Ethics and exploitation

1023:

The human animal has the ability to weigh the rights and wrongs of quite complex problems and the language to discuss the details.  Other animals are limited in this way.  They can’t necessarily ‘get out of the rain’ as we can.  Humans are lucky to have such sophisticated brains, but perhaps we’ve taken our mental abilities for granted, and used them to advantage ourselves to the detriment of others, especially other animals.

           

Our sophisticated thought processes have allowed us to feather our own nests, but in so doing we’ve forgotten our primary role as guardians of the vulnerable.  When any being is disadvantaged by the advantaged you would hope that any damage to them would be mitigated by that very guardian spirit within human nature.  But in our eagerness to keep ahead of our fellow human competitors it seems that our intellect has become detached from our conscience.  There’s been a separation between what we see and what we think about what we see; it has given us the green light to do things we know we shouldn’t be doing.  Instead of guarding the vulnerable we’ve wreaked havoc upon them.

One must argue that now we need to make amends.  We need to put ourselves second for a change.  We owe it to our victims.  It’s pay back time.  We have to realise that our planet is sacred and not something to trash, that our fellow sentients need our respect and that there is nothing to fear from becoming a non-violator.

On a personal level we may agree with this but, collectively, we are in league with the super-spoilers, mega-polluters and profit makers.  We’ve supported them in both their profit-making and in their regarding ethics simply as an obstacle to be squashed.   The collective ‘we’ might be guilty of this but the personal ‘I’ doesn’t have to be part of that collective.  Our own individual action might seem ineffective but this is where change starts; change must start from somewhere since the exploiters will continue unless an opposition forms to stop them.

Over the past few decades, public pressure has shown itself effective in starting to protect the environment from the spoilers.  The idea of ‘essential-repair’ is creeping into our consciousness.  These days ‘environment’ gets good press, after decades of neglect, but not so the abuse of farm animals.  People are reluctant to raise this issue, and the  Animal Industries make sure it gets little publicity, because they know that the idea of animals having ‘rights’ is a threat to the food and clothing industry.  It is also seen as a threat by the consumer, who may not yet be ready to see any threat to the supply chain of the foods they love.

If you are thinking of backing animal rights, you should not expect too much support from either industry, government or the consumer.