Humans, doing what we’re good at

1469: 

Humans are a paradox when dealing with ‘underlings’.  We’re capable of love and yet capable of the most cynical pragmatism which ends up as exploitation.  Animals are cared for at one moment and pushed down the next.  We look after them, feed them and shelter them but only to make use of them rather than out of any affection for them.  Most ‘useable’ animals we use and exhaust, the dairy cow which has a twenty year life span is exhausted by the age of ten years, her milk supply dried up and is of no further use to the human and so she is executed.  All farm-animals are exploited in a similar way - we suck every advantage from them, then kill them. It’s an ultimate 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, not just out of kindness but because we’re genuinely interested by them and want to be useful to them.  Humans can be very caring for ‘the other’.  We can show concern for the ecosystem, for a needy person or a distressed 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 and it challenges us to solve a problem somewhere.  But all that comes to naught when there’s something even more attractive in taking advantage of them.  There is a certain allure about being able to control and enslave the vulnerable, and none more vulnerable than the captive animal.  They have no choice but to let us indulge ‘in’ them, providing us with anything from delicious foods, to handy research tools, to companions for going walking with or being entertained by.  Animals are a most reliable resource.  They’re vulnerable and available.  They’re guaranteed to satisfy many of our needs.

But that means we have to turn away from a loving relationship with them and enter into a contemptuous relationship, in order to bend them to our will and make use of them.  Humans have built whole industries out of them, reducing them to mere foodstuffs or commodities.

For most of us, animals aren’t 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 of other ways to feed ourselves, and we have a taste for their highly flavoured muscle tissue and secretions, and less taste for anything else in the food chain which is blander.  We don’t kill animals out of hatred but because of a collective process that we’ve come to accept as natural, which flows seamlessly from the live animal to the dead animal at the abattoir to the butcher to the consumer to the dinner plate.  Our acceptance of this process is not very well thought-out. Meat-eating is automatic, learnt, unquestioned.  If we ever did think about it we’d probably abandon it in favour of becoming vegetarian-vegan, if only to enjoy a more benign relationship with the animal kingdom.

Most of us have our happiest memories of times we’ve spent in the company of animals, whether as pets, or as wild or farmed animals.  If we ever feel warm towards them or want to help them or free them, we can’t expect any thanks.  In fact a friendly nuzzle from our dog is about the most tangible sign of appreciation we’ll ever get.  For our part we can interact with animals in a symbiotic way, they being satisfying for us as we can be for them.  We don’t need to harm them.