Categories - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 53

In 2005, we added a Sheltie to our family. At first, I forbade her from the couch. But our six year
old daughter Claire broke me down by tearfully proclaiming “Knowsy is a person too.” In 2013,
the Indian government followed suit by banning all cetacean captivity and declaring that “dol-
phins should be seen as 'non-human persons' and as such should have their own specific
rights.” lviii Now, in the United States, the Nonhuman Rights Project aims to reclassify animals as
persons, not things.
Our goal is, very simply, to breach the legal wall that separates all humans from all nonhuman animals.
Once this wall is breached, the first nonhuman animals on earth will gain legal 'personhood' and finally
get their day in court - a day they so clearly deserve. l ix
Civilization is arguably a story of an expanding moral circle. Over time, we've extended kind-
ness from kin to tribe to nation and beyond. In 1776 when Thomas Jefferson declared “all men
are created equal” he implicitly excluded women, African Americans, Native Americans, Jews,
Quakers, Catholics, men without property, and anyone under 21. The Rights of Life, Liberty,
and the pursuit of Happiness applied to less than ten percent of the human population. Whether
we'll extend ourselves further, or not, is unclear, but shouldn't we take the time to consider our
principles of classification? Is the boundary of our moral circle fuzzy or fixed? Is the center sen-
tience or suffering? How do we circumscribe empathy? Is it emotion, fairness, or simply might
makes right?
In meditation, Buddha learned everything is process, there is no self. Two and a half thousand
years later, modern science is proving him right. The average age of cells in the body is 7 to 10
years, and our whole skeleton is replaced every decade. lx A person is a pattern that doesn't exist.
And it's not just impermanence that blurs what's mine. We have fuzzy borders too. The body is
an ecosystem of ten trillion cells that also contains one hundred trillion bacteria that together af-
fect digestion, weight, health, and even our mood. Each of us includes 2 to 5 pounds of them.
This gives new meaning to Walt Whitman's “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
We don't know our limits. Francis Crick speculated that the claustrum, a thin layer of tissue be-
neath the insular neocortex that has two-way links to nearly all regions of the brain, may be re-
sponsible for integrating myriad sensations - sight, sound, touch, taste, smell - into the single,
unifying experience of consciousness. lxi Of course, whenever we unify, we also divide. We in-
vent self-other as one in what Albert Einstein famously called the “optical delusion of conscious-
ness.” To make sense of an infinite universe, we create categories to reduce complexity. And we
use tools and language to spread the load across mind-body-environment.
Despite these devices, our search for the truth is limited by a very small flashlight. So we must
spin our categories like tetrominos. We must turn our ontologies downside-in and upside-out.
We must seek monsters and cyborgs in the borderlands, and be mindful to watch for “black
swans.” lxii We can't make change unless we're playful, since learning means letting go. E.M. For-
ster wrote “the song of the future must transcend creed” and asked “how can I know what I
think till I see what I say?” There's wisdom in those words, but to stare at the finger is to miss
the moon.
In the beginning was yathā bhūta, reality as-it-is, unmediated by concepts or classification or
culture. Now, trapped in our own maps, we meditate, in search of the untranslatable, an under-