Doing what we’re good at

Humans are a paradox when dealing with ‘underlings’. We can be pragmatically pushing them down at one moment and loving them the next. We look after their usefulness rather than their individual selves. To make them useful and essential to our survival we kill them - an ultimately violent act. At heart humans would rather be non-violent and to be doing what we do best. We’re not natural tormentors, we’re much better at alleviating pain. We like making life smoother for others. We can be very good to our neighbours. We can be especially good to The Vulnerable, not just out of kindness but because we are fascinated by them and at the same time want to be useful to them. Humans can be very caring for ‘the other’, whether an ecosystem, a needy person or an animal. We get involved in ‘foreign causes’ and we do it, to some extent, out of kindness but mainly we do it because it’s interesting, it’s challenging and it’s about solving a problem somewhere. This is the allure. Here we have the chance to observe something that’s not immediately understandable. To feel close to it. When we’re not engaged with killing or lending our financial support to the animal industry, then caring is the sort of activity that is hobby-number-one for humans. We love spending time with these ‘other fascinating consciousnesses’, like our companion animals at home. Since we like having company and we’re good at being companions ourselves, closeness give us satisfaction. We’re great lookers-afters. It’s one of our greatest skills, but we should also know it’s our greatest privilege, and that should be enough for us. We shouldn’t want anything else for ourselves.
But many do … let’s face it, we ALL do! We are so needy. The animals are our most reliable resource. They are there, vulnerable and available, for satisfying so many of our needs. This means we have to turn away from a loving relationship and enter into a contempt-type relationship. We attack them. And some gather great numbers of them and build whole industries out of them, reducing animals to mere ‘foodstuffs’ and commodities.
For most of us animals aren’t part of making our lilihood, that we eat them as food seems to be a bit of an anomaly, because we have no reason to. We kill them as food but not out of hatred. It’s not really out of anything and most often the whole abattoir-butcher-meat-eating thing is a not-thought-out activity at all. If it were most of us would probably opt for a benign relationship with the animal kingdom and move towards becoming vegetarian … because then we’d have a clear run towards many things getting better … which might mean becoming happy. Most of us associate our happier times having been spent in the company of an animal. Just being with them and letting them be with us can be exquisitely satisfying, whether companions, wild or farmed. We don’t necessarily need to be intrusive or to become indispensable to them or be in control of them. Better only to be relevant to them or be needed by them or useful to them. And while we’re on the subject, I should mention the bleedin’ obvious, that we can’t expect thanks from them for anything we do on their behalf. In fact a friendly nuzzle from our dog is about the most tangible sign of thanks we can expect of them (for being loving as opposed to being exploiting). Animals are silent appreciators but transmit something not easy to describe. But whatever it is, it’s in us too.
If we do something fine, we can feel appreciation for it but it’s not always tangible and, for the most part, were okay about that because we don’t want a song and dance made about it. The altruist and the ‘altruee’ are together, unseparated at that time. It’s good to know that we can have that with others, to know that we have the sensitivity to see a need and respond to it with no strings attached. Our reward is simply to be close to another living entity, and one who we don’t have to understand, who might be unpredictable and fascinating because of that … but do we have the right to understand them (or each other?). Do we need to?