Stopping Violence - Starting With Animals

1800: 

Edited by CJ Tointon 

There is a particular difficulty with Animal Rights. It isn’t directly about improving life for ourselves and it doesn’t seem to create big waves or impress our friends; but it is noticeably different to all other great causes. In fact, it’s the Cinderella of all causes. For most people today, there are other more immediate issues to be concerned with. People feel a threat to themselves and the planet and are specifically concerned with climate change. If that’s not the number one issue, then it’s war or hunger or pollution. Each major issue seems more dangerous, bigger and blacker than concern for farm animals. It drives people crazy to think of the potential we have to solve some of these problems, if only we weren’t wasting trillions of dollars on weapons of war. It drives us crazy to see the rich squander their good fortune by eating to excess and becoming obese, when there are millions of children dying from malnutrition. We feel crazy by the obscenity of it all. With all these major horrors, surely there's no room for any more? We have enough urgent, heart-breaking issues to deal with, so let’s deal with them first before we worry about eating bacon for breakfast! 

We can argue that there’s one common attitude driving all of these problems. It’s neatly symbolised by the way the enslavement of non-human animals is not touching people’s hearts. It should. It could. But it doesn't, because it isn’t seen as an indicator of threat to our civilisation. Rarely do people stop and consider that the one core value - humanity - is what characterises the potential of our species. We don’t see the damage being done to our very core and therefore we allow a barbaric and totally unnecessary behaviour to go unchecked. We continue to confine and kill and eat the most peaceful and gentle of animals, whilst diverting all of our attention towards other issues. Only the most obvious symptoms of human decline weigh on the collective mind. We only consider the damage caused by the problems, not why these problems have arisen. We are too busy trying to handle the problems and patch them up to worry about faults in the fabric of human nature. It’s not so much that we're hungry for violence, it just ends up that way. We neglect our problems and they get out of hand. Then we panic and turn in on ourselves to protect ourselves, leaving a trail of violence and violation behind us. Unless we go to the root cause of our problems (health, resource distribution, warfare, pollution, etc) we will never be able to stop the problems worsening. It’s suggested that we look at the root causes of violation and violence by starting with what we bring into our homes.  

Just a short distance from where you are reading this, there’s probably a refrigerator containing animal-derived food. In the living room, perhaps there’s a leather-bound chair. On your feet, leather shoes, in your wardrobe, woollen clothes - all evidence of humans-attacking-animals. It follows that once we can attack an innocent animal, we can go on to make an attack on our environment. By making war on animals, we stop ourselves from seeing the plight of poor people or how dangerous it is to make war on our neighbours or how stupid it is to dump rubbish in our rivers. It’s absurd to be in favour of non-violence if one still attacks and uses animals! It’s equally absurd to keep one eye fully open, seeing more clearly, whilst keeping the other one tightly shut, thus stopping us from seeing something else equally disturbing. As soon as we stop participating in the mass killing of animals, we open up to a new awareness. It has to start with individuals, doing what they know is right, without reference to what others are doing.  

If I do what I think is the right thing, then other individuals must eventually start to notice and follow suit (hopefully). It might seem like slow-tactics, but surely that’s the way the ball starts rolling. I doubt if any government will act on behalf of the animals, since to ban the killing of animals would be political suicide. The breakthrough has to start at the grass roots level - with individuals.