The particular difficulty of Animal Rights

1295: 

Animal Rights is the Cinderella of causes.  What makes it so different to all other important causes?  Perhaps it’s too personally close to home to be dispassionate about.  It's so closely connected to our food supply, and to the social habits connected to our eating and our health.  But it is also purposely neglected, because most of us are aware of other great dangers facing us, that seem more immediate and more threatening and which need addressing.  And we know for a fact that the animals we imprison on farms and in research laboratories seem to pose no threat to us.  They can’t fight back since they have no voice, no power and no rights.  It seems we can safely put 'animal issues' on the back-burner.

The more present danger seems to be coming from another direction entirely.  And, in response to the immediacy of some of these dangers, there is already some change of consciousness taking place.  We’re aware of the threat of climate change; we’re becoming more environmentally aware; we understand the huge waste of money spent on armaments.  And then there’s evidence of children dying from malnutrition, while our own obese society is eating to excess.  With so many human-caused problems directly affecting us and constantly being discussed in the media, the urgency of the ‘main issues of the day’ allows no room for any more concerns to weigh down upon us.  For instance, the plight of farm animals.  The other ‘louder’ issues crowding in on us stop us taking a closer look at the quieter issues which, nonetheless, are possibly of greater and more immediate importance, overall.

The enslavement of non-human animals doesn’t touch people’s day-to-day lives.  It doesn’t touch our hearts as it should.  It isn’t seen as an immediate threat, in fact to many people it poses no threat at all.  Few people care about the damage being done to our ‘humanity’, by confining and killing and then eating animals, when there are so many other more prominent issues to face.  But, there’s also a lazy side to our concerns.

We might say we feel strongly about the prominent issues of the day but, with these, we don’t necessarily have to do very much about them, personally.  We might believe in a cleaner environment and a more equitable distribution of food, but we are obliged to do very little to support those beliefs.  Perhaps we need to donate some money or subscribe to an organisation which is going to ‘cover our concern’.  It’s the sort of support we feel proud enough of, without feeling we are not a caring-enough person.  However, any effort we might make in one direction is nothing compared to the personal privations implied by supporting Animal Rights; our involvement won’t be a matter of making a donation or making a simple gesture of support, it will involve one in a much more substantial show-of-support.

Animal Rights involves fighting a very specific ‘wrong’ which calls for a substantial amount of personal action, to show how sincerely we feel about it.  And if we think exploiting animals is VERY wrong, then we’ll need to do as much as we can to support what Animal Rights stands for.

If we have a fundamental change of attitude towards animals, then that will involve many of our daily behaviours and related attitudes.  It will extend beyond the boycotting of animal-based food and clothing and touch the very nub of the problem which humans have been facing for millennia.  Namely, that the human species is extremely violent.  All the advantages we enjoy as humans may be attributed to violence.  No doubt, our eventual downfall will be traced back to our violent natures.  And at the root of our violation and violence is the animal-based foods we are in the habit of eating, because with almost every meal we confirm the violence of our natures.

It can only mend when we take away our support for the routine attacking of animals, which translates back to our other routine violent acts – the attacking of our environment, our neglect of poor and hungry people or the way we deal with potentially threatening neighbours.

Care for the planet, for the poor and for other less fortunate communities, sets the standard here. We should be aiming to be exemplars of confident, generous and non-violent people.  But it starts with attitude change in each of us as individuals.  We might believe in the rightness of being caring and non-violent, but we can hardly pretend to be non-violent if we’re still attacking and using animals.