The Last Korean Meat Dog

~ Kevin Boileau

I am the very last Korean meat dog. People from all over the world have been successful in convincing the Korean people not to torture and murder us anymore. They have convinced the Koreans not to beat us with hammers, electrocute us, strip us of our fur, and throw us into boiling water. Living conditions have been far worse than anyone could imagine: eating rotten food, watching our brothers murdered in front of us, watching mothers try to nurse their pups knowing that they would all die. I watched everyone I know killed. No one came to save me. I can hear the Korean men laughing as they stir the boiling water. I know they are coming for me. I have heard strange rumblings that the animal rights people are on their way, a bigger army than anyone can imagine. They finally put their feet down and said “No more.” No more killing. No more violence toward the Korean dogs. Yet the man stirs the pot. Another grabs a stick and a hammer. Why do I have to die? I have done nothing wrong. I have not hurt anyone. I wanted a life too, one that was full of love, sunshine, good food, playtime with my siblings, and a trusting relationship with a human. Instead, I have had a wretched life full of fear and terror. It is not fair. But I hear the animal rights people are coming to prevent this from ever happening again. But I also hear the man sharpening his knife. I know they will kill me soon. I am scared. I do not want to die. I want to live. I have a precious, sentient life to live but they don’t care. They laugh when they see me tremble. They are going to hurt me. Cut me up and eat me. Why do I have to die in this way? I am only two years old. Why do I have to be murdered? Then it dawns on me: There has to be the last Korean meat dog killed. I am the last of all the Korean meat dogs. I have to die in order for there not to be anymore. I wish so much that the animal rights people would get here soon. I want them to save me so I can live a life of freedom. This is the authentic nature of the world. I am the last to be unfree. I have to die. I have to die today so that there will be no more. I give thanks for the sparse sunshine, the cold nights, the terror, the rotten food, and the violence. I give thanks to the animal rights people who are strong. Who have solidarity. Who are responsible. I give thanks to the courageous and the new. I wonder what my life would have been in a world with non-violent humans. I am so sad. I am ashamed. The man is coming with the rope, the knife, and the stick. He will soon beat me until I can hardly see. Then I will feel the boiling water. I am the very last of the Korean meat dogs. Who are you?

Prof. Kevin Boileau

There are a number of points we at Freedom4Animals would like to make about the Zoo Director’s decision to choose the violent alternative in the zoo’s murder of Harambe, the innocent and imprisoned Gorilla.

First: Harambe never choose a life of imprisonment. Humans chose that for him. Because of that choice, we believe the Zoo owed him a fiduciary duty to protect his interests and his welfare always. The best choice would have been to send him to a sanctuary, but because the zoo chose to imprison him, the fiduciary duty follows.

Second: Because Harambe is a non-human primate he is not considered to be a “person” with due process, legal rights under the U.S. Constitution. Instead, under the “chattel” doctrine, he is considered to be property much like an orange or a chair, other than the enfeebled Animal Welfare Act which never protected him in a meaningful way. We find this intellectually dissatisfying because Harambe shares all the important traits that make humans human. He had a life plan; he had intention; he had moods; he was social; he required love and protection; he had autonomy and sentience.

Third: Many people are feeling outrage about the unjustified killing of Harambe because their morality diverges from what the law protects. They know something is intuitively wrong with the Zoo Director’s actions but they cannot articulate it in terms of rights and due process. Freedom4Animals will, therefore, speak for Harambe, our fallen cousin with DNA almost identical to ours.

Fourth: Humans base their legal rights on illusory and confusing notions about so-called natural rights. In reality, humans claim natural rights by fiat, and then find it easy to construct legal rights based on them. Within this worldview, humans always have greater ontological value than any other sentient and autonomous being. In cases of conflict humans, therefore, always win, and other beings always lose. This comes from the autonomous, acquisitive, possessive self of the Enlightenment, a philosophy that encourages humans to commodify everything and everyone around them, including non-human primates. In the case of Harambe, he was nothing more than a source of revenue to the North American system of zoos. The zoo director proved that on Saturday, the day after Harambe’s 17^th birthday.

Fifth: We propose a new kind of human subjectivity that chooses a gentler and kinder orientation toward other sentient beings, and which assumes ontological parity with other primates. This new way in the world we call vivantonomy, which espouses a philosophy of vivantology. It would also grant all primates the same kind of rights that humans enjoy. In that case, someone would stand in for Harambe and due the zoo and the mother for negligence or worse, obtaining justice for this beautiful, innocent primate who was guilty of no malfeasance of any kind. Without this form of justice, we believe that we only continue a new kind of holocaust against non-human primates, much like Nazi Germany did against Jews. It has the same logic and motivation.

Sixth: We propose a primate rights bill that prevent this sort of murderous behavior by a zoo director and which would also seek justice in a court of law for its violation. The title of our book is a Prolegomenon toward a Primate Rights Bill, which is on amazon.com, authored by Nazarita Goldhammer and Prof. Kevin Boileau at Freedom4Animals, two scientist-philosophers who are working tirelessly for theoretical and practical possibilities for human transformation. Our goal is to utilize all revenue from the sales of this book to introduce federal legislation that will close zoos and other legislation that will protect a new due process right for the important interests of all primates, human or non-human.

Seventh: The Zoo never exercised its fiduciary duty to Harambe after its original counterpart falsely imprisoned him from the first day of his precious life. The Cincinnati Zoo designed an enclosure that was the structural and negligent cause of Harambe’s intentional killing and, in fact, it did not protect against the negligent acts of the boy’s mother. Then, after this systematic treatment of Harambe as a commodification—it chose the violent alternative. When the Director directed the killing, he proved the value of Harambe’s life to the Zoo and to the people of Cincinnati.  There were many choices along the way that would have better protected Harambe. Now, in the 13^th hour of his life, he has no rights because he is a thing, no better than the feces of our capitalistic greed and our ignorance about the truth: Harambe was a person.

The question now is: What are we going to do about it?

Prof. Kevin Boileau

Co-Executive Director

Freedom4Animals

415.830.0065

(reprinted from our book, Vivantonomy: A Trans-Humanist Phenomenology of the Self by Dr. Kevin Boileau)

There are many species of beings that we humans will never see, and may that are in our daily ecosystems that we choose not to see.  Yet, they are there–here–rather, constantly watching, looking, appealing–usually to we humans.  We don’t see them because our own systems of value that are informed by our narcissism: our egocentrism.  This type of consciousness therefore closes itself in on itself, not seeing other life, other humans, and our very selves.  This is the possessory, dominating subjectivity that instrumentalists all others, and even in a system indoctrinated by rights and duties, fails to see the Other’s world on its own terms, as its unique manifestation.  Both Levinas and Burggraeve see this, understanding all too well that the anthropology based on autonomy constantly struggles within the consciousness of a desiring, egocentric self.  This is what leads to their formulations and developments of heteronomy (not a Kantian heteronomy but an existential, trans-human type. . . . ).   [This leads us to 6 axioms of change in our human thinking, as follows:]

First, we must dismiss the notion that humans are better, of more worth, or higher on a value scale.  We must substitute it with a new axiom of ontological parity.  This is for the reasons I mention earlier.

Second, we must agree in principle that most of us have little knowledge about the whole: about how all beings, processes, and structures work together in an ecosystem.  We substitute it with a new axiom of rigorous inquiry.

Third, we must accept a new Archimedean point.  We cannot pretend to be at the center of the universe or the planet earth.  This means that we must render an accounting of all life forms, including ours, holding that all living beings have equal interests and rights.  We must, therefore, have an axiom that recognizes we play a part in the while but are not the whole, and that we must mediate and weigh our interests relative to those of other life forms

Fourth, we must recognize that all life forms come from the same source.  This leads us to the reconstituted notion of solidarity.  This is a trans-human notion that includes the human equally with al other life forms.

Fifth, we must acknowledge and accept a new depth and breadth of our responsibility to others, including humans, other sentient life forms, additional life forms, and the environment in general.

Sixth, we must work diligently to formulate and articulate a new philosophical anthropology for human beings.  This means we must strive for new meaning and understanding of the world and our place within it.  This is neither the autonomous subject nor the heteronomous subject but it is a new human. This re-formulates the reality principle.