The treatment of animals accompanies the mindless abuse of the earth. Starting from this physical negligence, in fact, the relationships we forge within our space with other creatures are also transformed and cruelty is fostered. Our actions, detached from the sensitivities of our environment, become deaf to the cries of so many beings who are confined to a life of mere productivity or objectification. We fail so clamorously to recognise the intrinsic value not only of interests that are dissimilar to our own, but also of lives which carry meanings and are led differently from how we believe they ought to be led. In a small human perspective, just as Ivan Sergeevič Turgenevwrote, ‘man is able to understand everything, how the aether vibrates or the sun works, but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he's incapable of understanding’. Yet it is crucial to remember that, in our coexistence, we are not required to share values, and not even shape or form, in order to treat others with respect.
The matter can be viewed from an animal perspective, from a human perspective or in terms of relationship, concerning the meeting point between the two. To begin in the middle, the way we relate to each other is grounded in the very fact we are alive and share a common environment, which mankind has increasingly appropriated over time. However, what right should man have over other creatures, including plants, bees or wild weeds? What makes his life more valuable than others, other than his conception of himself in relation to them? The issue of animal treatment does not necessarily require that man sacrifices his fellowship to a species, in the name of sheer equality. Our structural ethic and biology require we make this category distinction between other species and our own, and privilege the one we belong to. However, when our persistence threats not only the wellbeing, but also the existence of other species, we should begin to consider the impact of our practical ethics. Is there such thing as a right to life? And if so, what allocates the hegemony of interests to persons? Is this consistent with our treatment of human non-persons, such as babies or comatose beings? From these examples, it becomes clear that in our common moral framework, it is not necessary to be a person in order to hold rights. It is perfectly plausible and humanely natural that a parent seeks to protect and nurture their child, and in the case he was not able to do so, it would be considered as an abominable infringement of the child’s rights. As well as this, we would not think to skin, hunt or barbecue an intellectually incapable human being. Drawing from this shared assumption that rights do not require personal (or rational) agents in order to be held, it becomes evident that we must seek justification for animal treatment in the practical exercise of interests. The philosopher Leslie Stephen once wrote that of all arguments for Vegetarianism, the argument from humanity presents itself as the weakest, because ‘the pig has a stronger interest than anyone in the demand for bacon. If all the world were Jewish, there would be no pigs at all.’ The existence of a species in fact seems to transcend the single, individual existences of its members with no regard for the constant pain or brutal conditions they may be held in. The assignment of life, as an ultimately sacred thing, therefore seems to defend any existence regardless of whether this is good or bad. The fallacy that lies between comparing existence and non-existence cannot stand: it is evident that we are in fact doing something wrong if we decide to bring a miserable being into existence, although they have ‘never tasted life’s desire’. The unborn and impersonal can feel no death, according to the Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura. Murdering a self-conscious, living person and killing an uncreated being cannot stand with the same moral burden. However, moving to the breathing creatures themselves, much recent research has been investigating the intellectual, sensorial and social capacities of animals, particularly those intensively farmed for food. Chicken, cows, pigs have been released by many scientists from the chains of inferiority our traditional beliefs have constrained them with. The Western tradition of anthropocentrism has however restricted the role of animals to that of mere producers of material goods, such as leather, milk, honey, or of entertainers and amusers. The logic that laid behind Aristotle’s claim that ‘Nature made nothing in vain’ enhanced the classification of plants, animals and other beings according to how useful they were to man. It is reflected in the origins of the word ‘environment’, first employed by the Scottish philosopher and writer Thomas Carlyle in 1828, referring to this limited notion of the world in function of man. Yet at last, considering the issue of animal welfare in terms of virtuous humanity, the virtue of animal concern may help develop other environmental sensitivities as well as good intentions and character within humans themselves, as a principle of reflexivity. This may also fundamentally reflect onto how we treat each other within our species. To cite an example, in Australia until the 1960s Aboriginal Australians came under the Flora and Fauna Act and were classified as animals, not human beings. It becomes clear then that the struggle for human rights and animal rights are deeply interconnected, if not one and the same fight. The moment we realise that the problem lies within the actual boundaries of how we, actively or passively, decide and choose to treat others, it becomes clear that our regards of them are purely derivative from our selves. The treatment of other creatures should aim to reflect a profound and careful attempt to refine our own nature to its finest, by curating one’s faculty of thought and empathy. We are free to free ourselves from the incarceration of habit and the structures of pernicious tradition. Our rendition as human beings should always aim to the best possible representation of what we can achieve. This blind industry of animal products that surrounds us casts the shadow of the modern homo economicuspopulating our society, who gives no intrinsic value to things but merely recognises their ability to produce profit, even through the veils of suffering. The fordism of life we are faced with, as observable in factory farming, lab testing or intensive pedigree breeding, leads us to events such as the recent extermination of millions of minks who had contracted COVID-19 in Denmark. The killing of such an enormous population not only is an unnatural failure in itself, but is also the consequence of a history of moral failures which have lead the path towards it. For this reason, we should not only revise our ways of dealing with other lives as a society, but also reconsider how we, personally and interpersonally, choose to relate to others and what conditions we set before our interactions. Cruelty is not constituted by the simple causing of pain, but rather by the wrong attitude towards it. Finally, to supplement the invite to this moral picture with a touch of utilitarian persuasiveness, the environmental effects of animal cultivation have many deep implications on a biospheric dimension, for instance by releasing around 502 million tonnes of CO2 emissions only with European livestock (more than transportation!). The moment we come to realise how fundamental the treatment of animal lives is, will perhaps be the moment we realise the spirituality and irreplaceability of otherness and the earth, as well as our fluid moral landscape, reconsidering the value of life and pain, wherever or in whichever body this may be found, as the piece of a unique, stretched skin covering us all together.
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