Cold hearted horror

640:

When you see pictures of the Nazi prison camps and the Jews being marched to the gas chambers you realise how much danger a humans brain represents, especially when the brain can also help to normalise cruelty until it is no longer noticed or remarked upon.

I saw the movie ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, and it showed graphically how the greatest damage done is to innocence. When that is broken, when a child is sent into the gas chamber, at that point innocence evaporates. And what exquisite terror children must experience as they see the cold killing ‘machine’ go to work on them.

A child’s innocence, just like an animal’s, is being destroyed by the pitilessness of the deed. For the two boys in ‘the striped pyjamas’, they experience an attack on their consciousness. And I can only think it must be the same for animals, when facing the same lack of pity from their executioner. This is why farmers don’t give their animals names or let their kids develop any emotional attachment to them, because one day they will have to betray them, by sending their animals to have their throats slit.

There’s not much difference between death camps for humans and abattoirs for animals - each shows how unfeeling, how ruthless and how pragmatic humans can be. And it’s that trait, in some humans, that lets them do it without a second thought. This is why we have to distance ourselves from this barbarity, and why we must give up meat.

These images of abattoirs and gas chambers are haunting. They’re attacks on the defenceless. They show what humans are capable of. But it’s in the nature of this terrible routine crime that we don’t see it as a crime at all. Present day humans (consumers) don’t necessarily see it, nor do the hands-on animal exploiters. They might say, “Animals - why make a fuss about them? They are ‘mere’ animals. They don’t have brains like ours. They are incapable of feeling and sensation. They aren’t conscious of anything. They can’t be traumatised because they can’t reflect on their own situation. They can’t premeditate their own executions so they don’t suffer from anxiety. In short, animals are unaware of what’s happening until it happens, so for them they don’t become agitated”.

These explanations have comforted many generations of humans. They help to convince whole populations of people that what happens to animals is basically okay ... because it is essential for human life.