Underneath the bridge
The tarp has sprung a leak
And the animals Ive trapped
Have all become my pets
And I'm living off of grass
And the drippings from the ceiling
Its okay to eat fish
Cause they don't have any feelings
-Something in the Way by Nirvana
The last two lines about eating fish is really the important part of these lyrics. Without them it just sounds like a Red Hot Chili Pepper's song. I take that back, the last six lines distinguish the song, but the last two lines are my focus.
When I was a very young child I painted something with my aunt at her house. It is basically a very post-modern painting, no real form just a bunch of seemingly randomly placed blotches of paint filling up the canvas. There was one thing that stuck out in the painting, and it was what looked like Captain Hook's hook complete with the place where he would put his arm to "hold" it, as if that were possible.
The point is that we had this very large wooden easel to display the painting in our living room. When I was told that we were going to throw the ugly thing out I protested, having grown attached to the inanimate object of my affection. It was a weird feeling because I knew that not only did the easel have no feelings for me, but no feelings about being thrown out at all. Still, my feelings persisted, and as a result my parents decided to keep the easel in its right place. A very good friend of mine once told me that friends are only worth what they give you back, but I would beg to differ. Our feelings for inanimate objects still have a palpable effect on reality and life. This reminds me of a thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson called Mary's room. One of the ideas in this thought experiment is "that all behavior is caused by physical forces of some kind...mental states are caused by physical states, but have no causal effects on the physical world." Jackson came to understand the problems of this line of reasoning, stating that Mary could very well say the word "Wow," thereby causing sound waves to exist. Part of the draw determinism has on me is the idea that I have been given the reins to a vast network of neurons which I am should try to understand and by understanding control. For example, I have learned that by controlling the breath and the mind I can enhance the functioning of my immune system. I learned this while I was on a drug trip, in which I was in a deep meditative state. The next day, when I looked in the mirror I noticed that the cold sore that was on my lip has caked over five times the size of what it usually cakes over in one day. This sense of control over oneself pours over into the physical world but in a way that can only be observed, not experienced. This is why it is hard for people to believe.
Back to the song. When I consider the lyrics "It's o.k. to eat fish // Cause they don't have any feelings," it make me wonder how we could be so crude. Well, maybe its the fish that are crude, but still. Kurt seems to me to be touching on something very deep here. On one level we know fish have the neurology to feel things like pain and probably a sense of striving to survive, although one could argue that every living thing has that instinct whether conscious or not. Therefore, we know that fish have the instinct for survival but not whether or not they are conscious. This leads me to believe something that I have intuitively felt for a long time: if we can understand our survival instincts we can go a long way to understanding the other (other animals mostly). This is how we are crude: both in our level of understanding and the way in which we may come to understanding. However, the crudeness Cobain really seems to be getting at is the crudeness with which he expresses himself. To say fish don't have any feelings contradicts our idea that fish have the neurology to feel and interact with their existence. But while it contradicts it also falls into place with the very human feeling of the rounding of numbers. My sister and I once did not have a ride home from some place we both were so we had the chance to walk home together. We took it, hell, it was our only choice. On the way home we were talking about God knows what, but this much I remember. As the nine year old older brother and seven year old little sister we approached home and a thought came to my mind relating to not having a ride home. I told her that in Germany they have these things called auto-bahns, in which people are allowed to travel at any speed their hearts desire. At the time I felt like it was a great idea considering the fact that even if the death rate were to double from what we have in the United States it would only double from .0000001% to .0000002%, an insignificant number. And to think, we would get home so much faster! I know this may sound like an almost evil idea to some of you, and it is. You may be wishing that I was that extra fraction of a percentage so that I could see the consequences of my actions, in which case to hell with you you evil S.O.B. Well now I know, this line of reasoning disregards individual suffering. But forgive me, it is a common human error. Think of the fish, for whom suffering is completely disregarded. If you round the feelings of the fish to zero, you are committing my mistake. One thing I have learned in my few years of being able to gamble is that in order to make a good bet you must take every factor into account. It is when you place the bet that you count on "luck," but it is a very calculated risk. Even if the end result is only 60-40 you must do as much mental work as you are capable of. We must be precise, and the results of this precision can be astounding. It is in the act of eating that we tell ourselves fish have no feelings, but is it not necessary for survival to eat? Some may see it as a death trap to calculate the insignificant, but I will tell you that if you do so you will begin to understand the fuzzy complexity of this Earth.
The next thing these lyrics bring to my mind is the idea that it is feelings themselves which keep us from killing each other. When I was young, I knew that I could never be certain that other people had feelings. Sure, they may express themselves thereby making me feel as if they had feelings, but I could never be sure because I could never walk in their shoes. In my mind, it was possible, although extremely unlikely, that everyone could be an amazing computer simulation of themselves, or, more profoundly, something quite similar to me but without any of the same parts. I have found that many people share this same doubt with me, including one of the most brilliant computer scientists to have ever walked this Earth: Alan Turing. The point here being that there are many benefits to knowing other people have feelings and knowing that which don't have feelings (computers or fish). These days I run on the assumption that people have feelings, naturally rounding off the possibility that they don't. I feel like the idea that people could be robots contradicts evolution, which implicitly states that we are slowly organically developed. However, all this scientific evidence could also be made up to make me believe that I'm not the only one experiencing this universe, but there would be no point to that. Just as rounding off is a way of denying the existence of the individual, denying the feelings of the other is a way of denying your own self. If I know that all humans are made of the same organic material then I know that the sense of self is nothing more than a centering of material. What makes me different from you fundamentally is that our centering is distinct from one another and every other. The neurology is very similar, but the thing that guides it is different. I have observed many selfish people and I can't help but think they are in complete denial of something. They know well enough that others have the capacity to feel, but they will do anything they can to ignore that fact. They will rationalize this denial as well as they will deny anything. The reasoning is this: I can't directly experience the emotions of someone else so why should I care about them? Here Kant comes in very well. "The right action is the one which produces the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure for the greatest number of beings." -from Wikipedia. If you don't care for others then others won't care for you, and all hell will break lose. Selfish people will eventually get what is coming for them, only then realizing how terrible it is to be treated poorly by other people.
Cobain's denial of the feelings of animals is one of the greatest denials man has ever entered into. It really stems from the necessity for survival. As we have evolved to understand our fellow creatures we have become over-grown. A being as complex as a human was not anticipated by the evolutionary model, so in order to actively participate in this crude world we must dumb down our understanding of fish and ourselves. By telling ourselves that fish don't have any feelings we are making it O.K. for us to not have any feelings ourselves (toward the fish). If we take this dumbing down to its logical extreme we wonder if it is O.K. to eat each other because we don't share their feelings. One wonders where to draw the line. Knowing that Kurt Cobain is a heroin addict explains a lot here, as it is almost universally true that addicts are trying to numb themselves of the world. But still, I think these lyrics have something to say of all of us.
