- "The moral duty of man consists of imitating the
moral goodness and benificence of God manifested in the creation towards
all his creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and
man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty."
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- Thomas Paine from The Age of Reason
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- Despite the trappings of a civilized culture and the
incredibly persistent myth of our moral exceptionalism, we in the United
States are collectively a group of mean-spirited, depraved barbarians.
Sparing our psyches the pangs of conscience by ferociously devouring the
corporate media's seemingly endless supply of rationalizations, euphemisms,
historical revisions, distractions, denials, distortions, and affirmations
of our pathological self-absorption, we each carry a degree of responsibility
in the infliction of immeasurable unnecessary pain and suffering upon the
rest of the Earth's sentient beings.
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- Deeply integrated into a cultural and economic system
in which compassion is considered to be a weakness and in which greed,
exploitation, profits, property, winning, bellicosity and selfishness are
sacrosanct, we cannot escape the reality that each of us participates in
the American version of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" to
some extent. Unless we isolate ourselves in a mountain cabin or expatriate,
as US citizens we are each damned to be one of the 300 million "Little
Eichmanns" who enable our cynical plutocratic masters to dominate
the world both economically and militarily.
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- Struggling to make itself heard above the cacophonous
din of sound bites, advertising jingles, clichés, tropes, memes,
mythos, and various other manifestations of the false consciousness that
afflicts so many of us, the voice of conscience occasionally grabs our
attention and violently reminds us how badly we are fucking the rest of
the world.
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- And when it does, the question we each need to ask ourselves
is, "How much like "Eich" do I want to be?"
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- While there are myriad ways we can each minimize our
culpability in the egregious crimes of savage capitalism and its most banal
representation, consumerism, the struggle to end speciesism is at the vanguard
of our much needed moral evolution. Yet is often minimized and ridiculed
by sociopolitical thinkers of nearly all stripes.
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- Seeking to provoke a re-examination of our ghastly practices
toward animals, Patrice Greanville, a force in the animal liberation movement
for many years, has defined speciesism as akin to German fascism. While
the comparison is doubtless inflammatory, it is well grounded in fact,
since both speciesism and Nazism share a core ideology of entitlement to
total dominion over anyone outside the ""master race" :
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- "[as] the oldest, crudest and most pervasive form
of fascism or tyranny aroundspeciesism must be understoodas an unrecognized
fascismnot so much as the organization of a mass party of thugs to beat
back labor, or an outright rightwing military dictatorship, but as a form
of institutionalized supremacism whereby a particular nationality, group,
class, race (or species), unilaterally proclaims its 'superiority' over
others, and proceeds to confer upon itself the right to exploit, murder,
and tyrannize at will with absolute impunity."
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- Infectious and insidious as racism or sexism, speciesism
permeates nearly every facet of our existence-and it's class blind: both
poor and rich practice it with alacrity. Raising 4-5 billion non-human
animals each year in the concentration camp-like conditions of factory
farms, we torture and slaughter fellow sentient beings merely to satiate
our carnivorous desires(1) or to justify any project, no matter how inane.
As Peter Singer documented so well in his seminal work, Animal Liberation,
we annually perform an array of horrendously brutal experiments on millions
of non-human animals, including acids and solvents on restrained rabbits'
eyes (given their great sensitivity). Singer's book clearly demonstrates
that much of the "research" conducted by torturing animals involves
redundant university studies that yield conclusions one could have intuited,
frivolous government or military projects, and unnecessary consumer product
tests designed to validate "new" brand claims.
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- Gandhi noted that "the greatness of a nation
and its moral progress can be measured by the way its animals are treated," and
he was right.
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- If the United States has a prayer of attaining even a
fraction of the "greatness" and "moral progress" it
already attributes to itself, we must engage in a fearless moral inventory
and prepare ourselves to make sweeping and dramatic social, economic, and
political changes.
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- Treating non-human animals as objects for our convenience
(hence subjecting them to horrendous suffering and abuse) is certainly
one of our most shameful misdeeds. It is also one for which each of us
can readily begin making amends. One simple step we can take is to refuse
to consume meat or products from the fast food industry, a hideous manifestation
of capitalism that catalyzed and necessitates factory farming.
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- [As a point of disclosure, this writer is a former carnivore.
While in reality he was omnivorous, his diet revolved mostly around meat
and he lived to eat it. There is rarely a day that passes that he does
not crave a steak, a cheeseburger, or some other form of non-human animal
flesh. However, as he explained in "Another
Bacon Burger Anyone?" he remains committed to vegetarianism based
on his rejection of speciesism, the detrimental effect factory farming
has on the environment, and the fact that meat production is a huge contributor
to world hunger because it consumes vast resources better utilized elsewhere.
While veganism is probably not on his immediate horizon, he does minimize
his egg consumption and makes a conscious effort to eschew the use of animal
products derived from or tested upon animals.]
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- Rising to the moral challenge
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- Every human being has a moral stake in the struggle against
speciesism, whether they define themselves as Left, Right, centrist, liberal,
or Libertarian. Drawing perilously close to the event horizon of the spiritual
black hole spawned by the excesses of the declining American Empire, our
capacity to evoke change as individuals in the face of an opulent ruling
class steeped in historically unprecedented wealth and power is limited,
but we are not impotent in the battle for our souls.
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- Consider the position of Matthew Scully, who authored Dominion:
the Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy and
who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, and
Bob Dole (not exactly the credentials of a "bleeding heart liberal"):
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- "Conservatives like to think of animal protection
as a trendy leftist cause, which makes it easier to brush off. And I hope
that more of us will open our hearts to animals. I also believe that in
factory farming and other cruelties conservatives will find some familiar
problems - moral relativism, self-centered materialism, license passing
itself off as freedom, and the culture of death."
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- Vegetarianism, one potential cure for the disease of
speciesism, has a long and rich history. A number of individuals noted
for their impressive moral, intellectual, social, literary, or political
accomplishments were vegetarians, including Edison, Einstein, Gandhi, Kafka,
Pythagoras, da Vinci, Tesla, Plato, Tolstoy, Thoreau, Jane Goodall, Cesar
Chavez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and George Bernard Shaw.
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- Almost undoubtedly these conscientious individuals who
respected non-human animals enough to stop eating them confronted some
of the same specious, often snide, arguments against vegetarianism that
defenders of speciesism still use today.
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- Consider a brief deconstruction of a few of them:
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- "A vegetarian diet is protein-deficient and vegetarians
become weak, frail, and sickly."
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- There is abundant medical and anecdotal evidence to demonstrate
that a plant-based diet provides ample proteins for a human being to sustain
health to the same extent as those eating meat. There are also some indications
that we were almost exclusively vegetarian at one point in the evolutionary
process (2).
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- "Animals do not have the same capabilities as humans,
so they are not entitled to the same rights."
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- That is a true statement. The first part, that is. It
would be patently absurd to argue that a pig has the right to bear arms.
The point is that few serious-minded people pursuing animal liberation
think in terms of animal rights, per se. However, the moral equality sought
by animal defenders for animals is not based on a ludicrous equality of
"intelligence" between non-human and human species, since if
intelligence (or lack thereof) were the criterion to confer protection
from abuse, torture and death, then we would be logically justified to
kill, eat and use mentally handicapped or brain-dead people in such manner,
and we clearly are not about to do so. As has been repeated for a couple
of decades now, the basic point is not whether they can reason like us,
but whether they can feel pain as we do, and they clearly, obviously, and
loudly do, as anyone can readily attest by spending just a few minutes
in a slaughterhouse or similar hells. Animals are ends in themselves, and
not mere means to our designs.
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- In Animal Liberation Singer defined the above
principles in this manner:
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- "The argument for extending the principle of equality
beyond our own species is simple, so simple that it amounts to no more
than a clear understanding of the nature of the principle of equal consideration
of interests. We have seen that this principle implies that our concern
for others ought not to depend on what they are like, or what abilities
they possess (although precisely what this concern requires us to do may
vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we do).
It is on this basis that we are able to say that the fact that some people
are not members of our race does not entitle us to exploit them, and similarly
the fact that some people are less intelligent than others does not mean
that their interests may be disregarded. But the principle also implies
that the fact that beings are not members of our species does not entitle
us to exploit them, and similarly the fact that other animals are less
intelligent than we are does not mean that their interests may be disregarded."
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- "To live is to destroy and kill."
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- There is an element of truth to this statement. For instance,
we inadvertently kill insects and microbes with great frequency. However,
as self-conscious, relatively intelligent beings, we bear the responsibility
and have the power to minimize the destruction, suffering, and death we
cause. One certain way to achieve this end is to end one's support of the
industrialized murder of the meat industry.
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- "Vegetarians have no regard for the "suffering"
of plants."
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- One of the principal reasons most animal liberationists
oppose meat consumption is the suffering it imposes upon non-human animals.
Arguing that vegetarians are hypocritical because they eat plants is fallacious
for two reasons (which are probably obvious even to those who disingenuously
make this ridiculous assertion).
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- Lacking a central nervous system and even a rudimentary
consciousness necessary to experience pain, it would be impossible for
plants to "suffer" in the sense that human and non-human animals
do.
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- Admittedly, we do violate the sanctity of life in an
absolute sense when we consume a plant, which is why there is some validity
to the assertion that "to live is to destroy and kill." Yet again,
as self-aware beings capable of making moral decisions, it is incumbent
upon us to minimize the suffering and death which we cause simply by being.
Choosing to eat plants rather than animals is one of the most viable means
we have of doing so.
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- Abstention from eating flesh aside, many ardent speciesists
argue that the entire notion of animal liberation is puerile and trivial
because the world is filled with problems that are "more important"
than relieving the misery of non-human animals. But remember that many
of these same individuals thrive in a system of savage capitalism which
provides them with an "inalienable right" to prosper through
exploitation. Terrified of losing their profits, they work vigorously to
prevent our society from adopting a more enlightened moral position with
respect to animals.
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- Certainly the United States is not alone in committing
shocking atrocities against non-human animals as a matter of routine, but
we are the epicenter of the most advanced and malignant stages of predatory
capitalism. With the complicity of all of us Little Eichmans (even those
who consciously keep their participation to a bare minimum), the moneyed
class comprising our de facto government is literally committing crimes
on par with those for which we hanged the architects of Nazism at Nuremburg.
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- Despite the environment of bitter dissent and rage directed
at the status quo in the United States, taking extreme action against an
increasingly rickety yet still incredibly powerful system would be premature,
self-defeating, and perhaps suicidal at this point.
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- Yet regardless of the considerable number of constraints
the ruling elites have upon us, we are still the stewards of our own souls
and possess the means to rise above the abject moral poverty of our nation.
What better place to start than in the defense of the most vulnerable amongst
us?
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- Here's to the liberation of animals and of our spirits..
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- SOURCES
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- 1. http://www.cultureandanimals.org/animalrights.htm#overabundance
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- 2. http://www.diet-and-health.net/Diet/veg_diet.html
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- Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who
has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He is Cyrano's Journal
Online's associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas
Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
You can reach him at JMiller@bestcyrano.com
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- Comment
Horst
- 8-16-07
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- Cats hunt mice and before they finally eat them they
play for some time with them until they are thoroughly dead, Spiders inject
a poison into the bodies of their prey, which digests them alive. Presumably
a very unpleasant way do die. Thus one can say from everyday observations
that nature as God created it is rather violent! (When i face Him i'll
ask Him WHY?)
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- The craving for some kind of food usually is a signal
of the body that it needs something contained in it. I know rather healthy
Vegetarians. Obviously their metabolism doesn't need certain substances
contained in meat, but not all people are equal. I attempted for more than
a year to keep a vegetarian diet. Often i was feeling like a junkie on
'turkey'. Even after two years i could not live without some animal products.
Today i go to the tavern about once a week and eat a modest portion of
grilled meat - the rest of the week i eat Vegetables.
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- The moral problem is not eating meat, but the industrial
production of it!
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- You are right, plants don't have a nervous system, yet
they can feel pain. At some university they connected plants to a polygraph
(lie detector). When they plucked off a leaf the reaction was that of immense
pain, when the person who tended to the plants approached them the reaction
was that of joy. (at least they have a soul!) (The secret life of plants
by Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird)
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- greetings Horst
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