Symbiosis, essential for mutual survival

Holding onto the egalitarian ideal is never going to be easy but here in Australia, with our natural flair for rethinking things to fit into our mongrel character, we’ve made certain break throughs. One of them seems to be that within our multicultural society we have built a mutually-benefiting and symbiotic relationship with each other. To some extent it allows us to coexist in an atmosphere of acceptance of opposites. We exploit the advantages and protest the disadvantages in a rough and ready way. It’s a society where it works on a human to human level.
It’s somewhat different when animals are brought into the picture, where they are simply part of an exploitation culture, with no chance for them to be part of a symbiosis. In this respect Australians are the same as others – we don’t take their interests into account in any way whatsoever. Even if we wanted it, there’s no chance of having a symbiotic relationship with them because we can’t gain their consent. So, in theory, animals and humans could be mutually beneficial, but it’s a million miles from any relationship we have with them today. It’s always us exploiting and allowing no advantage to the animals themselves. Even the apiarist finding and transporting a hive of bees to good feeding grounds is not doing it for the bees neither are they willingly giving up the honey to the apiarist.
As soon as we act to bring about symbiosis and we start to think ‘egalitarian’ everything changes. Speciesism and all the other exploitative attitudes fade away allowing us to accept non-separation as an ideal and therefore non-violence. This must be the aim of animal liberation, to bring about an attitude of equality between humans and the animals they have exploited in the past, atoning for the crimes of past generations by promoting sanctuary for all animals who are presently in captivity.