Humans, doing what we’re good at

1160: 

Humans are a paradox when dealing with ‘underlings’. We’re capable of love and yet capable of the most cynical pragmatism imaginable. We sometimes take great care of our fellow humans, who are less fortunate than ourselves, but that same caring doesn’t extend to non-humans. It always ends up with some level of exploitation.

We have a very inconsistent relationship with animals.  Some we push down into hell (at one moment) and others we love to heaven (the next moment). But all of them are exploited in some way - our motive being to look after them, to make them more useful to us. And yes, our treatment of them can be mixed with affection. But most animals we use without compunction, and when used, we kill them in a brutal act of violence and betrayal.

At heart, humans are 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 and especially good to the vulnerable people we meet, not just out of kindness but because we’re fascinated by them. And instinctively we want to be useful to them.

Humans can be very caring for ‘the other’, whether it’s 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. That’s the allure.

Part of the challenge is that we mostly enjoy the chance to observe something that’s not immediately understandable. In this way we might reckon to get closer to other fascinating consciousnesses. Perhaps we’re all pretty good at doing this, and never more so than when we’re  observing companion animals.

Now, since I personally like having company, I try to be a good companion-animal myself - closeness is my main motive, my main satisfaction. I like to be a good looker-afterer. It’s fun to exercise the skill, on either a great or small level. It’s most fun when you’re being useful. And if we could get over expecting thanks and come to appreciate what we can do - just the fact that we’re capable of being useful should be enough for us, for complete happiness.

So, why do we want anything more? But we do. We ALL do! We are so needy ... which brings us back to the animals. They ‘let’ us indulge in all sorts of things. From them come the main resources - mainly by way of food ingredients. Animals provide for humans very generously (!!!), anything from delicious foods, to being handy research tools, to serving us as our companions (like dogs being our excuse to do some exercise by walking them). We’re entertained by them, shod by them, and warmed by them. The animals give it all.

Animals are a most reliable resource. They’re vulnerable and supremely available. They’re guaranteed to satisfy our needs ... but that means we’ve got a slight relationship problem. Imagine cooking your faithful pet dog when he was plump enough for the pot. Our connection with certain (useful) animals, forces us to turn away from having any sort of loving relationship with them. We can then enter into a contemptuous relationship, in order to make full use of them. Humans have built whole industries out of them, reducing them to mere foodstuffs or commodities.

For most of us, we don’t rely on animals for our livelihood, we just eat them. And that in itself is an anomaly, because we don’t need to; we kill them as food because we don’t know how else to feed ourselves (although of course, we do!!). We don’t kill animals out of hatred but because we are locked into a process, and this feeding-clothing process accompanies us throughout life. It starts at the abattoir and continues to butcher, to shopkeeper and to consumer. The processing of animals is a habit that humans are locked into. And on the face of it, it hasn’t been very well thought-out.

Take food as the prime example: meat-eating is automatic, learned, and goes largely unquestioned. Whereas, once a person starts to think for themselves about it, they start to move towards becoming vegan. As people move in that direction (via vegetarianism usually) they turn away from an ugly abattoir-inspired world and into another world entirely. They transit into a wiped-clean world that is initially inspired by a plant-based diet. Ideally, it goes that way mainly because we want to enjoy a more benign relationship with the animal kingdom.