Horton Hears A What?

[catsittingstill]

Apparently there's a new movie out: Horton Hears a Who.

For those who missed it the first time around,  Horton Hears a Who, by Theodore Guisel (aka Dr. Seuss) is about an elephant named Horton, who, with his big ears, hears a tiny little voice coming from a speck, and tries to convince his friends that there are people on this speck and it should therefore be treated carefully.  I won't give away the ending, except to assure parents interested in finding classic books for small children that nothing in it will traumatize a child.

During the course of the story, Horton tells his friends "A person is a person no matter how small."

The In Sorrow Shalt Thou Bring Forth Children crowd has taken this to mean that Dr. Seuss opposed abortion, or should have opposed abortion, or it's okay to hijack his creative work to promote their agenda against what would be his will if he were still alive, or something like that, and are using the movie as an opportunity to press their views on the small children who attend.

See also min0taur's recent post,  Wikipedia's entry, and, if you have a strong stomach and a lot of patience, an example of "pro-life" "thought" from "Thinking Allowed" where thinking may be allowed, but is apparently optional, or at the very least takes off on some ...unique tangents.  The latter page is about the book rather than the movie, but the principle is the same.

Being dumber than a piece of paper with an elephant drawn on it, the In Sorrow Shalt Thou Bring Forth Children crowd has typically missed half the point: 

A person is a person no matter how small, and the way you tell a person from an insignificant speck is that a person can talk to you.  Otherwise, if it looks like a speck, it's a speck.

Comments

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

Huh? No not really. I am in awe of the _____________ not sure what word to use. People don't really think that way do they. Yes Heather they do.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

My reaction to the "thought" found behind that link, to paraphrase the Firesign Theater: "How Can You Engage In Doublethink When You Don't Seem Capable Of Thinking At All?"

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

People don't really think that way do they. Yes Heather they do.

Well, for certain values of the word "think."

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) I had never heard that one.

[madrona.livejournal.com]

A person is a person no matter how small, and the way you tell a person from an insignificant speck is that a person can talk to you. Otherwise, if it looks like a speck, it's a speck.

I'm sorry, I don't buy this. You know, since I follow a community for parents of learning disabled children with little to no communication skills. I request that you find a better criteria.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

My criteria cover disabled children, all the way down to infants.

Something that's visibly a person is a person. (That's the "otherwise, if it looks like a speck, it's a speck"--anything that looks like a person isn't a speck) And in addition, a speck that can talk to you is also a person.

I'm sorry that it wasn't immediately obvious.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I've often wondered about a different perspective--Trying to remeber an expression something like "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." I recall reading something by Stephen Jay GOuld pointing out that that expression wasn't correct, but that embriological development does follow a path of specialization, if not of chronological evoloution. That at one early stage, all animal embryos are specks (clumps of cells) indistinguishable from each other. At a later stage, all vertibrate embryos are anatomically indistinguishable. At a later stage yet, Mammal embryos are still indistinguishable, and so on until you actually reach a point where a human embryo differs from a great ape embryo in ways beyond not-yet-expressed gene sequences.

I've often wondered if there were a reasonable ethic based on the the idea that "if the embryo in in question is anatomically, physiologically, and neurologically indistinguishable from that of a species that no one has any qualm about eating, it's not ready to be endowed with any more inalienable rights than that species of livestock."

I neither advocate nor deny that idea, but I'd be interested in what someone as thoughtful and informed as yourself might think of it.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) My take on it is perhaps a bit simpler: If it's so supernaturally human that it is okay to enslave a real human being to keep it alive, you ought to be able to tell it at a glance from a mouse or a chicken.

Seriously, my beliefs about it are based on a woman's (or a man's, not that it has ever come up in this context) absolute right not to be parasitized without her consent, and to withdraw that consent at any time for any reason that seems good to her. As far as I'm concerned, fetuses have only such rights as don't conflict with that primary right of the real living breathing human being they are parasitizing.

And I think that the humanity of a person is based on that person's ability to think and hope and fear and suffer and imagine. None of those things are possible without a sufficiently complex brain. Until a fetus has a sufficiently complex brain it isn't "human" in my book. I grant infants, or any later developmental stage of humans, humanity by courtesy, even if they don't seem to be able to think and hope and imagine, because I have to draw the line somewhere and "when an entity is no longer a parasite" seems like a good place to me.

The "ontogeny recapitualates phylogeny" thing isn't quite the way you are remembering it. The original idea was that an embryo passed through developmental stages reminiscent of its extinct ancestors, in order, and that turned out not to be the case, really. Actually the very early stages of embroynic development differ between species, then they pass through the pharyngula stage, during which embryos of all vertebrate species look very similar indeed, then they diverge again during further development. The idea that being able to tell mammals apart requires a higher stage of development than being able to tell a mammal from a reptile I hadn't come across before, but it seems reasonable to me.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Didn't the Geisel estate sue the pro-life lobby in an attempt to stop them misusing the phrase?

[min0taur.livejournal.com]

I knew one such child. She was the daughter of friends, and had severe health problems from birth. During her few struggle-filled years of life out in the world, she taught me many things -- including how to hear some of what she was saying, during every waking hour, without words. She was a being of a high order of complexity; she registered as a social presence. And she registered understanding when spoken to (which I would consider an act of communication), even though she was not among us long enough to start using the symbolic systems that could have given that presence a finer level of articulation. Perhaps what we're looking for here is more of a threshold than a dichotomy -- and a reasonable place to mark where that threshold is.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

I don't know if the line was adequately trademarked. It's probably fair use under US copyright law.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Absolutely we're looking at a spectrum of development and abilities, including the ability to communicate. But there was never any serious possiblity that you would mistake the child in question for a speck, because she was obviously a person.

I think I know (have heard of) the child you're talking about. I never met her, but I wish I could have known her. She sounds remarkable.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The way I heard it, someone who wrote a biography of Theodore Guisel reported that he had threatened to sue to get them to stop using it. If I remember right, they stopped while he was alive.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

If it is, boy, sometimes you really have to hold your nose to support fair use.

[min0taur.livejournal.com]

It seems likely her orbit intersected yours as well as mine. And your point remains well taken. These issues are so much harder and subtler than the public uproar can ever address (or do anything useful to resolve).