Whose Consciousness Matters?
Yesterday
“You got a critter back there,” my customer—shopping the postcards—alerted me, pointing down to a bin of finger puppets near the bookstore’s front door.
I heard the rustling. When I came from behind the register and stood beside her, I saw movement.
“Squirrel?” I asked
“You think?”
“My grandma voted for Trump,” she said, explaining her failure to find among the “Black Lives Matter”-style political postcards in that rack, an appropriate card for the coming birthday. My customer drifted outside, while I darted to the back for a broom.
I poked my broom at the box of finger-puppets. A fluffy tail wagged. I pushed the box off its shelf and a cute, baby squirrel poked head past tail, regarded me, then leapt at me—aiming into the store. I waved the broom, and the squirrel changed direction, leaping out the door.
My customer was nearby. She called, “Watch out!” The squirrel had reversed course. I batted my broom, and the critter turned and zipped past my customer, who leapt back. To our surprise, it entered the foyer of the saloon next door—that door however was locked. The squirrel continued on down the block, testing other doors.
Was it cold, we asked? Sick? Just a baby?
To us, at that moment, the cute squirrel’s consciousness mattered.
Today
A student at Lehigh University was talking with me about Artificial Intelligence, and brought up the controversy around whether AI can be said to create art. I expressed surprise that anybody could think such a thing, and he informed me that it’s an active debate. Lots of people feel that yes, AI can be said to create art, just as humans create art. If it’s great art, it’s great art.
Extending the philosophical leap: humans can be thought of as a complex form of AI.
Well—if AI can make art, then, AI consciousness matters. Just like the cute squirrel’s.
Three Weeks from Now
We are playing host to a new book club, which will meet on the Fourth Friday of every month, at 7pm. It’s a Vegan Book Club, curated by “The Local’s Bookshop” owner Deborah Emin. Deborah tells me that this will not be cookbooks, but philosophy and activism. I know that she’s been involved with the Lehigh Valley Animal Defenders who’ve hosted several potlucks here. When I mingle with them, I overhear what seems to me to be modern vocabulary. They think meat-eaters exhibit “species-ism,” meaning, racism towards animals.
Since I eat meat, I am species-ist. I guess I consider the type of awareness that animals possess to be insignificant enough that I can turn a blind eye, and mouth, towards the suffering of factory-farmed chicken, pigs, and cows.
I must think farm-animal consciousness doesn’t matter.
Three Weeks Ago
I wrote a book last summer that argues Palestinians deserve equal rights with Jews in a “One-State Solution” country with no state religion, in the territory now occupied by the state of Israel. A cousin wrote me a letter containing an argument in rebuttal:
“The Jews who moved to Palestine were poor but determined to rebuild a national home. They found the land in disrepair—scarce water, little food, and malaria among a relatively small local population. The Arabs living there were largely poor and uneducated, and the term "Palestinian Arabs," as used today, did not yet exist in the same sense…”
“The Palestinian Arab identity as a distinct political category was created by the KGB—a claim rarely discussed but, I believe, important….”
“Arafat and his Black September organization received KGB backing, and Mahmoud Abbas earned his education and PhD in antisemitism in Moscow. The KGB coined the terms "Palestinian Arabs" and "Israeli colonialism" and actively promoted them through Soviet propaganda….”
“You believe that Israel, and our tribe, colonized Palestine. I have studied the history, traveled to Israel, and have friends and family there, and I know that Jews never colonized Palestine.”
My cousin is arguing that there aren’t any “Palestinian” people, it’s a fictitious identity. So, this is a basis of her feeling that—against the legitimate Jewish claim to “the Holy Land”—there can be no contesting claim, because there is no legitimate claimant.
The consciousness of those claimants—so-called “Palestinians”—doesn’t matter.
What makes cute squirrel consciousness and Artsy AI consciousness matter, but meat-animal and Palestinian consciousness not matter? Eye of the beholder? Convenience to me?
Stop by the Vegan Book Club and get an earful. Fourth Fridays at 7pm.
