True liberation

986: 

These days my passion is for non-violence alongside a concern for farmed animals.  I’m looking up ahead.  I’m seeing that animals and humans are inextricably linked, their fortunes and ours are directly dependent upon our becoming protectors of them.

           

We’ve always been violent and exploitative towards them and now the time has come for us to atone and become their protectors.  They need our laws to make them safe and we need to learn from them how to restore our own sensitivity.  It’s a two way road - the need for human liberation is even more urgent than animal liberation, if only because this is where it all has to start.  Humans are the violators and therefore it’s we humans who need to change.  The animals don’t need to, unless we can help them recover their true wild natures.  If that is unrealistic then at least we can try to help them gain liberation.  And for that we first have to prove we are worthy to be their representatives.

           

My feeling is that if things don’t work out well for the animals, things won’t progress for any of us.  Humans, having such a long tradition of treating animals barbarically, seem like true barbarians.  But that’s not how  I want to see myself.  I want to see the humanitarian side of me.  And I think others might want to see themselves that way too.  But it’s going to need a change of attitude towards animals, by a lot of people, all of whom would no longer be wanting to use, keep or eat animals.

Until at least 50% of the human population realises there’s an animal problem, the animal problem will remain.  And we will remain a barbaric species.  We may eventually get the worst abuses fixed, we may swing over to becoming vegetarians but that will be still a long way from true liberation, for animals or for us.