Abolitionism and greatness

213a
The very idea of putting another human into slavery is abhorrent but we do it to animals without a second thought. We empathise with other humans because they’re just like us, but animals ... they aren’t anything like us, so we don’t see them as individuals but like peas in a pod. We see them collectively. Each is part of a whole and not much more - the antithesis of the ‘great individual’ (exception: Inspector Rex). Animals are the great un-great. They’re furniture - beautiful to look at, useful, but of no importance beyond that. An animal doesn’t even have a soul ... so we say!
We’re so used to seeing animals in paddocks in the countryside or in cages at the zoo (both animal prisons) that we see no ugliness. In fact we see them in the opposite way - the countryside and the zoo are fun to go to. Kids love to see the animals - they ask to go ... and we don’t tell them there’s anything wrong with these places. Is it any wonder that abolitionism has to be invented, to prick or expunge this insane gaoling instinct humans have concerning animals?
So, what do we have here? What am I saying? That in some ways our attitudes have been high-jacked, that our thoughts are not our own, that all adults in every country (and that includes your mum, your friend, your doctor, your teacher, almost everyone) have lost touch with their very soul ... that they have no opinions of their own ... do I mean that everyone’s been manipulated?
It’s come to this - we accept the worst thing imaginable - the torture and murder of animals. We accept it as being okay. But, in reality, it’s rather like thinking child-molesting is okay, and everyone knows that’s one huge crime.
Animals-in-slavery number as many as humans. They’re our slaves. We’ve got used to that ... so used to it that we no longer know it ... that is, until we sit down and try to imagine a human being actually, deliberately hurting even one them. Wow! And for what? But to say this, to denigrate virtually everyone for this, makes me seem like one angry dude, as if I’m standing in the middle of a hundred thousand football fans and shouting at them, “Football stinks”.
What Animal Rights advocates are saying looks like one
gigantic insult, levelled at the hugest number of people imaginable.
So, I’m trying to turn that around by saying ... “Yes, it’s wrong, it’s all so unnecessary, the enslaving and abuse of animals ought to stop ...”, but I know this won’t attract anyone. I must come up with something more optimistic, about us all. So, here it is.
The meat-eating, zoo-visiting, ethically-challenged person is a mix. I’m a mix. It’s not about who is better than the other, it’s just that we each have sensitivities in different areas, and those who’re sensitive to the animals’ plight may be less sensitive in some other areas. None of us can afford to be smug. In my own personal mix there are stupidities and insensitivities mixed in with things no one would quarrel with.
I see greatness in most every person I meet (because I choose to go looking for it) but I don’t conjure it out of thin air, I actually see it. And I see it because I can’t miss it. Because it’s there and so common in all of us. But if you don’t consciously go looking for it, it goes unnoticed. I, like most others, employ modesty to hide it from myself (and so I should) but that hides it from others too. I don’t see myself as great and others don’t tell me so anyway, but when they do tell me I’m special, that’s a fantastic feeling. However, that’s how I might want to feel, to feel ‘special’, but that might be my biggest problem.
We want to be special. That is better or more outstanding than others ... as famous people seem to be. And we all know that famous people are few in number (at any given time), whereas the not-famous are many and very forgettable ... and we do so want immortality, to be remembered ... as if that could make us happy ... by helping us live longer in others’ memory of us. We want to be so ‘special’ that we’re unforgettable. That’s vanity gone crazy!
‘Great’ may be different, in that it’s a feeling of satisfaction which has some sense of motion about it, as if we’re ongoing, striving to be engaged in universal pursuits. The trouble is we want to be recognised for our greatness all the time. On the one hand we deny our own greatness and on the other we want it so badly. And it doesn’t come. And eventually we give up and settle for conformity - the big second-best. Our greatness is allowed to wither, or worse, become a need for ‘specialness’, for the preciousness of wanting-to-be-remembered-or-revered (read ‘immortal’). How stupid is that when we’re already as ‘great’ as ever great can be.
To those few individuals who might know us well, who like us, to them we may seem great - they possibly see it ... but not exactly in that way. When this same word is used to describe just about everything these days it becoems so watered down as to be meaningless. What is truly ‘great’ is something maybe too universal to be defined. ‘Great’ may not be in our lexicon, it being too overpowering a concept to contemplate. We may not feel adequate enough to acknowledge it, either in our self or in others ... and out of that comes a depreciation that is nothing short of wasteful.
I might be greater than I could ever want to be, but if I simply don’t see it I might instead, out of desperation, become narcissistic and ego-driven. Oh! And then the frustrations hit. Oh the agony! Then, certain of my more impressive attributes are concealed from me ... and a much more uncertain person-within pops up, who is swamped by past mistakes, saying, “I wouldn’t have done that if I were really great”. “Great people are like this ...not like me”, and in my own mind I string off a list of famous people I admire, and say, “I can’t identify with their greatness because it’s too different to any greatness I see in myself”.
When kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up they say “famous”, which probably means they just want to be thought of as ‘great’.
The hum drum world doesn’t recognise me because I’m not rich - we aren’t worthy to be rewarded for who we are. If we are nothing, and have nothing, it’s because we’re not special enough. And so eventually we give up on our own greatness and emulate the specialness we see in others ... who seem ‘much greater than me’. We lose touch with our own original thinking (based on instinct and personal experience) and say, “If ‘they’ do it, it must be okay for me to do it” ... but, as it happens, the ‘emulated’ are not very great at all - the ‘great’ people don’t set much of an example.
So we take the kids to the zoo, and parade them in front of majestic lions, locked behind bars, and say “me human: you animal ... me great: you nothing but banged up prisoners” ... then there’s lots of laughs.
It doesn’t make us feel ‘great’ but at least, in the eyes of our children (who we’ve taken to the zoo and fed hamburgers) it makes us feel a whole lot better about ourselves. We’re momentarily popular with the kids ... ‘special’ to them.