Maria gave me this gift for my birthday (a bracelet she wove, also), it is metal sculpture of Diana, the Roman goddess of women, the hunt and childbirth. We are not sure, but think it was the cover for some kind of jar or container, it is heavy and beautiful. I’m going to keep it in my office.

I was reading about Diana, a powerful feminist figure, and I was also thinking about how the idea of the hunt as it relates to animals has evolved so dramatically. I am not a hunger, but a number of my friends here are, and the ones I know are good and ethical people, most are environmentalists, they know the woods and nature and care for both.

For many thousands of years, the hunt was life and death for many human beings, it was not controversial in any way. Diana was believed to have great power over animals, she spoke with them whenever she wished.

The idea that hunting animals is cruel was unthinkable. In  the age of Dr. Palmer and Cecil the lion, the hunt has come to stand for something else, even though most hunters I know do not consider trophy hunting to be hunting, but something different and distasteful.

In Roman and Greek times, the great philosophers began to argue for more humane treatment of animals. Judaism called for animals to get one day of rest just like people, a brand new idea to the world. Later, Thomas Aquinas was to argue that we need to be merciful to animals so what we could learn to be merciful to people.

Aquinas would have been shocked, I think, to consider our times when the argument is that we need to be merciful to animals so that we can learn to harm and hate the people who we believe mistreat them. I heard from a lot of people this week who told me proudly that they wish Dr. Palmer could be killed in the very same way that he is believed to have killed Cecil the lion. This was spoken in the name of loving animals.

Aristotle and Plato both believed – before Diana – that the existence of the  human conscience meant that human beings were superior to animals, who do not have consciences and are not creative. They don’t write books, plays, invent political systems, work to better themselves, know the difference between good and evil, are not aware of death, make career choices, or take the initiative to change their lives. They tend not to want more than they have.

And they don’t have our complex language to invent all of our stories and narratives. They aren’t vengeful or vindictive, they don’t sue one another.

The great philosophers did not believe animals had human-like souls, they would also be surprised to see in our time that animals are often and increasingly consider superior to human beings, many people have essentially begun to worship them, seeing them as idealized and romanticized spirits of pure love and innocence, incapable of harm or wrongdoing. More and more, animals are seen as abused and piteous, in desperate need of being saved from the deprivations of humans, who are often seem as being outside of the moral community of people,and too evil for redemption or negotiation.  (Just ask the New York  carriage drivers.)

I am sympathetic to Aristotle’s point of view. I love animals, but do not worship them, I believe they have powerful spirits, but the human conscience is an extraordinary thing, unique to human life. We don’t always act to the best callings of our conscience, but still, it is there, we can reason about the value and ethics of our lives. Animals can’t.

I love many animals more than I love many people, but i do not believe that animals are superior to humans. To me, animals are our partners in the earth, not our superiors or inferiors. They do not have perfect lives any more than we do, they share the risks and joys and sorrows of life, just as we do. They are not owed and cannot be given better lives than we have.

Like Aquinas, Aristotle and Plato would be surprised at the animal worship of our time, the idea of the rescue dog, where some dogs are taken from other countries so that they can be brought back and rescued here (rescuers might go to Newark and Detroit and Philadelphia first, there are plenty of dogs to rescue right here). They might wonder at the no-kill shelter, for instance, where hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats, perhaps millions, languish as prisoners in their crates, living the most unnatural lives possible for dogs, often for years,  in order to feed the egos and need for  well-being, of human beings.

American dogs are perhaps the best treated animals in the history of the earth but more and more, we see animals only through the prism of abuse.

I like to think of Diana talking to animals, maybe because i am writing a book about talking to animals. Perhaps she can give me a hand, show me some things. She is one of my goddesses now.

Diana gives me a lot to think about. This is a time of goddesses, I think, I am happy to have one on my desk. She is already inspiring me, challenging me to think.