Anticipation of Judicial Inquisition of Humans by Extraterrestrials (Part #5)

 

Ensuring recovery of a form of cosmic debt?

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Public debt: Over the decades of the past century humanity has adopted practices whereby nations borrow financially, most notably from each other -- thereby incurring debts on which interest is paid, in anticipation of some process of debt recovery. Public indebtedness of this kind is measured in trillions of dollars and as a percentage of GDP (List of countries by public debt; List of countries by future gross government debt).

The Economist offers an interactive World Debt Comparison: the global debt clock. An update of the IMFâ-'s Global Debt Database shows that total global debt (public plus private) reached US$188 trillion at the end of 2018, up by US$3 trillion when compared to 2017. The global average debt-to-GDP ratio (weighted by each countryâ-'s GDP) edged up to 226 percent in 2018. Jeff Desjardins, $69 Trillion of World Debt in One Infographic, Visual Capitalist, 14 November 2019)

Indebtedness between species: The obligation to borrow may well be experienced as a pain by governments -- accompanied by an erosion of confidence and trust. There is every possibility that an analogous pattern may obtain among the universe of species. However rather than borrowing being understood in the financial terms so familiar to humans, ETs may have evolved an understanding of indebtedness between species of a far more radical and fundamental nature. In this sense species may indeed freely borrow from each other on any world -- each species exploiting the vulnerability of other species however they deem possible and appropriate.

In this regard, the preoccupation of the ET judicial inquiry can be understood as focused on the 10 to 100 million animals used in animal testing each year, and the ever increasing use of certain species for human consumption. The conditions of those animals bred for such purposes in intensive farming installations, as well as their experience during transportation and in slaughterhouses, is necessarily a particular focus. Comprehension of the ET concern can be usefully compared with human horror of the treatment of people in concentration camps and labour camps. Ironical human denial of the relevance of such ET concern is also comparable with attitudes to denial of the existence of camps.

In particular this may be determined quantitatively in terms of the pain caused by one species to another -- as understood and experienced by the formal analogues to each species throughout the universe. This perspective assumes, following the morphological illustration of D'Arcy Thompson above, that location in the universe determines the relative dominance of one species relative to another. Thus the ET commission of inquiry may effectively include a form of chicken from a region in which it is the chickens who are dominant -- thereby enabling them to "borrow" from humans whom they have the habit of consuming.

Across the universe, each biological form thereby has the potential of becoming "indebted" to every other form. The issue preoccupying the ET commission of inquiry may therefore be better understood as the relative degree of indebtedness of humanoids to other species and how debt recovery is to be ensured. In the human financial context, this is a function of the Bank for International Settlements. The delegation of ETs might therefore bear comparison to a group of bankers -- but one for which the currency of concern is a deeper understanding of interspecies pain.

The encounter of the chicken emissary with the chicken population on Earth, to take that example, is therefore of great potential significance in terms of this process and the procedures of the commission. Clearly that emissary is effectively an extreme -- an "elder" -- in the morphological transformation of that form, and necessarily constrained in the capacity to communicate meaningfully with those scheduled for human consumption in intensive farms. A degree of equivalence is to be recognized in the limited capacity of a human elder encountering other humans in urban slums, concentration camps, or similar facilities.

Dukkha and pain: On Earth the issue of how pain is to be measured is a matter of controversy. It is readily asserted that animals have no sensitivity to pain that is of any particular concern to humans causing it. This view may indeed be justified by scriptures implying that humans have a right to cause any pain necessary for their nourishment and survival. This perspective is extended to conflict between humans according to just war theory using arguments adapted to the process of inquisition -- perhaps to be recognized as "just torture theory". Variants of such arguments are applied to those suffering from painful illness and then to withhold any form of euthanasia.

A major effort to determine levels of pain -- as incurred by humans -- is that of Ralph Siu through the International Society for Panetics (Panetics and Dukkha: an integrated study of the infliction of suffering and the reduction of infliction, 1994; Less Suffering for Everybody: an introduction to panetics, 1994).

For the panetics community, the dukkha is a measure of the intensity and duration of pain and anguish adapted from the 9-point hedonic scale used to provide subjective judgements in market research. A "megadukkha" represents the order of magnitude of suffering sustained by 1,000 persons for about 10 hours a day, for a year, with severe stomach ulcers and without medication. The approach has been explored further by Johan Galtung (Panetics and the Practice of Peace and Development, 1999).

The reference to dukkha recognizes a more complex understanding of pain. Found in ancient Indian literature, it is indicative of anything that is "uneasy, uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, causing pain or sadness". It is also a concept in Indian religions about the nature of life that innately includes the "unpleasant", "suffering", "pain", "sorrow", "distress", "grief" or "misery".

There is little comparable effort to extend the understanding of dukkha to animals -- although the principle is accepted. However it could be readily argued that some of the descriptors of dukkha are clearly of relevance to the experience of animals as treated by humans. Arguably ETs would have an especially clear understanding of some such concept as being the basis for the transactions between species across the universe.

Dignity: Of particular relevance would be any universal insight into dignity -- so obviously evident in the lack of respect in many forms of human treatment of animals:

• Eva Bernet Kempers: Animal Dignity and the Law: potential, problems and possible implications (Liverpool Law Review, 41, 2020)
• Gieri Bolliger: Legal Protection of Animal Dignity in Switzerland: Status Quo and Future Perspectives. (Schulthesis zum Tier im Recht, 2016)
• Taimie L. Bryant:
  • Animals Unmodified: Defining Animals/Defining Human Obligations to Animals (University of Chicago Legal Forum, 2006, 1)
  • Similarity or Difference as a Basis for Justice: must animals be like humans to be legally protected from humans? (Law and Contemporary Problems, 70, 2007).
• Samuel Camenzind: Dignity of Creature: beyond suffering and further (The Ethics of Consumption: The Citizen, The Market and the Law, 2013)
• Suzanne Laba Cataldi: Animals and the Concept of Dignity: reflections on a circus performance (Ethics and the Environment, 7, 2007)
• Robert Heeger: Dignity Only for Humans? A Controversy (The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2015)
• Dunja Jaber: Human Dignity and the Dignity of Creatures (Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 13, 2000) .
• Federico Zuolo: Dignity and Animals: does it make sense to apply the concept of dignity to all sentient beings? Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 19, 2016)
• Gavrell Ortiz and Sara Elizabeth: Beyond Welfare: animal integrity, animal dignity, and genetic engineering (Ethics and the Environment, 9, 2004).:

Such concerns clearly merit consideration in a universal context where it is humans who may have the status of "animals" in some constellations (as envisaged above).