Are we more important?
Despite the similarities between humans and animals, humans continue to use animals as if they belonged to us. They are no more ours than another human being is ours to use. Why are animals, that are feeling, thinking beings treated in this way? Some, reason that it is their intelligence level. By that logic, we are then justified in treating infants and disabled persons in the same manner. That, however is a terrible thought and both unlawful and unethical. It just isn't right to take advantage of those different from us. Why then, don't we consider it the same with animals? They are subject to and forced into the entertainment industry, the food industry, the clothing industry and into research and product testing. The reality of what is done to animals on a daily basis in all of these instances is so far removed from our minds that we think nothing of it. Think now of doing the same to a human. Imagine being kidnapped and taken from your family to a strange place you didn't know and into conditions you weren't made to live under. Imagine being forced, against your will, into a place filled with images and feelings of fear, panic, even death. A place unnatural, uncomfortable and unfriendly. The way that abused children and dogs flinch when they have lived a life of beatings, animals run and flinch at passers by who occassionally whip, kick, punch push and beat them, if they live long enough. They submit out of fear. Some are used as living machines, pumping out milk, laying eggs and being impregnated consistently in unthinkable "living" conditions. Some are taken, and some at very young ages, to be slaughtered, bodies dismembered and torn apart for food. Some are torn from their families for the sake of entertainment. Removed from tightly formed bonds with others, and from their natual environments to perform unnatural tasks and live dreadful and maddening lives. Some are stolen, bought or born into a world where they are considered objects, their bodies used as tools for research and development of products and medicines. They are burned and cut and mutilated in the name of science, when alternative methods exist to replace them. Our needs for luxury subject millions of beautiful wild creatures to be caught in painful traps and sent to a painful and shocking death, their flesh and skin to become what we value so highly as a luxury. Our need for sport and recreation creates a cruel and painful death for animals and the loss of familial bonds and beautiful creatures. Animals have no violent or malicious intent. They react when frightened. They do not seek to kill others for sport or recreation. In this way, they are superior to us. So far removed from their world are we that we continue living in ways that perpetuate the cycle of cruelty and violence. Rationalize it any way, it all boils down to ignorance, blindness or denial. We choose that path because the desire for convenience, wants and luxuries is stronger than the desire to think and act against the cruelty. Acknowledging these things is the first step. Acknowledging these things and caring is the second. Acknowledging these things and acting compassionately to stop them is where we start to change the world for animals...and for ourselves. "I want people to get a different understanding of animals, that they matter, and their lives matter. People tend to think of them as belongings, and they're not. They're animal people." -Jane Goodall
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"Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case."
- Peter Singer,
"Animal Liberation," page 9, First Edition
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