Article 7. Fifty Billion Animals on Death Row

How successful are we going to be, as liberators? If things don’t work out well for the animals (and they’ve had no luck with humans so far) things won’t progress for any of us. Humans have built a tradition of treating animals barbarically and we now seem like barbarians, ourselves. We want to see ourselves as humanitarians but until we change our attitude towards animals we won’t be able to move on. Until 50% of the human population realises there is an animal problem, then the animal problem remains and we remain a barbaric species. We may get the worst abuses fixed, we may swing many over to becoming vegetarians but that will be nowhere near to inspiring the sort of voting support we need for true animal liberation to start.
Ultimately, this is what makes us feel so afraid – the no-progress thing. We don’t seem to be dynamic enough when we just observe the principle of harmlessness. It feels as though we aren’t getting anywhere (as a species). On a personal level, most of us would like to save our own souls, but how can that happen until we know the animals are safe - from us! It’s as if a great ball is ready to roll but without just the right nudge, it won’t move. How can it move anywhere if most of us are still exploiting animals?
When we look at things coolly and calmly, we can see what happens. The 50 billion domesticated farm animals who are alive today are all on death row. They have no quality of life. They have no purpose for living. They have no contact with the natural world. And we impose this on them, each one of us, to a greater or lesser degree, by what we buy and consume. Shopping for animal foods is therefore an act of violence. Now if we profess to "believe in non-violence", we have to put our money where our mouth is and it isn’t only a moral statement we have to make. Because we can’t sustain this behaviour just because it is ‘right’ behaviour, there must be some other force present to keep us on track. Perhaps it’s not so much about what we should do, but about what we should want to do. The intelligent altruist isn’t a do-gooder but an uncoverer of hidden acts. We need to practice altruism to understand it, to let it be part of our lives so that we can be effective and not be depleted by what we try to do. We need to develop our interest in one another and realise that our own happiness is linked to wanting others to be happy too.