Compassion for All

"The ideal state of humans among animals is not one in which wild animals become tame." (519)

I know this quote is a rather different start from where most of our latest reading led, but I found it particularly important.  Everyone knows a line exists between humans.  Whether it's due to our ability to reason, the environments we create around ourselves, or something else- we can't deny it exists.  I'm not doubting the ability to bridge that gap either.  There are plenty of instances of man and beast sharing in something deeper than can be explained with the scientific capabilities we have now.  But I think there's a danger in assuming that a perfect world would entail animals becoming complacent and tame with our way of life.  That's just arrogant to believe ours is the more civilized way.  Well, technically we are "civilized" but here I'm referring to the connotations the word holds- not the dictionary definition.  It isn't dolphins who are polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.  It isn't lizards who create acid rain.  And it certainly isn't ants who create weapons of mass destruction.  For all our accomplishments, we should never be so vain as to think our way is the "right way."  And for me, that belief is what this quote is trying to resist.

"The Animal Liberation Front, for example, is committed to rescuing animals from labs and exposing abuses that are hidden from the public, but they are sworn to nonviolence." (552)

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0810/S00021.htm

More on track with out studies of animal misuse and abuse, I found I had to challenge my personal bias and prejudice.  I don't think it was my parents who instilled the idea in me that animal activists are merely "crazy hippies" or some variant.  More likely it's been my exposure of peer pressure and the general social media that have led to such a conclusion.  But as I read the essay explicitly showing links between the holocaust and our current "usage" of animals, I had to realize that some of my ideas were simply flawed.  Animal activists aren't just deranged people on the fringe of society.  Sure, there are a few that certainly go to great lengths to get the message across- usually to their own detriment.  But for the most part, they're well-informed individuals who are trying to enact a change in a corrupt system.  I wish that the populace at large could understand and see beyond the stereotypes.  Of course, the only way to change a group's opinion is to take each one as an individual and bring about change slowly.  It's a painful process but it's the only way we can guarantee the change will last and isn't just a gut reaction move that shifts back with time.

"Though I have no reason to believe that you have at the forefront of your minds what is being done to animals at this moment in production facilities (I hesitate to call them farms any longer), in abattoirs, in trawlers, in laboratories, all over the world, I will take it that you concede me the rhetorical power to evoke these horrors and bring them home to you with adequate force, and leave it at that, reminding you only that the horrors I here omit are nevertheless at the center of this lecture." (Coetzee 63)

Although Elizabeth Costello at times holds a tenuous position in my like/dislike of her, in this case I find her to be extremely rational.  All too often I see horrific pictures or gruesome tales that shock for a while but then slowly fade to memory.  Sometimes it even gets transferred into the part of the brain where you store scary stories for around a campfire.  Such tactics are only effective for a short time.  To have a sustained conversation in the public about animal cruelty, we must keep from tugging on the heart strings so much.  It's definitely difficult when so much of this is emotionally charged content, especially in reference to animals we often house as pets, but I think it's critical to keep a rational, logical mind when discussing such topics.  How else an we convince the critics that say we're just bleeding hearts?  Like everything in life, it's all a matter of balance.

http://dedroidify.blogspot.com/2008/08/888.html