Sunday, July 13, 2014

Symbiosis essential for mutual survival

1107: 

Holding onto the egalitarian ideal is never going to be easy but here in Australia, with our natural flair for rethinking everything, we’ve made certain break-throughs, one of which seems to be our healthy relationships with each other.  Snobbery doesn’t exist here.  We’re more inclined to build mutually-benefiting and symbiotic connections.

It’s somewhat different when animals are brought into the picture.  They are simply part of an exploitation culture - there’s not much ‘symbiosis’ there, and in this respect Australians are the same as other nationalities.  In theory, animals and humans could be mutually beneficial, but that’s a million miles from what we have today - we exploit them and we allow them no privileges.  Even the apiarist, who transports his hives of bees to good feeding grounds doesn’t do it for the bees’ sake but in order to get them making even more honey ... to steal from them.


Even after the animal has been exploited and used up there’s no thought for the animal itself.  They’re sent for slaughter - the last vestiges of usefulness are drained from the body.  Nothing of them is wasted, and that’s considered to be ‘virtuous efficiency’.  As for retiring the poor exhausted animal in a sanctuary - ya gotta be jokin’!! 

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