Another contentious issue … inspired by the same events of this morning (which I won’t go into) … but I hope this post will help you understand why I am so passionate and aggressive over these issues.
Human beings do several things to other sentient beings of all species:
- Appreciate them;
- Adopt / love them;
- Help them;
- Ignore them;
- Exploit them;
- Torture them;
- Kill them.
- The first 3 are always ok;
- The last 3 are rarely if ever ok (though they MAY be understandable in extreme circumstances)
- The middle one is ok IF by ignoring you’re not enabling their suffering, and which you could lessen, remove or prevent without significant negative risk or consequences to yourself.
AND YET … we don’t do the first 3 enough, we are complacent in our duty of care to the middle one, and we’ve normalised the last 3 … So at what point do we look at ourselves as a species and say STOP THIS IS NOT OK AND WE CAN DO BETTER!
In a recorded discussion between Richard Dawkins and another guy (I can’t remember who), I think it may have been Richard who said (paraphrased):
“Perhaps our burden of responsibility lies at the critical threshold,
beyond which a species is caapable of psychological suffering”
… and whatever you think of him (I have my own criticisms), you MUST acknowledge that he has a very good point.
When we take on pets, we have a burden of responsibility to them … compared to ourselves they are like children, and they are extremely vulnerable to our whims, idiosyncrasies, etc. … so I do not see how we can take one of these species, adopt them, yet so often treat them as property (despite all the love they give us), and then murder everything else on the planet if it suits us … WHAT WOULD YOU THINK OF AN ALIEN SPECIES WHO CAME TO EARTH AND DID THE SAME TO US??? … let’s just hope we never find out the answer to that question … and in the meantime, let’s make ourselves worthy of being defended if there’s another alien species, or members of the same species whom would do so.