People who find ideas about animal rights uncomfortable (for example, my father who has a degree in biology but just doesn't get what my problem is) sometimes wonder what "went wrong" to turn some of us into raving, lunatic animal-lovers.
I blame Classic Disney.
Try not to cry (not joking):
Dumbo
The Fox and the Hound
Bambi
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Dominion
Sometimes I've stated to people I know that I believe animals have just as much right to live as humans do. Usually, the reaction is as if I flippantly described how delicious my dinner of roasted human baby was last night. "Oh, so you're saying animals are more important than people? Do you even care that human beings are starving all over the world?"
That most people believe they have the right to decide what animal lives and what animal dies goes almost without saying. We humans have even gone so far as to write into our religious texts basically that God dost sayeth we have dominion over the birds and beasts, and can do whatsoevereth we doeth choseth with them. It's an awfully convenient idea, to just say, "Hey, well, God himself did ordain that we have control over all other living creatures, so I don't really need to spend too much time wondering if that's right or if animals deserve to be treated like unfeeling, edible objects or nuisances to be exterminated."
So, say the religious texts are all true and were really written by God/s, and we humans do have dominion over all other living creatures. Why did we decide that meant we should be so thoughtlessly violent and cruel to all the other animals? Why didn't that mean to anyone that humans needed to be stewards, helpers, caregivers, doting fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters to the creatures we share the globe with? It goes back to the convenience factor - it is decidedly uncomfortable and really inconvenient to think very hard about the suffering of the animals trying to share this shrinking habitat we call Earth with us. About how relentlessly we destroy our natural surroundings, about our unsustainable consumption, our pollution, and our insane exponential population growth. Not to mention the "little" things like constant, normalized animal cruelty, and use of animals for entertainment that often leads to their deaths.
Getting back to the original statement that I believe animals have as much right to live as humans do, and people's counter-argument that it means I don't care that humans are starving all over the world, I have to point out that disregard for the well-being of animals is directly related to disregard for human well-being. Since we do not care about the plight of hunted, displaced, or starving animals and their degenerated environments, it shows that we do not care or understand humans' relationship to that ecology and the impact that its destruction has on human access to food, water, life. The same "natural" impulse to use animals for whatever we please because they aren't powerful enough to stop us, extends to human use of other humans that are not as powerful as themselves. By extension, animals are the largest oppressed group on earth.
Jesus (who may not have been the son of god, may not have been a holy prophet, but was definitely a man who confronted issues of class and gender oppression in his time) apparently said that the "Meek shall inherit the earth." Perhaps this could also mean that whatever animals manage to survive humanity's rush to destroy themselves, will then have dominion over this earth.
That most people believe they have the right to decide what animal lives and what animal dies goes almost without saying. We humans have even gone so far as to write into our religious texts basically that God dost sayeth we have dominion over the birds and beasts, and can do whatsoevereth we doeth choseth with them. It's an awfully convenient idea, to just say, "Hey, well, God himself did ordain that we have control over all other living creatures, so I don't really need to spend too much time wondering if that's right or if animals deserve to be treated like unfeeling, edible objects or nuisances to be exterminated."
So, say the religious texts are all true and were really written by God/s, and we humans do have dominion over all other living creatures. Why did we decide that meant we should be so thoughtlessly violent and cruel to all the other animals? Why didn't that mean to anyone that humans needed to be stewards, helpers, caregivers, doting fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters to the creatures we share the globe with? It goes back to the convenience factor - it is decidedly uncomfortable and really inconvenient to think very hard about the suffering of the animals trying to share this shrinking habitat we call Earth with us. About how relentlessly we destroy our natural surroundings, about our unsustainable consumption, our pollution, and our insane exponential population growth. Not to mention the "little" things like constant, normalized animal cruelty, and use of animals for entertainment that often leads to their deaths.
Getting back to the original statement that I believe animals have as much right to live as humans do, and people's counter-argument that it means I don't care that humans are starving all over the world, I have to point out that disregard for the well-being of animals is directly related to disregard for human well-being. Since we do not care about the plight of hunted, displaced, or starving animals and their degenerated environments, it shows that we do not care or understand humans' relationship to that ecology and the impact that its destruction has on human access to food, water, life. The same "natural" impulse to use animals for whatever we please because they aren't powerful enough to stop us, extends to human use of other humans that are not as powerful as themselves. By extension, animals are the largest oppressed group on earth.
Jesus (who may not have been the son of god, may not have been a holy prophet, but was definitely a man who confronted issues of class and gender oppression in his time) apparently said that the "Meek shall inherit the earth." Perhaps this could also mean that whatever animals manage to survive humanity's rush to destroy themselves, will then have dominion over this earth.
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