On Animal Rights There are many, even within this group, no doubt, who hesitate to acknowledge that a mother penguin can love her chick. This would be anthropomorphism, they say. We cannot project human experience onto what we observe in other animals. I call B.S. on that. We are, of course, animals among other animals. There is no great distance between us and them. Their are equipped with nervous systems and endocrines that give them the capacity to experience suffering and comfort in just the way that we do. And the more we come to understand the chemical mysteries of our own endocrines which are the root of our more nebulous emotional realities, the more we must concede that other animals, most notably the mammals and birds, experience the world sensitively and emotionally as we do, even though they have no vocabulary to articulate or mythologize those sensations. Even if anyone wants to refuse that, it is important -- imperative -- to consider the social viewpoint that places so much at stake: Once we reduce the status of a group (e.g., Jews, protesters) to that of animals, atrocities beyond what we dare to imagine possible can and do occur. For this, if only this, we must resolve that no sentient being can be subjected to wanton horror. End factory farming. Stop the suffering.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:04:38 +0000
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