Songs of the Dead by Derrick Jensen

quietly downhill, with some paralysis, to death. In what’s called “furious rabies”—and this is what Old Yeller had—the creature begins to experience extreme excitement and is hit by painful muscle spasms, sometimes triggered by swallowing saliva or water. Because of this the creature drools and learns to fear water—thus the frequent references to rabid creatures being hydrophobic. The creature will also be- come extremely sensitive to air blown on the face. But there’s more. During that final furious phase, the creature may, without provocation, vigorously and viciously bite at anything: sticks, stones, grass, other animals. This stage lasts only a few days before the creature enters a coma and dies. Once infected, death from the disease is almost invariable.
    I remember at that point putting down the encyclopedia, leaning against the deck railing, and staring at the light blue sky above the brown and gray and smoky blue and white of the distant Rocky Mountains, and I remember thinking about volition, free will. Of course I didn’t use that language—I was precocious, but volition would certainly not yet have been part of my everyday vocabulary—and I couldn’t have clearly articulated any of this, but I got it. I understood—or rather asked, which is almost always more important than understanding anyway— “Who’s in charge? Who is actually doing the biting? Is it Old Yeller, or is it the virus?”
    The virus knows that if it is to survive the death of its host, it needs to find a new host, which means it needs to get Old Yeller to slobber on or bite someone. Thus the painful spasms on swallowing and the excessive salivation, which combine to lead to the drooling. Thus the furious biting.
    In some ways central to this discussion is the question of whether you perceive the world as full of intelligence, and so do not hesitate at the possibility of viruses knowing, viruses choosing; or whether you believe viruses act entirely unthinkingly, mechanistically, and so at most you’ll allow viruses not to know, but to “know” that they need to find a new host. But in some ways that question doesn’t matter at all, because in either case the viruses cause Old Yeller to change his personality, his behavior toward those he loves. Or perhaps loved.
    The central point of R.D. Laing’s extraordinary book The Politics of Experience was that most of us act in ways that make internal sense: we act according to how we experience the world. If, for example, I experience the world as full of wildly varied and exciting intelligences with whom I can enter into relationships I will act one way. If I experience the world as unthinking, mechanistic, and composed of objects for me to use, I will act another.
    Clearly the virus changes its host’s experience, at the very least by causing pain and hallucinations.
    Now here’s the question that struck me so hard on that hot summer afternoon: as Old Yeller snarls and snaps at those he so recently protected, what is he thinking? If I could ask in a language he could understand, and if he could answer in a language that I, too, could understand, what would he say? Is he terrified at this awful pain, and is he, because of that pain, lashing out at everyone around him? Is he confused? Is he asking where this pain comes from?
    Or does he have his behavior fully rationalized? Has he—or the virus—created belief systems to support this behavior? Is he suddenly furious at the thousand insults large and small he has received from those who call themselves his masters? Certainly throughout the movie the humans—especially his “owner” Travis—have treated him as despicably as we would expect within this culture (where do you think I learned to mistreat animals?). Does he perceive himself as suddenly seeing things clearly, and as hating these others and all they stand for?
    Or is he