About Animals

AGRICULTURE is different from HUNTER-GATHERING.

Hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland, post-glaciation, 12,800 years ago.
In 12,800 years, we're not quite at the absolute disparition of suffering, but we've altered some of our views and morals to further us in this objective. Go us.

Somewhere along the line, someone influential enough is going to have to assert that, after 12,800 years, if it's possible to eat, survive and not cause suffering, maybe that's what we should be doing. Maybe torture and slaughter are no longer okay. Maybe a primitive tribe deep in the Amazon turning to hunter-gathering when McDonalds burns down their arable land to make room for burger-machines isn't comparable to an affluent Western society farming animals as though they were vegetables and churning them out for us in a lazy, disturbance-free and successful effort to make money.

As a species, we continuously mistake rationalisation for justification. It's okay for me to eat meat because a LION does it. And so forth.

As a person, I bang on about feminism, queer theory, ableism, racism, transphobia and any number of social issues, goshdarnit, I have something to say. And then it comes to the way humans treat other animals and I can't even think about it, because it's symptomatic of how absolutely fucked up we are, that we'll run a marathon to cure cancer or we'll sign up to Amnesty or we'll make Rage Against The Machine the Christmas number 1, we'll join a facebook group to prevent the death penalty for gays in Uganda, we'll march in our millions against the war in Iraq and then we'll fight to allow gay people to fight in the very same war and then we laugh at Lenny Henry and phone in with a donation and then we'll skin a fox cub or a seal pup alive to make a warm coat and we'll cut open a kitten's brain to see if a vague theory pans out and we'll throw hundreds of chicks in a wood grinder and feed them to their sisters so we can have an omelette in the morning and we'll shave mice, wrap them in tin foil and put them in an oven to see if a brand new suntan lotion works and we'll inject monkeys with their own faeces just to see what happens because we're bored students and we'll do these types of things again and again and again and again, we'll slaughter animals in this manner in their billions, causing more pain than a petition signature will ever relieve, because a whitecoat or our tastebuds or the mirror told us it was okay.

These things happen and if you're not already somewhat involved in Animal Rights, then it's safe to assume the situation is worse and wider spread than you would ever believe. And so I've just stopped thinking about it because, to me, the way humans treat other animals is a manifestation of the worst possible way in which we could act. I see every morsel of flesh in your meal as the whole being it came from. I took a step in this direction and this is where I ended up. I'm made to feel as though I'm not allowed to talk about it, everyone expects everything to be convenient and non-confrontational and I'm part of a minority, with an extreme opinion and so I have to be humble about it. I'm pigeon-holed as some kind of bigmouth, holier-than-thou, potential terrorist, brainwashed, societal annoyance. How do you begin to make people listen? How do you know where to begin talking about it? I have to somehow make my peace with the fact that I alone can't change the way humans view other animals. I used to hole myself up in my room for days, vegetating on these thoughts and now I've sort of learnt to muggle along with the idea that, while I cosy up in my duvet and put on an episode of Buffy, whinge about noisy eaters or upcoming exams, other beings are living in unnecessary and inexplicable misery. I could have been left to rot on a cage floor somewhere, absolutely trapped and forsaken by humanity, so really, I'm extremely lucky to have ended up as a human being who slots into any number of minority categories. In terms of suffering, I ain't got shit on your bog-standard laboratory rat. My body is mine, it's not powdered on anyone's crackers.

Compassion shouldn't be considered an extremity.