pic nicked from here

Fur is controversial.  I don’t see why.  It’s obviously wrong to cage, kill and skin an animal.  There’s nothing controversial about that.  It’s just not the sort of thing decent people do.  You don’t wake up in the afternoon and think to yourself:  Today I’m going to get that animal out of the cage, kill it, skin it, and fashion me a big ole hat. So it’s a good thing we can hire people to do it for us.

Because I love fur.  I wish I had a fur coat.  A big one.  Made of dalmatians.  Your dalmatians.

The moral argument against fur is correct.  I just don’t care about it.  At the end of the day, I value my privilege to wear what I please over the rights of any animal except for humans, chimpanzees (also humans) and endangered species.  I do have limits.

Fur is warm, I like how it looks and I like how it feels.  I also like leather, love eating tortured animals and enjoy decorating my apartment with their corpses.  I have a monkey skull, a dead fish and all sorts of insects.  Dead animals fascinate me.

pic nicked from here

I remember going to work in a potato factory.  I passed a dead raccoon on the road.  The creature had been hit by a car.  There’d be no funeral.  Nothing in this whole wide world cared that it was dead.  That animal would just rot there.  Some other animals might eat it.

And I thought, no matter what pomp and circumstance we may attach to our own lives, that’s basically how important we are.  You can throw a bunch of make up on a corpse, have thousands attend your funeral and it still doesn’t matter.  You’re just a dead raccoon on a country road.

And that’s it.  As pointless and despicable as it is.

Yet, within the brutal machinery of nature, we must try to do something.  To be decent, make something beautiful or educate ourselves and each other.  The world is rough enough without us adding to it.  Dead animals remind me of that.    They’re a memento mori.

That’s why people object so deeply and viscerally to fur.

Even if you avoid leather, refuse to eat animal products and work for the humane society, your life is still based upon more cruelty than kindness.  Mice are ground to death beneath the grain thresher.  You kill just by breathing.  You use more coal, oil and dirt than your have any right to.  Animals and humans alike are ground up in factories.  It’s a slaughter.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQyQnXrLb0]

But usually, you don’t have to look at it.  Usually, you can pretend that it’s a big, nice world.

It’s hard to do that when your hat has eyes.

Those things will look at you.

When we see fur, we recognize something of ourselves in the slaughter.  We feel empathy for the animal.  Beyond that, we see that we are the animal.  Fur is not just a senseless cruelty.  It is also a recognition of ourselves as the victims and perpetrators of this senseless cruelty.  The coltan used in your cellphone has caused a civil war and killed countless gorillas..  But knowing is different than holding a gorilla’s severed hand.  If cellphones were made from those, they’d be banned.  That’s just how it is.

Fur animals live in a factory cage until they’re murdered for profit.

Are you really so free?  Are the people who made your gadgets?

I hope so.

I wear a dead fox around my neck.  The fox is the symbol of the peasant and the cunning they needed to outwit the aristocracy.  I’m not sure where foxhunts fit into that but I’m sure they do.  I’ve named this little fellow “Nik Mackey” after Nicccolo Machiavelli and Vic Mackey.

A fox scarf is typically and traditionally worn by women.  But I’m not terribly disturbed by gender roles.   If ball-gowns were as warm as Nik Mackey, I’d wear them too.   Sadly, they’re a bit drafty.

Nik Mackey excites a good deal of comment and dirty looks.  People are upset, disturbed and impressed by the little fellow.  They’re even more worried when I dress my cats in him.  But I’ve found that, on the long walk to work, he provides an incredible amount of warmth.  I can’t even use him unless the temperature dips below zero.  He’s just too hot.

I’m so impressed by the heat he provides that I’m actually looking for a fur coat.  But I’d like to get a used one.  As interesting as philosophy is, I would prefer that the animals be long dead before I put them on.  No sense throwing them out.