Some nights, when I am cozy in my bed, curled up next to the love of my life, my mind wanders to the factory farms, and I imagine the innocent pigs and cows forced to live out their entire lives without anything even resembling the kind of comfort I experience in my life, and I want to die. But more than that, I want to inspire change. The privilege I get to enjoy for simply being born a human is not something I take for granted nor is it something I want to abuse. The animals of the world are at our mercy, for we have created tools to dominate and destroy, and we are quick to use them. The fact is that oppression is never okay. It is never okay for those in positions of power to exploit the weak, not for any reason. Progressive humans can agree to this when it comes to our own species, but we struggle when it comes to including other sentient beings. Why should our circle of compassion be limited solely to our own species? What exactly makes other species unworthy of our respect? What allows us to feel so superior to them that we are able to ignore their suffering?
Scientists recently signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which states that most nonhuman animals experience consciousness just as humans do. This is monumental, since the history of animal exploitation is built upon the ability to disregard the depth of other species, to write off their experiences as inferior to our own. That entire mindset is incredibly problematic, disturbing, and absurd. Who gets to decide what makes another being's experience more worthy of consideration? The oppressor? The privileged? Our power to force animals into subservience does not indicate any inferiority on their part. Since science is now backing what animal rights activists have been saying for decades (for centuries, really)- that these animals are no less conscious than humans- then what excuse do we have for turning them into commodities and subjecting them to heinous cruelty and violent deaths? This is not a rhetorical question, but there is no good answer.
Humans seem able to understand animal consciousness when it comes to our pets. We develop incredible bonds with our companion animals as we share our lives with them, and this relationship has even been proven to improve our health as it reduces stress and increases the quality of our lives. Why do we not extend this kind of empathy to other animals? Pigs are widely considered to be the one of the most intelligent species on the planet, ahead of even our beloved dogs. Dogs are farmed for meat in South Korea, and we can easily recognize what is wrong with that, yet we allow pigs to be treated as nothing more than meat in our own country. It's completely hypocritical.
It breaks my heart when otherwise good people choose to remain blissfully ignorant about the incredible violence going on for the sake of tradition, habit, convenience, and taste; when I see the desire for comfort outweigh the desire for justice. So many alternatives exist in our privileged world for amazing food and excellent nutrition. There is simply no need for so many beautiful creatures to be brought into this world for the sole purpose of exploiting and killing them. Just because we are able to live off their flesh and secretions doesn't mean we must to be healthy or to survive. Shouldn't we continue to evolve as a species? Isn't it a good thing that we can thrive off a plant-based diet rather than rely on animal products, which use so many more resources? And most importantly, don't we want to strive to be more compassionate?
A culinary preference should not be more important than a life. Do humans want to be the devil of a hellish world forever, reaping joy from suffering and death? I know the answer is mostly yes, so I'm at least grateful that the goliaths of industry are not sustainable and will eventually collapse. It's either that or we become the wasteland we're sprinting towards. I don't want to live in a world built on blood and pus and corpses, on the harrowing screams of mothers and their young. And I'm not being extreme when I describe it that way - that is exactly the world from which cheeseburgers and hot dogs come. How does it make any sense to demand respect for our dietary choices, but to consider it extreme to demand respect for the lives of sentient beings? Life is so precious and brief. And it will be full of tragedy no matter what. If you have the good fortune of choosing what you eat, why not choose an alternative to the direct result of oppression, violence, and death? Why not choose to live a life of doing less harm? Why not extend our compassion to the other creatures on this planet besides ourselves?
Humans are not the special snowflake of the planet. We are not the best species. It would be easier to argue that we are the worst. No other species on the planet can come close to rivaling us when it comes to horrors and atrocities. Every beautiful thing we have to offer is countered by a million terrible things. We have to use our treasured intelligence to be more compassionate and to make more informed choices. We can't deny the suffering of billions of sentient beings because they are "simply animals" anymore. Even science is on the side of those of us who know that animals have complex inner lives, and their inability to express themselves in ways we can easily understand should not be used against them. And the distance that separates us from them when we are consuming what was taken from them is no excuse for our apathy and indifference. Their lives deserve as much respect as do the lives of humans. That is the way forward. Our compassion is proof of our greatness.
I love you, Charlotte. I think it's really interesting that although we both share the same diet, and we agree on all the reasons for it, we still have different priorities as to why we choose to eat what we eat. I love that people are vegan or vegetarian or locavore or raw for so many different reasons. For me, although I do care deeply for the sentience of animals, my main focus for a vegan diet is the environment and my own health. I do believe that I could eat meat even 3 times a week and still be healthy. I could even eat it once a day and still be healthy and probably make a positive impact on my carbon footprint, but animal sentience does push me over the edge into complete abstinence of meat. Also, I'm aware that there are problems with my personal view at times. Soy is overproduced and not very healthy for people, for one. I don't think it's necessary to eat soy as a vegan, either. So there are ways around that. I do think that if the entire world suddenly stopped eating animals that there would be very strange effects of that. I haven't really thought it through completely, but it seems very messy. We've created such a machine and exploded the populations of these animals that it seems impossible to stop what we've started. I read at the Pennsylvania County Fair this year that the US population consumes an average of 8 billion chickens a year. I can't believe we breed these animals as products, but more importantly to me, we feed them very badly and then feed our families the badly fed animal, which then makes Americans unhealthy. It's a very corrupt system, which I do think is closely tied to the Pharmaceutical Industry, as Lee mentioned a little while back. It's good for them to keep people sick, and the meat industry standards (and conventional produce standards) are such that the antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides that we consume are definitely keeping us sick and overweight. It's not fair that the cheapest foods are the most unhealthy. Our system is really broken. I hope that you can educate yourself and in turn educate and help other people who remain unaware or negatively affected by the foods they eat. I wish children ate better lunches in school and didn't disregard the healthy options. The post World War 2 nation boomed and created a lot of mess that is not easy to clean up, but keeping an open mind and heart can help people help themselves.
ReplyDeleteI'm not even proofreading this before I publish it, so great job. Thanks for your 2 cents, Nicole, no matter how poorly you expressed it.
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Thanks, Nicole. I love you, too, and it makes me so happy that my dearest friend cares as much about the planet and the lives on it as I do. It's hard living in a world where mass killing and exploitation serves as sustenance when there are so many alternatives. I agree that it's totally possible to maintain good health and eat meat and dairy occasionally, but our capitalist culture allows for such greed and gluttony that I think it's better to promote a plant-based diet exclusively, because it's impossible to avoid oppressing the animals we use in a culture that promotes excess. Although I'm sure we could overproduce and destroy to make money in a plant-based industry as well, there is a greater awareness in that movement of environmental impact and really all consequences. The culture surrounding eating meat in America thrives on ignorance and apathy. To care is truly seen as radical, and that's what really gets me the most. I read recently that the key to advocacy isn't making people aware, but making them care. Because really, most people do know that factory farming is completely fucked up and wrong, but they just don't care enough to do anything about it. It's hard to know what will make people care, but the great thing about veganism is that it addresses so many issues: personal health, world hunger, environmentalism, animal rights, and non-violence are the first that come to mind. I think that last one is ultimately what it's about for me. I don't want to be complicit in violence towards peaceful, innocent beings, human or not. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to do that in this world, but honestly one of the easiest ways to do less harm is to stop supporting the meat and dairy industries whenever you can. We can't stop all of the harm we cause to animals, since we live in an industrial, agricultural world. But nothing comes close to the killing machine of meat and dairy.
DeleteReading about the way mothers and their young are treated in the dairy industry is really the worst of all to me, and the most glaring evidence of speciesism. The mother/child bond is something truly sacred and precious, and the way we keep dairy cows forcibly impregnated only to rip their children away and steal their milk is truly shameful for a species that cares so much about family bonds and protecting mothers and children. I can't get my head around the hypocrisy that exists to allow people to disregard the familial bonds of entire species for the sake of our appetites. If we don't have to do it, we shouldn't. And we don't have to. It's as simple as that.