Tag: Human exploitation

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The Last Days

 

Apocalypse

II Timothy 3:1 says —

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

In Apostolic Incest, Jon said:

“Why would the Armstrong crowd care about incest? Incest to them is nothing to sneeze about. It is normal to them. They approve of it and by endorsing the old pervert they endorse his ways. All of them.

Moms and dads, donā€™t forget to have the elders of the church babysit your kids. They might not be the same ever again but heck, you need a break!

Soon the feast of booze will be upon us. The members of the so called churches will imitate Herbert and drink themselves silly. Those who run the hotels will be busy cleaning out the empty bottles and cans. Maids and janitors will be busy indeed. Cleaning up puke, spilled drinks off carpets, but hopefully they can make a little more money doing their mundane jobs and return these bottles and cans for the deposit.

The feast is a bore, the sermons painfully repetitive. The fun starts at family day where your children can mix with a selection of ministerial brats and the local pervert can have his way when your not looking. Again, your children may not be the same, but it is your church. You own your decisions lock, stock and barrel.”

Jon’s comment might seem a little over the top: After all, from the external view, the Armstrongist Churches of God seem benign, if not warm and cuddly — well, cuddly might seem to be stretching it a bit with Roderick Meredith and the Living Church of God, but if you look at say, United’s Muppet type videos for the kids, it could seem like you have finally found a church home. That is sort of a point of view because the ACoGs don’t seem to have many church buildings nor do they seem to have much presence in the community, because they are now TV based and Internet based church groups renting places for their services and various rare occasions. The point is that they don’t seem that extreme and bizarre on the surface. Be sure you don’t scratch because what lies just beyond the surface is ugly and often deadly.

One could argue that many events lay in the past with Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God, but the tie to those times is far too tight with today because the same people, Roderick Meredith, Dennis Luker and some of the minor leaguers like Jim Franks, John Rittenbaugh, David Pack, Gerald Flurry and Ronald Weinland are still running things and the same problems keep cropping up over and over and over and over.

Back in the days of the WCG in Seattle / Bellevue, Washington while Dennis Luker was in charge as Regional Pastor, there was a lot going on. Chuck Harris was showing his pistol to folks under his suit coat in the holster after Sabbath services and trying very hard to date and marry Brenda James. At the same time, an elder and his wife in the church were pursuing The Tracker — an outdoors survivalist type of guy — with great enthusiasm, even mentioning him in Sabbath services. Glenn White was also tapped into this. It seems as if The Tracker was sort of an extension of the last days mania where people were stocking up for the Great Tribulation and the horrible things to come (while living in faith, we suppose). The elder spent a lot of Ā “outside time” with The Tracker. His son was spending a lot of “outside time” with Chuck Harris and so was another teen of a prominent and respected family in the church.

A number of things all seemed to happen at the same time. I remember the nice summer afternoon when my wife and I went down to the Seattle Center by the fountain from the World’s Fair and met the elder and his wife. We had a pleasant chat for a few minutes and headed off to the cat show. What none of us knew at the time is that the two teens who had been BFF with Chuck had been with a drug dealer the night before. The drug dealer wanted more than money and when he proceeded to attempt to seduce them, one of the teens whipped out the gun and shot the dealer dead. Subsequently, the elder’s teenage son went to prison and so did his friend, who wanted to be with Chuck Harris in prison where he had been sentenced after shooting Brenda James and several other people in the church. Chuck Harris was black and Brenda was white and the WCG was still in racist mode and would not permit them to marry. What Dennis Luker failed to fathom was that Chuck was already married to a woman in Canada who showed up rather unexpectedly.

Meanwhile, my daughter was BFFs with two other girls in the same congregation. One of them was the daughter of a psychopath and routinely took my daughter and the other girl on shoplifting tours of places like Nordstroms to take expensive items like scarves from the store. Her other friend shocked our daughter by revealing that her father had been committing incest with her and had raped her for years. These and many other events have scarred my daughter so horribly that she is terrified of attending any Armstrongist church again, even though it has been decades past: She just couldn’t stomach it. The sermons about demons didn’t help much and neither did the graphic descriptions of death, destruction, dystopia of the soon to come last days.

Somewhat earlier, a brilliant young teen with an unwed mother in the church experienced the benefits of having a WCG parent by ending up in a Juvenile Hall and being raped there by the other teens. He had done nothing, but his mother just wanted him to learn to stay in line. The situation ended up so bad that the State of Washington gave guardian custody rights to a single man in the church.

After dinner at the Night to Be Much Observed, the host sat with me and told me about the elder in the church who was a pedophile favoring young boys. He taught the Sabbath School. She told me the leading women in the church reported him to the local ministry. When they did not respond, they reported it to headquarters. Headquarters and Herbert Armstrong did nothing. She told me that the only thing left to them was to “watch” him on the Sabbath and the Holydays. I wondered what moves he may have tried to put on my son.

By this time, nearly everyone is familiar with the UCG stalking case where the ministry, supported by Dennis Luker, defended the protagonist instead of following Scripture and putting him out of the church. The couple had to pursue getting a court to issue a restraining order. What many people did not know is that there were other stalkers in United. One weird and creepy woman stalked a young man up until he married and left on his honeymoon. When he returned, she confronted him and told him (and this should sound so very familiar to people who have been stalked), “You are mine!”. A single woman in the Midwest had a man stalk her, also under the watchful eye of Dennis Luker, and he had the gall to sign her up secretly with an insurance agent for life insurance, with his wife and him as the beneficiary! We are all familiar with the Philadelphia Church of God under Gerald Flurry where young women are pushed into a relationship with weird creepy older bachelors.

We are also familiar with Terry Ratzmann and the Living Church of God in 2005 when he entered into Sabbath Services and shot the minister and several members. Attending church could very well be hazardous to your health (not that the other stories here diminish from that concept). Roderick Meredith’s little group isn’t particularly impressive in the realm of the fruit of the spirit and neither is the apologist Robert Thiel.

The positioning of the “leadership” in theĀ hierarchyĀ makes the following scenario believable:

The minister in Topeka has committed murder.

Do we think he can get away with it?

Yes, I think so.

Good! What can we do to cover it all up?

Byker Bob had an interesting comment in the last PT blog entry:

“I think this issue is simply too mind boggling for stalwart Armstrongites to even consider, let alone believe and react accordingly. The greater majority chalks it all up as persecution, and considers Satan to be the author.

The period of incest coincides with the time period when Herbert alleges that God was revealing to him the restored truths, which are the backbone of Armstrongism. Anyone who reads the Bible knows that the God described in its pages did not work directly through individuals involved in ongoing and systemic sin. Sin whores up the spiritual channel, so to speak. God does convert evil, kind of like spiritual karate, and turns it against itself, ultimately producing good, but in every case of perennial sin in the Bible, it had to be cleared up and corrected before God worked with and through different individuals as His spokespersons. Even the most diehard Armstrongite would recognize that basic truth, which is why there is such a wall of denial. To acknowledge ten years of this type of sin, theyā€™d have to question and ultimately reject the so-called restored truths.

BTW, incest is an example of ā€œmala in seā€, an act considered so totally evil by all society, that a perpetrator is automatically reduced to non-person status, and anything that person had to say, or any good activities throughout his or her life are totally invalidated.”

BB

Herbert Armstrong was the source of this mess: His actions were so totally evil that by the standards of all society, that he would be automatically reduced to non-person status, and anything that he had to say, or any good activities throughout his life would be totally invalidated. Yet here we are. He is thought to be a great man. People idolize him. They call him, “Mr. Armstrong”. They say (in excusing his behavior): “But he brought us the truth!”. The reality was that Armstrong was responsible for warping and twisting the thinking of his followers — and worse, his ministers — so badly that they accept the weirdness and the risk of attending church in a completely dysfunctional environment fraught with danger. It might not seem so, but lurking behind those smiles and quality wool suits, there is a darkness that would never accept a message from any Holy Spirit.

Here we are, just days away from Ronald Weinland of the CoG-PKG being sentenced for 5 felony convictions of Income Tax Evasion by the Justice Department.

We also have other history, such as the minister who ended up in John Rittenbaugh’s Church of the Great God. The man was originally in the WCG where, as was related to me by Rex Sexton in the United Church of God, an International Association over lunch at Azteca, he raped 16 teenage daughters and 8 of their mothers. The man went from the WCG to Global under Roderick Meredith where he eventually was fired and he went with John Rittenbaugh and the Church of the Great God. In 2003, at the Feast of Tabernacles in Redmond, Oregon, I talked with John Cafourek — who, incidentally, has a degree and certification in counselling — who told me that he was the first one to report this man to headquarters in Pasadena. Their response to Mr. Cafourek? “Oh, but he gives such great sermons!” We’ll wait while you roll your eyes.

The reason I met with Rex Sexton in Azteca was to present to him my “Ministerial Guide to Mental Disorders” and discuss it with him: I knew that there was a dearth of material from which to draw and there were many problems in the Armstrongist Churches of God in this regard. (Later, I sent information and a link to the leader of every major church of God about the solution to the problem of alcoholism in the church — Rational Recovery — which was also ignored and rejected, particularly by Gerald Flurry.) He proceeded to tell me about a woman in his congregation who was married and had a job with a governmental agency. Once a month, she received her paycheck and disappeared for three or four days: She went binge drinking and sleeping around with other guys; then she would go back to work, to start the whole cycle over again. I’m not certain why he told me this in front of the other patrons and the wait staff.

Part of the reason I presented my Guide was because I knew of the terrible problems with mental illness in the church, not just among the members, but the ministers as well. One of these ministers wrote an article in the Good News about The Bible Keys to Mental Health. I knew that he had a mental illness when I met him — people in the church told me that he was just not coming to grips with his problems with mental illness, which is certainly clear in the Good News article. If you read it and know something about the issues, the advice to just be positive conveniently sidesteps the potential danger of not having the disease treated. Scripture claims that those with the Holy Spirit have the power of a sound mind. If that is true, there is something very wrong with the Armstrongist Churches of God. Do you really want to have mentally ill ministers giving you sermons and then advise you about mental health, when they have unresolved issues themselves and their advice (of non treatment from mental health professionals) could lead to your death?

It’s hard to write this: It brings such pain. If it were just history, I wouldn’t mention it, but it never really gets any better. The only thing that happens is that there are fewer opportunities for the sociopath and psychopath ministers and members who do such things — but make no mistake, they still go on and that’s the point! The injustices go on and on and there is no real advocate. Joyce, whose husband is the Living Church of God, related the tragedy that her husband has become a terror in following Roderick Meredith: She wanted to know what she should do? Their long term marriage was falling apart. The only real advice I could give her was to try to find what she needed in “Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships” by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias. Though the book as a resource is not specific to Armstrongism, you will certainly find that it has all the elements of it and does a good job on how to escape and recover from such cults as Armstrongism.

So while it may seem like Jon was over the top in his comment, the truth lies in the horror that many people face in the mean spirited practices of the ministry and membership of the Armstrongist cult. As a side note, the man whose father was the publisher of a sacred names newspaper who also debated with Herbert Armstrong in the 1940s, told me that he had an inside memo from Squaw Valley, telling the Church to clean up the bottles and cans of booze the members had left around. Jon’s comment, “Those who run the hotels will be busy cleaning out the empty bottles and cans. Maids and janitors will be busy indeed. Cleaning up puke, spilled drinks off carpets, but hopefully they can make a little more money doing their mundane jobs and return these bottles and cans for the deposit.”, may be sarcasm, but it is on spot. Armstrongism has a history and that history has taken us into the new millennium — but certainly not the millennium the Armstrongists were promised, and they should all think really hard about that.

If there is one thing we should have learned is that people in the WCG absolutely did not know one another. We may have been told, “We are family,” but it simply was not true — it was all artificial. When the WCG began changing the doctrines and when it all came to a head, people went their separate ways: People who sat together in services for decades simply did not know what their “brethren” in the church really believed. When it was all said and done, people were spun off in all sorts of directions and certainly did not speak the same things.

The reason that everyone stayed together as long as they did should be evident: It was, as Herbert Armstrong said, the Worldwide Church of Gossip. People were addicted to curiosity to find out what was going on. Many think it was because they had a social connection, but it is clear that they wanted to get the goods on their church “neighbor”. That yellow sheet journalism experiment, The Journal, continues the stupidity with Dixon Cartwright knowingly maintaining a newspaper filled with strange articles, with stranger advertising, written by extremely strange people, all in an effort to make the entire Armstrongist community seem genteel and civilized when it is nothing of the kind. People are addicted to infotainment involving perceived celebrities at the center of their eschatology with a slavish dedication to watch church news so they can be counted worthy of attention of their associates in the church. If people left, they would sorely miss the continuing soap opera of “as the church turns”. They just can’t leave — they are slaves of their passion to get all the news of the other church people that can fit in their minuscule minds. It’s like a small town, best described by Bob Hope: People are so narrow, their ears overlap.

If you are disfellowshipped, you will learn instantly that you really didn’t have any friends in the Armstrong community, particularly if you brought to light something the cult wanted to keep hidden. It could be worse than that: In some of the extreme Armstrongist cults, people have found themselves stalked or worse. Many have had repeated phone calls late at night with those who hang up immediately when they answer. Some have had to contact the police and the FBI. A few are threatened in other ways, such as being threatened with lawsuits or other forms of extortion. If you leave, it depends, but under some circumstances, you might just want to drop off the grid when you leave.

Indeed perilous times have come.

So yes, we do seem to be in the last days.

The last days of Armstrongism.

And we’re just fine with that.

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"The Call"

I donā€™t think about my childhood much.Ā  Itā€™s not that it was particularly awful or that I suffered irreparable damage itā€™s just that it feels unimportant.Ā  Almost as if it happened to another person or it was a movie I saw once but canā€™t quite remember the details.Ā  It somehow does not connect to me anymore, does not inhabit my soul the way childhood does in others.

But I do reflect now and then, dredging up distant memories like faded photographs blurred and distorted with time and age but still recognizable if you look closely enough.Ā  If you squint just right, adjust the light the image will begin to make sense and you will find yourself saying, ā€œAh, yes, I remember now. I had forgotten.ā€

Upon recent reflection into the question of spirituality and what that means to me I found myself looking at some of those distant memories.Ā  I can see myself as a young girl, hair brushed and held securely with a barrette, my nicest dress ironed and immaculate, my white socks and patent leather shoes, everything in its proper place nothing allowed to be out of order. I was sitting in a hard metal folding chair with my notebook and bible waiting for our weekly pilgrimage to ā€œGodā€™s Houseā€ to get underway.Ā  Two hours of religious instruction in ā€œthe wayā€ about to begin.Ā Ā  The ritual of prayer, hymns, and dutiful note taking that was a part of my weekly duties as a good daughter.Ā  This weekly preparation to save my soul from the sinful and dangerous environment in which I lived known to me as ā€œthe worldā€ as if it was a separate state or distant and foreign land was somehow going to keep me safe from the devil ā€œhaving his way with meā€ as my mother said making it sound so salacious and almost sexually exciting to a newly hormonal young lady.

I was a good student.Ā  I accepted this teaching because it was expected and it was all there was.Ā  One way~one God.Ā  However it never moved me, never swept me up into a feeling of grace, never inspired or delivered me from heartache.Ā  I was told the answers before I was ever allowed to ask the questions.Ā  In fact even the questions were picked for me and those that didnā€™t fit into the churches dogma were quickly discarded forbidden to further discussion.Ā  I did what I did, believed what I believed out of fear.Ā  Fear of punishment, fear of abandonment, and fear of not pleasing this God that was a jealous and demanding God somehow displeased with the human nature he supposedly created in his infinite and infallible wisdom.Ā  Forever paying the price for the sin of the first man and woman, a debt that Jesus paid but somehow I still carried on my account.Ā  The sin of individual choice, thought, and desire.Ā  It didnā€™t add up (perhaps why I have always hated mathematics) but I went with it all out of fear.

Until in my seventeenth year of life having been freed from the church going experience since the age of thirteen when I left my mother and moved in with my father I stumbled on a book in the library about the history of witches and paganism.Ā  Being the bad ex-Christian I was at the time I stole this book, which later I lost never to be recovered–my first lesson in karma.Ā  For the first time in my life the words I read caused a physical and emotional response that had no trace of fear.Ā  There was only a feeling of peace as if lost in a foreign land I had suddenly stumbled on a map I could read and understand.Ā  There was in fact a spiritual world that seemed to fit me.Ā  Although I liked the idea of this particular spiritual path I didnā€™t start to seek any real training or learning until my mid twenties.Ā  I found myself surrounded by other young people who were drawn to Wicca and paganism as I was, but I felt out of place.Ā  These young people dressed in costume flirted with witchcraft but didnā€™t take it seriously.Ā  They were like children playing dress up, reveling in shocking and disturbing the status quo with their outlandish and heathen behavior.Ā  They were emotionally unstable, personally unreliable, and some even dangerously intrigued by the idea of wielding magic to gain power over others, involved in practices I found to be morally questionable.Ā  I walked away from these people and their playacting disillusioned and disgusted.Ā  If this was Wicca I wanted no part of it.

Donā€™t get me wrong I still considered myself a Pagan.Ā  I wouldnā€™t be running back into the arms of Christianity any time soon, but finding no community in which to grow, learn, and practice with that I could trust or even consider real I simply stuck to the central guidelines and forgot about pursuing any deeper commitment to the craft.Ā  I rarely performed any type of ritual, I did not continue my studies, and I avoided most so called witches like the plague being completely disinterested in any drama or Hollywood type practices.Ā  Most of the people I came into contact with became interested in magic because of a movie theyā€™d seen expecting to find a magical outlet that would gift them with some sort of power they could wield over others.Ā  Hogwash.Ā  There is no power to be had over another only the power to enrich and expand oneself.Ā  Those who seek to control, influence, or even ā€œhelpā€ others without their consent are in my mind very dangerous and misguided individuals.

For the next ten plus years I existed in spiritual limbo.Ā  I battled (mostly unsuccessfully) my chronic depression, wore my anger and cynicism like a suit of armor, used my humor and indifference as my weapons of choice, and generally just drifted through my life without really ever showing up to the event.Ā  I was deeply sad as if in a state of constant mourning.Ā  I felt completely disconnected from others and myself.Ā  In the distance beyond the fog and shadows in my brain I heard a faint call.Ā  So faint I decided it must surely be my imagination.

god_blast

Imagine my surprise when the call began to get stronger, louder, and more insistent.Ā  It was the same voice that spoke to me all those years ago at the tender age of seventeen.Ā  The same invitation to leave my state of spiritual limbo and show up to life alive, in color, and present.Ā  An invitation to come home only this time my Goddess sent me true guides in the shape of friends.Ā  And so now approaching my fortieth year on this earth I resume a journey long ago abandoned, I exchange my armor of anger and cynicism for a warm cloak big enough to share with fellow travelers.Ā  I keep my humor but turn in my indifference and select instead an open heart in which to house my many souvenirs, and set out to join the dance of life with childlike abandon and wonder, trusting that this time faith will sustain and inspire me instead of chain and punish me.Ā  And I know I am truly blessed to have this time to continue my journey.

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THE ARROGANCE OF HUMAN ASCENDANCY

by Allen C. Dexter

Time for something lighter.
I hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The human race stands in a position of dominance on planet earth. We are clearly the most highly evolved species.

Our brains and minds are the most highly developed in the entire biological sphere we inhabit. We alone have the capacity for advanced speech. No other creature has the manual dexterity, due largely to our opposable thumbs, to invent and manufacture quite like we can. No other being besides us has the capacity to reach for the stars or even realize that there is a vast universe out there to explore. It’s only recently that even we realized that.

We’re obviously superior in many important ways.

That fact leads many of us to assume that everything, including other creatures, is here to exploit and use as we damn well see fit. Like the attitude ancient royalty and pre-civil war slaveholders had toward ā€œlesserā€ humans, we tend to regard all other creatures as simply there for our exploitation. We are prone to think they don’t have the same quality and depth of feelings and emotions we do.

This is a very flawed attitude.

I’ve always been somewhat cognizant of the fact that other inhabitants of this world do have feelings and emotions, but I still thought they were vastly inferior to what I as a human would feel.

All of that changed in the last few years as three small dogs entered into my world. We are the doting owners of a female Pomchi and two male Pomeranians. I have been fascinated to see how much like human children those pooches are. I am convinced that all they would need is a hyoid bone and a human-like larynx and they would carry on kindergarten level conversations with us. They certainly know a great deal of what we are saying and we are learning to interpret what their barks, growls and looks mean. Watch this video to see what I mean: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/11/dog-breaks-vocabulary-rec_n_804728.html.

The little Pomchi and one of the Pomeranians absolutely love peanuts. I keep a large sack of roasted peanuts beside my recliner. As I’m watching the TV, the little Pomchi will park herself in front of my recliner and gaze steadily at me. If I don’t notice, there is soon a little bark telling me to adjust the portable steps for her and then she watches for me to put my hand down into the sack. Up she comes and parks herself with an expectant look like a child waiting for candy. My heart just melts at such moments. She can also hear me open a carton of ice cream from the master bedroom, and if on the bed, bark to be put down for her share.

Daisy, the Pomchi, especially loves to have her tummy rubbed and petted. She usually sleeps between us and will often roll over and impatiently convulse her little body to let us know she wants her tummy rub. When she is sitting on my lap and being petted by my right hand, she will daintily reach out her paw to my left hand in what I call her ā€œtummy dummyā€ reminder.

Years ago, a friend who had a large property in the Altadena, CA foothills with horses and a couple cows commented how he always resented putting gas in his car, but he never resented feeding his animals. It’s much the same with our dogs. We just don’t resent sharing anything with them when we see the joy it gives them. They are so much like little human children.

And, they want to please us, just like normal children do. If we have to scold them for something, their little crests fall and they look oh so miserable. We are careful to shower them with love and praise as soon as possible afterward.

None of them have ever been struck. As a result, they have no fear or hostility toward any human. Yes, they will bark at all visitors, but its all a territorial ā€œpackā€ thing. Their tails are wagging and they are ready to love and be loved. Nipping a visitor never enters their minds.

When they have been left alone for a while and we come back, it’s like children welcoming daddy and mommy back. We have to let them in the car or they could get run over. Trouble stands up like a little man and does a dance we call the ā€œlambada.ā€ His brother is starting to do the same. Daisy is more sedate. She just waddles up in all her plumpness, tail wagging, and waits to be greeted and petted. Then, they anxiously wait to see if we brought them something.

Dogs fit in so well with humans because they are in many ways very similar to humans.

They form packs (families). They are hierarchical with top males and females. They mark their territories ā€“ much like Mexican gang bangers ā€œtagā€ theirs. If we had evolved a keener sense of smell, one can only wonder what we might see taggers doing. Would save them a lot of money for spray paint. Getting acquainted by intimately sniffing each other would also add an interesting dimension to life!

Besides, there are known benefits to having a pet. This recent article points out six of them: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-liebmannsmith-phd/6-health-benefits-of-owni_b_795430.html#s209450.

Dogs also learn quickly from experience. One morning, our oldest Pomeranian, who was a pup near a year old at the time, came yelping and howling from under our bed. Like all pups, he liked to chew just about anything and that, along with other mischief, earned him the name ā€œTrouble.ā€ The compulsion included electrical cords. I soon found that he had chewed through one of the control cords to our sleep number air bed ā€“ and gotten a painful shock for his ā€œtrouble.ā€ He has never touched an electrical cord since!

We hope his two-year younger brother, Jubilation or ā€œJubi,ā€ learns a similar lesson without dire consequences. Like children, you just can’t guard them from all hazards. They have to learn some things the hard way and one can only hope without too many serious repercussions. The main cord he has damaged so far was the charger cord for my wife’s cell Phone. Those small cords carry very few amps or voltage so he didn’t learn from it.

We aren’t sure whether they’ve learned the lesson about skunks yet. A skunk family chose our alley for a temporary ā€œstomping groundā€ last summer. Of course, the Invaders had to be challenged. Yep, we had some ā€œde-skunkingā€ to do. Luckily, not a direct, close-up hit. As an old North Dakota ranch kid, I know how devastating that can be. It makes for instant ā€œcanus non grata.ā€

Neither of us are cat fans, but the stories people tell us about their cats make it plain that they have their own unique personalities and feelings. I’m certain, if we had a cat, and we won’t because of a severe cat allergy on my part, that I would find many things to love about the animal and could relate equally interesting facts.

Other creatures are a lot more intelligent and emotionally aware than we would perhaps suppose. Their feelings run deep and they suffer from pain, deprivation and loss very much like we humans do. Anyone who takes on a pet needs to realize that and treat that animal as a feeling, sentient being every bit as worthy of our concerned respect as any other member of the family. If you’re unable or unwilling to provide that loving respect and care, it’s best to forget taking on the responsibility.

Many denizens of the animal kingdom demonstrate great awareness. Elephants have great mental capacity and their care for each other is in many ways human-like. Watch them playing with snow at a German zoo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/28/elephants-play-in-snow_n_801933.html#s216103. Dolphins can be trained to do a great variety of complicated things, as can whales. Both are extremely intelligent. Even the lowly octopus has a very highly developed brain. The longer we study, the more we learn and the more our commonality of shared abilities and traits with other creatures becomes apparent.

I was amazed by the story of Washoe, a female chimpanzee who had been taught to communicate in computer sign language. She learned to name things, and when asked what a watermelon was, she gave it the name, ā€œfruit drink.ā€ If that isn’t a synonym for ā€œwatermelon,ā€ what would you call it? That was human-like reasoning!

We recently watched The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill as the first film we pulled up on instant Netflix. It was amazing and brought tears to our eyes several times.

Exactly what life, mind, brain, spirit, soul, etc. all may mean, it is clear to me that all higher creatures, although still greatly inferior to us in many respects, share a great deal of our mental and emotional characteristics. We have a responsibility to respect them and care about how we treat them.

We don’t need to go to the extreme of becoming vegetarians, never using their capacities for our service, etc. Many animals add a great deal to human existence, and if they are treated with humane care and respect, their lives are also enhanced. A triple crown race horse, for example, usually leads the life of an aristocrat ā€“ great accommodations, constant attention, the best of food and medical care, and lots and lots of sex with the best and most beautiful fillies in the equine kingdom. A Solomon couldn’t have it better!

Ask any blind man what he thinks of his guide dog. I have a blind friend who once had one and wishes he still did.

I’m not a fanatic. You won’t find me picketing or sabotaging research labs that utilize animals in experiments. I do hope they are treated humanely and I would push for that. I don’t go around looking for fur coats to throw paint on. I eat steak and most other meats with no pangs of conscience. All I have to do is open my mouth and look in a mirror to see that I resemble a wolf much more than a sheep dentally. My whole digestive system is that of an omnivore. I wear and use leather.

What I’m saying is that we have a responsibility to treat all species with respect and an awareness of their sentience and intrinsic worthiness. We are part of the animal kingdom and share a distant kinship with all of them. As humans, we are all cousins somewhere in the past. We are also some kind of relative to all other creatures, no matter how many millions of degrees removed.

We need to quit feeling so superior and haughty.