Instinct before understanding

To make up our minds about big issues we’re likely first to feel it out and then to try to understand details. That instinctive how-does-it-feel reaction sways us more powerfully than mere understanding of issues. One can communicate by feeling and translate with it. Something that’s not clear often becomes clearer when subjected to our own instinct. We may not be able to read others’ thoughts (thank goodness!) but we can all read each other’s feelings. Our capacity to feel and guess and imagine help us grasp things beyond our understanding. For instance, we may not need to understand the psyche of a cow to know how she feels when her calf is taken away? (Cows aren’t allowed much time with their calves before they are removed within days). It’s impossible to know how an animal thinks, to be sure. But with imagination and instinct we can guess. Anthropomorphically speaking we can rely on our instincts to tell us about things that we can’t provably ‘know’ … for instance, like knowing how this cow feels. We can safely say she feels badly, because she’s captive, powerless and forced to lose her offspring. Who’d be foolish enough to argue about that?
If we take away an animal’s freedom we take away her very soul; loss of freedom is inimical to all wild creatures as it is to humans. Once we allow animals their freedom and liberate the captive ones into sanctuaries, that’ll be the first time we’ll be able to restore relations with them. And after that, as long as we aren’t violating them or disregarding them or treating them as if they were inferior, we can truly living with them. Then we can enjoy being close to them.
It’s this wanting-to-be-close that we do best and what we like most about ourselves. The buzz from animals is not so very different to the buzz we get from kids. Animals and children always bring out the very best in humans. If we’re NOT interested in ‘closeness’, then animals might mean little and their fate even less. They may be seen as objects, certainly not seen as equals. They are, after all, there to be exploited.
With attitudes like these, animals all over the world continue to be in grave danger. That’s why to vegans this attitude, allowing separation to take place, is so concerning.