Judgement and arson

1560: 

As usual at this time of the year, there are bush fires, with houses lost, human lives sometimes lost and countless animal lives lost.  The fires are often deliberately lit.  There’s public fury for the arsonists.  People feel strongly, in defence of the victims of arson.

But we’re inconsistent with our strong feelings.  No other person is so detested as the arsonist.  When caught, they’re shamed by their community and punished by a professional judge.  Nothing shows up the public thirst for vengeance than that for the arsonist.  But for another equally horrendous crime there’s silence.

When something is not illegal, and doesn’t apparently endanger human life or property (and I’m thinking here of the mass killing of animals) there's no shaming or judgement, other than from the morally-outraged, animal rights activists; we're intent on shaming those involved; and that's being just about everybody!!  The activist takes on the responsibility of identifying the crime because there seems to be no one else doing so.  Vegan activists take on the role of judge since there’s no professional judge and court room to do this for us.  The strange things is that we never quite get used to the fact that no one is even the slightest bit disturbed by the crime of animal-killing, or much affected by our judgement of them.  Which is why these sorts of value judgements always fail.

We form strong opinions during our life - the public’s about arsonists, the vegan’s about meat eaters, but we never ask why the arsonist lights fires or the meat eater is prepared to hurt animals.  The arsonists are usually in their youth and have disturbed minds, but there are older arsonists too, like those in our neighbouring country, setting fires on a massive scale, to clear the land for economic reasons.  So whether it’s done for fun or for money, there is a common lack of caring about consequences.  The catastrophic fires of Indonesia (burning forests, smouldering peat sub soils) are producing greenhouse gases on a catastrophic scale.  But whether we are judging the youth for being destructive or the Indonesian land clearers, we judge them out of a screaming sense of frustration and impotence on our part.  We are powerless to stop them acting to harm the innocent bystander.

The meat eater is the pyromaniac’s double.  And they each need urgent help to cure them of the same urges that cause harm both to themselves and to countless innocent animals.  They too do what they do with not a care in the world for those who suffer most from their carelessness.