For the past two hundred years since the British Industrial Revolution and the rise of consumerism, the Western World and now the Eastern and Third Worlds, have adopted a mantra that says; ‘we can do anyhing we like to this world- destroy other species, the natural environment as much as we want in our pursuit of profit and things to consume’.
A few humans are now coming to the realisation that this mantra is rapidly and progressively destroying this planet- that we, and the billions of other species on this planet , are doomed very soon, to annihilation, unless we rapidly reverse this hedonistic view of life.
In my little ‘green and clean’ country of New Zealand alone, we mercilessly kill many many millions of other animals we ‘farm’ each year. Each of those animals, (as every pet owner well knows) , just like us; has thoughts, feelings and intense fear as they approach their deaths by humans who must construct careful thought patterns to ensure they are not unduly themselves destroyed by the pain and psychopathic cruelty they are inflicting on each animal they encounter for killing. There are harrowing stories in the links below of animals coming to their murderers for comfort and reassurance before the moments of their deaths.
There are stories too of the enormous psychological damage inflicted on those butcherers by their killings day after day. And yet incredibly, we see educated ‘authorities’ extolling diets which endorse and enthuse over those killings. The so-called ‘paleo’ diet- where supposedly our prehistoric ancestors somehow had enough time and energy to go on killing sprees and consume vast amounts of meat. One has to wonder which killing corporation is sponsoring such a diet?
In reality, we in our early years, like our fellow primates, did kill a few other animals, but predominantly ate what came to us in our travels, fruit, grains, roots in the ground and some times a lucky kill of another animal.
We are not ‘predestined’ to be killers in our genes- despite the animal killing industries best protestations; we are essentially omniverous animals- and we can choose not to inflict cruelty and death on our fellow species.
But the killing industry is just a small part of what we humans are blindly doing to destroy our planet. It is all part of a vast and intensely ignorant ‘understanding’, that we as humans, are superior beings who consequently have the right to do what we like on this planet.
Nothing could be further from the truth!. We are in no way superior beings- we have unique talents, as many species do, but they in no way equate to ‘superiority’- whatever that might mean.
Even humans should be able to recognise that self-definition of superority using those traits that that species excels in, has rather a large flawed element of self-fulfillment. The inherent stupidity of such an argument should be visible to any human;- sadly , it is not.
This self-fulfilling prejudice means that humans can, without a qualm, destroy countless individual and total fellow-species for any reason the human brain can come up with. Thus we can pave over the living and breathing earth, create cancerous concrete growths we call cities on top of the natural world, destroy billions of acres of forest to maintain monocrops endlessly and increasingly sprayed with poisons -or ‘genetically engineered’ to self-destruct and destroy those species relying on them in the process. We can pave the planet with increasing labyrinths of tar we call roads or ‘essential services’, we can desperately retrieve more and more of the stored earth-bound energy on this planet to keep our so-called ‘civilisation’ running; but, all for what?
Global warming is but one small symptom of this incredible stupidity. Oh yes, certainly one that will kill millions of humans and many billions more of our fellow species, but nothing in comparison with our ongoing hell-bent ride to destroy the planet we live on with every avail able tool we have created since the Industrial Revolution.
Do we really hate ourselves this much?
Links
http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/belly-beast-meat-factory-farms-animal-activists
http://www.texasobserver.org/ptsd-in-the-slaughterhouse/
http://werewolf.co.nz/2016/02/killing-for-a-living/
https://verdict.justia.com/2014/05/21/dilemma-humane-execution-humane-slaughter
https://www.rebelpress.org.nz/files/cleangreencrueltyfree.pdf
New Antarctica 