June
1995
Editorial:
Appropriate and Inappropriate Behavior
By Martin Rowe
|
|
|
At the end of April this year Robert Homrighous of
Fort Lauderdale Florida was sent to jail and fined $1000 for burying
alive nine newborn puppies.
In addition, Homrighous was ordered to undergo psychological evaluation
and to stay away from cats and dogs for five years. Witnesses told
the
court that Homrighous had tied up the mother dog, Sheba, after she’d
given birth, put the puppies in a bag, and then buried them in his
backyard.
Sheba, however, had torn free and desperately had begun to dig up her
babies. Neighbors, hearing the cries of the dog, came to the rescue.
Three of the puppies died; the rest, along with Sheba, were adopted.
For his part, Homrighous pleaded no contest to the judgment. His only
statement was that the animals were his property and he had a right
to do what he wanted with them.
Since the Enlightenment, the rhetoric surrounding property has echoed
through the lofty chambers of various Euro-American concepts, especially
capitalism. However, as generations of indigenous peoples, descendents
of slaves, and even the parents of the lost Japanese student who knocked
on the door of a property-owner in New Orleans late at night a few
years
back and received a fatal bullet will tell you, property is not a respecter
of human rights, let alone those of animals. Why then was Homrighous
punished and, say, the student-killer — who argued along
similar lines about his property — let off lightly?
The answer I suggest lies within the ambiguity of the very word “property.”
The word’s root is the Latin preposition prope, or “near.”
Property, therefore, is literally that which is near us. From cognates
of prope we get other words which suggest nearness, such as propinquity
and approximate. On the one hand, these cognates also intimate that
with the nearness of ownership come certain responsibilities: property
can be appropriate; to be a proprietor calls for propriety. On the other
hand, however, when something is appropriated a seizure is involved
which points to an impropriety at the very moment when what is appropriated
becomes property. As the student-killer exemplifies, you do not have
to be proper or behave properly to be an authorized — or
proper — proprietor.
If you are confused by all these forms of prope it is not surprising;
because so is the law, society, and the world at large. While it is
good that the court in Fort Lauderdale recognized there was a quantifiable
difference between burying rocks in the backyard and burying puppies,
the court’s decision was not whether animals should even be considered
property at all but on how animals as property are treated. In that
regard, it is uncertain what would have happened if, say, Homrighous
had sold his puppies to a vivisector to be experimented upon. If Homrighous’s
neighbors had heard about that act, they may have sensed some vague
impropriety, a certain fear or bad taste in the mouth; perhaps they
would not have allowed their kids to play around weird Bob Homrighous’s
house. But the laws governing property and appropriation might have
dissuaded them from thinking that inappropriateness here could actually
be illegal. With such subtle caprice does the law slide between feelings
of social unease over what is appropriate in society and what can legally
be appropriated.
On this little, threatened planet of ours, the nearness of things offers
us both salvation and damnation at the same time. The near-sightedness
of appropriation will continue to do what it has always done: push
all
those peoples who own less or nothing off the land they live on so
that those who own more can have more and claim it as their own. It
leads
to countless numbers of Homrighouses — doing what they can
get away with to animals for as long as possible. It is not simply that
in this case all property is theft: for theft suggests a rightful owner
— and there is no ultimate owner, only a commonweal of interests.
It is here that the nearness of things offers us hope. The judge in
this case recognized a commonality — a nearness if you will —
with the puppies and Sheba, and property became an inappropriate defense;
shamefully that was not the case for the Japanese student. Only when
we extend outwards to the furthest extent our sense of “nearest
and dearest” — those whom we think it proper to behave
towards with propriety — will we stand a chance of one day
living appropriately.
 |
|
|
 |
