"When I say that I work in animal welfare I often hear the response, ‘How come you only care about animals? Don’t you know there are children being abused… entire nations starving… old people having their dignity violated… homelessness, poverty, cancer, heart disease and on and on. In their eyes does me choosing to work on one thing preclude me from acknowledging and caring about the others? And when did there suddenly become a right or wrong thing to care about? It’s not like we wake up each day with an allotted amount of compassion. “I only have enough caring inside of me for these things today; everything else is just going to have to wait until a space opens up.” And it’s not like my caring about animals causes more suffering in other areas. A child doesn’t die of malnutrition because I’m rescuing a dog. But this is exactly my point. Why do we still feel the need to defend ourselves? Why is my default position to try and justify that I actually care enough about something that I am prepared to dedicate my life to it? How did that ever become something that required defending? I don’t understand why animal welfare is so often seen as the poor relation to other realms of compassion? If I were as dedicated to child poverty I can’t imagine people coming up to me and questioning my choices then. I find that those who would question my choices the most are not those who have made a choice elsewhere but those who have made no choice at all. What do you care about? Does belittling my beliefs make yours stronger? Are your moral values better than mine? Instead of judging me for my choices, why don’t you tell me what you’re actually doing to address the things that you’re so clearly worried about. Compassion isn’t something you should have to pick and choose. Everything is important. We don’t spend Saturday mornings wandering around the morality section at IKEA deciding how we should furnish our lives so we can sleep better at night. We make sacrifices and compromises every day because in the real world we have to. We can’t save everything and everyone but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. There’s a difference between what is right and what is easy. If our aim is to end suffering, in whatever form it comes, human or animal, then we should never feel the need to defend ourselves. It is people who question and criticize the need to help and show compassion that should have to defend themselves. The question isn’t why do I care but why do you not!" Harry Eckman CFAF
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 09:19:21 +0000
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