GoatMan by Thomas Thwaites

Author:Thomas Thwaites [Thwaites, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2016-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Fifty years. I’d be such an old goat. If it’s not possible at the moment to physically alter my perception (without tripping my balls off), I can at least alter my context and way of moving, like the Yukaghir shamanic hunters. I need to get rid of these roving hands with their fiddly fingers, which can’t help but do ungoatlike things like holding pens and grasping door handles. I need to get rid of my hands…and replace them with hooves, so I can gallop along and leave my human troubles behind me…

1 Dr. McElligott’s goat expertise has more to do with pragmatics than an overriding passion for goats. As an ethologist (a scientist who studies animal behaviour), he’s chosen to work with goats because they’re neophilic. That is, when presented with a novel situation (like the specially constructed equipment he uses in various experiments), they’re less inclined to just ignore the experiment and cower in the corner than, say, sheep. This curiosity makes them interesting from a cognitive point of view and easier to study.

2 You could actually say “less positive” as opposed to “negative” cognitive bias, because experiments have suggested that people with mild depression are actually more realistic about their chances in life. For example, they are less likely to think buying that lottery ticket is worthwhile and more likely to think that yes, they might be the one in the one in three who will get cancer.

3 The phrase comes from horse racing (and I shan’t apologise for using it). A goat was put in the stable with a twitchy racehorse to keep it company and calm it down. Jockeys would try and steal their rivals’ goats the night before the race so their horses wouldn’t be on top form the next day.

4 And, of course, the parallel argument is that if the treatment of animals depends on whether they’re as clever as seven-year-old children, then humans with a mental age less than seven should be fair game for the conditions in battery farms. But then we’re speciesist, according to the philosopher Peter Singer.

5 Yesterday, however, was the centenary of the end of the Great War, a less edifying example of our capacity for generating symbolic thoughts (like nation-states) and convincing one another to act on (and die for) them.

6 Wearing now lives in a nursing home and has reportedly gained a kind of instinctive peace with his condition.

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