Science of Morality“), where he described the disapproving feedback he received from academic rationalists who insisted that, from rationalism’s point of view, issues of morality are “indeterminate.” It was a one-punch KO — an inside upper-cut punch from the ranks of his rationalist constituancy. And this rationalist was dead right. History is on his side. It was kind of odd seeing rationalists cannibalizing each other, devouring their own kind, utilizing the same limited disfunctional instrumentality that makes ‘rationalism’ so utterly incompetent and ill-equipped to handle matters of empathy, conscience and Compassion. And make no mistake about it, their rationalized concepts of ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ were designed to supplant the epistemological function of “Empathy” and “Compassion” and “Conscience” because social engineers always desire, always seek a socially uniform cookie-cutter, rubber-stamp result that will be more amenable to “consistent mass production” industrialization, manipulation and control by social engineers and government leaders devoted to the belief society must be kept under tight reigns because it is always pulling on the leash in the direction of cerebral and spiritual independence (what they consider to be “anarchy”). To read Sam’s articulate account of those academic rationalist objections, is to see first hand, precisely why rationalism is and always will be utterly clueless and inept at performing the task Sam has assigned to it. I strongly encourage anyone who reads this blog to take the time to read Sam’s Huffington Post blog “Toward a Science of Morality.”

Huston Smith thoroughly understood the limits of Reason when he astutely pointed out that “Reason makes a good servant and a lousy master.” So Reason isn’t useless, expendable or irrelevant — nor is it a villain — WHEN it ‘serves’ rather than trying to lead the way. The villainy of Reason is in its usurpation of authority in a power-hungry land-grab — in a dishonest attempt to claim ownership of and control over the province and domain of Compassion. And then — its villainous sin is one of “utter incompetence” — it is grotesquely incapable of delivering on it dishonest charlatan promises.

While Sam deduced that the rationalist discord was the result of confusion about the importance of having a “consensus” on such matters, he seemed oblivious of the fact that the ‘consensus’ explanation effectively pollutes and perverts the faculty of empathy and Compassion, converting it to nothing more than a mathematical “poll-taking” popularity referendum, which historically is precisely what rationalism has always done when it over-reaches in a territorial ‘land grab’ attempt to invade the province of another epistemological domain that is uniquely suited to handle such matters. It is that errant frolic through a surrogate wasteland that has cursed us with the self-righteous, sanctimonious “tyranny of the majority” lynch mob mentality that has plagued most of human history (moralistic majority hysteria). That is precisely what rationalism has historically produced when it lies about its abilities, namely, it produces a watered-down, plasticized, mutilated ‘semblance’ of the pristine original that it is trying to pirate, and that disfigured, atrophied, contorted, pirated ‘knock-off’ end-product forgery ends up being a nutrient-poor surrogate for “the real thing” — but it invariably gets accepted, because most people are looking for a simple, easy, nano-second “silver bullet” formulaic, spoon-fed, pill-popping silver-spoon opiate solution that doesn’t require them to get a lot of dirt under their fingernails.

As stated in the Parent Article here, the problem with the “Rationalism is King” notion that rationalism (the intellect) is an all-around handyman who can fix everything, is that it isn’t true, it isn’t accurate. At best, it gives you a “Jack of all Trades — Master of None” charlatan snake oil salesman who is scavenging the countryside extolling his brain surgery expertise, to the detriment of those who believe him. At worst, it results in the wretched condition that is epidemic throughout the World today, namely, a rudderless morally destitute, spiritually impoverished culture that has abandoned “the Real thing” (Empathy & Compassion — the Spiritual) in deference to a fraudulent surrogate that has dumped its passengers in the middle of a barren wasteland without a map or a canteen.

It is bone-chilling to contemplate the repercussions of Sam’s notion that Science is capable of resolving moral, ethical questions. Apparently, by Sam’s reckoning, we need not worry about genetic engineers ‘crossing the line’ and engaging in unethical, unscrupulous and environmentally dangerous behavior because science is fully capable of resolving moral & ethical issues. So by Sam’s reckoning, science can just “self-regulate” itself by virtue of this astute moral aptitude it possesses. And we all know how effective self-regulation has been in the field of science . . . right? I’m sure BP (Gulf Oil Spill) would just love to slot Sam’s edict into their PR propaganda. Truth told, what makes the sciences, like genetic engineering, so horrifyingly dangerous is their profound moral reluctance, ineptitude and outright refusal to draw prudent, honest moral and ethical lines and limits for itself and resolve not to cross them. Probably because it deems morality to be “indeterminate.” That is science’s historical legacy.

I first discovered rationlity’s moral ineptitude for myself after a peculiar college incident.

I had an Animal Rights article published in the school newspaper. In essence, I was appealing to human’s “true nature” — their compassion – with its ability to see other suffering creatures as equal to themselves. A day or two later, I found a copy of my article stuffed in my department mailbox from a Philosophy Ph.D. student, with all sorts of comments scrawled in red in the margins. The gist of what he said was that “there is nothing in the realm of reason or rationality that informs me that I must or should perceive another’s life as being as important as my own. Everything that reason tells me is that ‘my life’ is of paramount importance, and that all other lives are quite secondary.”

After reading it several times, I was absolutely convinced I could blast his position to smithereens, in such a conclusive and obvious way, that he would be forced to outright concede the point — like a chess player tipping over his king in acknowledgement of an impending inevitable checkmate many moves down the road. But every argument against this ‘selfish nature’ claim ended up only producing selfish reasons why such a selfish person might compromise his selfishness merely for the selfish gains to be realized from it. My effort was futile. All plausible roads led to selfishness. And after a 15-20 hour effort without success, I finally gave up. And at that very moment, the light went on and it dawned on me. The graduate student was right. He was absolutely right. Reason, aka, Rationality, the Discursive Intellect, will never, ever tell you the truth, that another’s life is as important as your own, because it is incapable of discerning that truth. That realization comes from a different epistemological faculty altogether — the conscience of Compassion.

Compassion is NOT a product or construct of Reason. In fact, Rationality hasn’t a clue what the hell Compassion is, so it tries to “reverse engineer” the thing and simply comes up with the simple-minded “Golden Rule” Quid Pro Quo, something-for-something, barter & exchange, “being kind to each other” reciprocity paradigm as the next closest thing it can think of that is loosely ‘similar to’ but most certainly not really close to the original. Because rationalism is utterly clueless as to what Compassion is, and because it can only represent it mathematically, so to speak, as some vague, over-generalized over-simplified flattened-out plastic semblance, it ends up concluding that Compassion manifests as the body chemical Oxytocin, because Oxytocin levels in the body increase during friendly interaction between people and when you give people Oxytocin they are more considerate to others — therefore Compassion is Oxytocin or some facsimile thereof. That is precisely what Sam Harris and Michael Shermer insinuated during a ABC News Nightline Discussion \ Debate Forum entitled “Does God Have a Future?.” That is precisely the kind of ludicrous false lead misdirected misinformation rationalism intractibly and routinely spits-out because it is ‘stuck’ in its own limited operation which is inherently incapable of performing the tasks which the epistemology of Insight and Compassion perform quite easily and naturally, just as the ear is inherently incapable of experiencing or apprehending a beautiful sunset, something which the eye does quite easily and naturally.

The latin root for the term “rationalism” is “ratio” – meaning “to cut up.” And that is the primary function of rationalism, cutting things up into categories and compartmentalizing things, differentiating things, labeling them, alpabetizing them, dating them, genus – species, directory–subdirectory. It’s the basic function of an office clerk, organizing and maintaining the files in the file cabinet, labeling each folder, and so on. And we all know how angry office managers get when a clerk says they “can’t find a file” or when they say they’ve “never heard of or seen the file” the manager is looking for. For rationality, everything has to have a place and a name and a label and a definition. And once rationality labels something, no matter how inaccurately, the label sticks and rationality can’t ever seem to let go of it. And that is the rigidity and the dogma of rationalism — every bit as petrified, arbitrary and capricious as the religious dogma rationalists so militantly ridicule and repudiate.

And when rationalism runs up against a completely “foreign” object — something it cannot trace to any of its preordained labels or categories, it gets frustrated and militant, and it will mutilate, butcher and bastardize the alien object in order to force a fit into the next closest thing it can associate with the unknown entity. That is precisely what it has done to the epistemology of Insight, Intuition and Compassion. These “alien objects” are as alien as alien gets, because they come from a totally different epistemology. But rationality is treating them as though they are just some kind of an unwieldy, quirky, anomalous hybrid spinoff from a sub- subdirectory within the rationalist epistemic filing cabinets. And although this represents a totally mistaken understanding and a patent misconception of this ‘alien object,’ it will remain misfiled in that misnomer compartment indefinitely, to become petrified and institutionalized there as another brick in the wall of rationalism’s dogma palace.

I cited the philosophy department story, not as “proof” for these arguments, but simply to share this experience of the futile effort that I exerted in trying to slot the Compassion animal (Equanimity of Life) into the Rationalistic epistemic register, WITHOUT SUCCESS. And if there is a message here (and there is), the message is this. In this ‘other’ epistemology of “Insight” – “Intuition,” no one can spoon-feed you the answer. You have to find it out for yourself, through your own self-inquiry. It doesn’t function like rationalism. Only then can you take ownership of it and make it your own. Compassion can’t be transmitted from one person to another, because it simply does not operate like the rationalistic epistemology operates. It’s like the Socratic Method, which abandons the notion of spoon-fed, ‘person-to-person’ transmission of Insight, and instead, extracts the wisdom and the answers from within the student, the listener, thereby demonstrating to him that “You know more than you know.” That is how this ‘other’ epistemology operates. It is the only way in which it can operate. Buddhists and Taoists, from time immemorial, have always understood this.

It is like the Buddhist axiom which states: “You can’t teach a hunter that it’s wrong to kill.” You have to come upon that understanding through your own life experiences of pain and suffering, of death, a near-death experience or loss of a loved one. There is no cookie-cutter formulaic rubber-stamp ‘silver bullet’ argument (or pill) you can ‘pop’ that’s going to deliver you to the ‘Promised Land” eureka of realization. And yes, you’ll have to get some dirt under your fingernails. Because we have spent our entire lives in the epistemic world of the rational, we have come to expect, even demand, crisp, precise, succinct, unequivocal, articulate spoon-fed answers, although it is unclear why, since there are so many deep and vital questions rationality has been utterly incapable of metabolizing.

As stated in the parent article, Rationalism is what you think & say; Compassion what you “are” manifesting as what you “do.” Equilibrium is having resilient, fluid open access to all epistemologies and all ways of Knowing & Being.”   ~~The epistemology of `rationalism’ will never connect you to the epistemology of `Compassion,’ just as the ear will never connect you to a beautiful sunset. ~~   So many today are lost and adrift on rationalism’s barren moonscape and enduring acute starvation from a lack of Compassion. If they continue to use only one of the two chopsticks Life has given us, they will miss another dinner and ultimately they will shrivel-up to the size of parched pea from malnourishment.

Poets, philosophers and song writers, from time immemorial, have written about Compassion without ever claiming to have “bottled it” or conclusively “defined it” for all of posterity. And it is quite apparent that this article has attained no right to level such a claim either. In the book “The Prophet,” Kahlil Gibran demonstrated that he understood the predicament precisely. In acknowledging the human tendency to expect and demand clear, explicit articulation in the answer, Gibran wrote, “and who knows, but what a crystal is a mist in decay.” Whenever I reflect on that passage, it conjures up the many, many Zen and Taoist sketches and paintings which virtually always emphasize the peace, tranquillity and beauty of shrouded, misty mountain tops and secluded misty sunken valleys, just as their writings emphasize the serenity and imperturbable composure that lies within “The Great Mystery” of Life. Like a transient flim-flam huckster, Rationality lies to us and lures us into believing that it has a crystal clear answer for everything, then it silently disappears when the defects, bounced checks and the legal-tender problems start surfacing.

We have erroneously come to believe that fulfillment and satisfaction can be attained by finding the precise answer to our questions about life. And never does it occur to us that, perhaps, understanding, serenity and fulfillment eludes us, not because we lack the right articulate answers, but because we are not posing the right questions — questions which often contain their own answer. And if we stubbornly demand that the answer have the clarity of a glittering crystal, how shall we ever find it in the beauty and wonder of the mysteries of life or the misty mountain top? What Compassion lacks in linguistic clarity it makes up for in panoramic insight.

This “other” very different epistemological faculty has integrity and legitimacy in its own right, in its own sphere of influence and it is imprudent and premature to discount it or dismiss it merely because a different epistemology, of a different and inferior scope, cannot metabolize its contents. By that kind of reckoning, we must reject the entire torrent of new discoveries made by the radio telescope — merely because the findings cannot be confirmed by the optical telescope. Einstein often said, “I did not arrive at my fundamental understanding of the Universe through my rational mind.” He insisted that a new type of thinking is essential if humanity is to transcend to higher levels of understanding. Einstein was well-connected to this Intuitive faculty of Insight and knew how to actualize both the rational and the intuitive in his pursuit of a higher understanding.

And while this “other” very different epistemological faculty may not be amenable to microscope identification and test-tube corroboration, it is nevertheless discernable. It manifests as “Compassion” and those who do NOT discern it are all the more impoverished in its absence. The Compassion of St. Francis and Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer can be discerned without the intervention of the discursive intellect. But rationalism has trained us to mistrust it. It is entirely probable, realistically and credibly plausible, that this is an epistemology that exists beyond the faculty of the rational and beyond the faculty of language. There is absolutely no tenable, coherent logical basis for discrediting its integrity for this reason . . . just as it would make no sense for a plumber to pass judgement on the electrical integrity of your household wiring.