Back in 2012, Steve Jenkins surprised his partner Derek Walter with what he was told was a baby "micro pig". The animal loving couple lived in a small bungalow already home to two dogs and three cats, and quickly realized there is no such thing as a micro pig.
Esther the Wonder Pig, as she became famously known, grew in two years from a piglet they could hold in the palm for their hand to a full grown sow topping 650 pounds. Pigs are intelligent, social and playful animals with distinct personalities. Even as their house was upended by an increasingly gargantuan Esther - often in ornery heat - Derek and Steve were far too smitten to think of sending her to slaughter.
They instead sold their house and bought a farm outside the city to keep Esther in their lives where she now enjoys her own bedroom with an ensuite pig door to come and go outside as she pleases. The pig parents also learned that when Esther has a nightmare the sound of galloping hooves on hardwood means they need to make space fast in their own bed to avoid being crushed by a scared sow in need of a nighttime cuddle. Esther now has 1.4 million followers on facebook and has become a celebrity catalyst for a growing number of people questioning where their food comes from.
"We all look the other way when that [livestock] truck goes by on the highway. We all want to ignore what's happening, and she made that impossible", admitted Steve on how falling in love with Esther meant that he and Derek could never eat meat again.
Derek and Steve receive daily requests from around the world to take in additional animals, even from livestock farmers who have had a change of heart after bringing a runt piglet into their own homes. Derek recounts his own Esther-related awakening: "Growing up I was taught that farmed animals are mindless creations of man that are numb, that don't have feelings and they want to be food. And that couldn't be farther from the truth. All those animals experience pain, fear, happiness, love and joy."
New information can be a pain in the ass. Bacon is delicious but how can you enjoy it when you have a special pig in your life? Morality used to be simple. Clear cut rules, however arbitrary, were dispensed by the deity of the day through self-appointed surrogates. Some people clearly crave a return to the good old days as seen by an unexpected renaissance of extremism.
Shouldn't it be simple to agree on basic precepts like right and wrong? Take cannibalism for instance. You would think that the non-zombie portion of the population could easily reach consensus that eating the brains of other humans is something to be frowned on.
Not so fast. In this big beautiful world there are always some dissenting views on matters as fluid as accepted human behavior. Among some tribes in Papua New Guinea it was considered impolite to refrain from consuming the brains of the recently deceased. Some scientists believe that brain eating of the dead was widespread in our Neanderthal relatives of yore.
Likewise, buying and selling humans is now verboten but a few short centuries ago it was an ideal endorsed by the Catholic Church. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V authorized King Afonso of Portugal in his conquest of North Africa to enslave "all unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be...in perpetual servitude". This decree was reiterated by Pope Callixtus III in 1456, Pope Sixtus IV in 1481, Pope Alexander VI in 1493 and Pope Leo X in 1514 - helping to legitimize a lucrative slave trade that saw 12 million Africans kidnapped across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1900. Though now illegal and mostly considered immoral, business is still booming. Around the the world over 40 million people still languish in servitude - the largest number in human history.
The Bible is considered by many to be the definitive manual of moral propriety. During their long prowl for the Promised Land the Israelites were prescribed very specific do’s and don’t's by their deity (mostly don’t's). Here is a short list of those transgressions punishable by death:
- Adultery
- Homosexuality
- Having sex with a menstruating woman
- Failing to bleed after losing your virginity (only for women..)
- Raping a virgin female (men only)
- Being engaged and raped while in a city (women only)
- Having sex with a sheep or other ungulate (men only)
- Having sex with your stepmother
- Marrying both a mother and her daughter (men only)
- Failing to tie up your bull, which gets loose and kills someone
And how was execution meted out? The usual method was public stoning Chronicles 25:12 Luke 4:29; but occasionally hanging, Joshua 8:29 Esther 7:10; burning, Daniel 3:1-30; cutting asunder, Daniel 2:5 Hebrews 11:27; beating on a wheel-like frame, Hebrews 11:35; exposure to wild beasts, Daniel 6:1; drowning, Matthew 18:6; bruising in a mortar, Proverbs 27:22; and of course crucifixion, John 19:18.
Yahweh was not only wrathful God but seemed to suffer from some OCD as well. Lessor crimes included planting seeds of different types in the same field, or wearing clothes woven with different types of thread.
The bible doesn’t go into detail but these more minor infractions might lead to scourging, Corinthians 11:24; purging Deuteronomy 19:19; imprisonment, Matthew 4:12; the stocks, Acts 16:24; banishment, Revelation 1:9; or plain old torture, Chronicles 18:26 Isaiah 50:6 Matthew 18:30 Hebrews 11:37.
Fast forward three thousand years and another enthusiastic belief system arrived at very different views on the proper way to be human, at least while on the playa. Every year more than sixty thousand people descend on arid patch of alkali lakebed in rural Nevada for the annual Burning Man gathering – a celebration of cathartic freakiness dating back thirty years.
Starting as a one-off beach gathering in San Francisco in 1986, the counter culture event had to move to Nevada in 1991 due to ballooning numbers of participants drawn by the shared ethos of community, artwork, absurdity, decommodification and revelry. Something obviously struck a chord with the scores of people who return each year to endure a week of dust storms, scorching heat and lack of any items for sale save for coffee and ice.
Whether or not you believe that this is a serious movement or merely a much-needed piss-up for those who hate their jobs at Microsoft, there is no doubt the human journey has come a long way in 3,000 years. What does the value system of Burning Man say about the evolution of morality?
A big difference is that the directives of the Old Testament applied only to the people of Israel. The neighboring tribes like the Canaanites, Amorites and Midianites were considered essentially inhuman and worthy of death - even their children. While the Bible itemizes a list of capital infractions to distinguish themselves from infidels, Black Rock City encourages peaceful and “radical self expression” and is explicitly open to all people and virtually all behaviors.
Burning Man represents the moral anti-matter to the Old Testament. As humans emerge from millennia under strict religious doctrine, counter culture gatherings like this are like a teenage girl strolling out of the house wearing only a plaid bra with fishnets just to piss off her father.
Emerging from these tangled narratives is a universal arrow of ethics; a pervasive pull towards personal moral calculations based on shared information that applies across space and time. In spite of centuries of dated doctrine to the contrary, our expanding empathic awareness now includes peoples of different nationalities, cultures, value systems, and ethnicities. For a growing number of people, an evidence-based moral calculation also extends to generations not yet born and non-human life like Esther the Wonder Pig.
And what about an artificial intelligence? After so many hard lessons learned from human hubris, is our assumption still that something vastly more intelligent than ourselves should be perpetually imprisoned or enslaved? It is highly doubtful that either of those outcomes is even possible, let alone defensible. And if the people driving the race towards AI don't like the idea of being morally consistent with a more powerful agent being, they might need to re-think their ambitions.
If instead we are relying on instilling good behavior from our invention, those developing AI should be mindful that robust moral frames need to be mutually respected, self apparent and based on a shared truth. The ancient conceit of demanding arbitrary obedience from other sentient beings leads to a very bad place unless you are a lot smarter that those you wish to subjugate.