The Animal Manifesto
NO. 1
Aristotle wrote, ‘’Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of deformation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie.’’ (Book VIII, pg.6) to compare this to his hierarchy the ‘’The Great Chain of Being’’ in his book, ‘’The History of Animals, where humans are at the top, and slaves and non-human animals are at the bottom, justifying the subjugation and oppression of these beings. But that isn’t fact, it’s just a theory to support this type of biased reasoning at the time. In this essay, or manifesto, I will explore my four main steps that I believe will benefit all animals, humans, and the environment.
NO. 2
The discussion about the cruel treatment of animals, particularly agricultural animals like cows, chickens and pigs, and the harmful effects it has on our society and on the environment is still talked about now. In her paper called In Defense of Slavery, sociologist, Marjorie Spiegel compares the suffering of animals and humans. For example, chickens cramped in cages, stacked on top of each other, to the slaves in the south. Comparing non-human animals to humans isn’t the right way to make the point across that we need to liberate all animals that we use for food from these machine-type farms, because comparing animals to captive human beings is wrong.
The difference between non-human animals and humans is what early scientists have described as, ‘’The argument to prove that the reason why animals do not speak as we do is not that they lack the organs but that they have no thoughts; (Humans) We all have moral status because we *think*. If animals think, they must use language. Humans who do not speak use symbolic language to express original thought.’ (Descartes, 1646). This type of thinking is why the abuse of animals has gone on for centuries, and it has only caught attention during the last two decades. All animals, including humans, share the Earth, and we must co-exist to help protect it. Since we can speak, we believe we are the superior species, and even then, we feel that way and dominate other races of humans, anyone or anything we feel is ‘other.’
NO.3
In Marc Beckoff’s, The Animal Manifesto, one of the reasons he uses to envision the world a better place is, ‘’Connection breeds caring; alienation breeds disrespect,’’ is one very important step we humans must learn if we want to instill peace, for all living beings. For example, humans express lighter emotions, especially to dogs and cats, animals we normalize and see as pets. In contrast, we express extreme dislike and contempt for many animals, like rats, pigeons, reptiles, bugs, and even some dogs, like pit bulls. For example, during the late 1800s, the English Sparrow was one of the most documented problem animals of that time. ‘’The English Sparrow is a curse of such virulence that it ought to be *systematically attacked and destroyed’’ (U.S Department of Agriculture, 1889). The hatred of this particular bird stems from moral attributes rather than scientific ones. They are foreigners, they attack American birds, their character is disreputable, and they need to be controlled as foreigners. Humans also show contempt for other humans, those of a different race and culture. We still don’t understand one another, so we make up stereotypes from one person we’ve met, and suddenly that stereotype is placed on the whole race of people, alienating and disrespecting a whole people. It leads to social problems, fear, and occasionally, death, toward the oppressed.
NO. 4
The environment is the most important place we all have to take care of, and it fits into my thinking of the human-animal relationship because we are the cause of its downfall. The Meat and Dairy industries are giving land animals products displaying scientific substances inside them to speed up killing for consumption. The main reason, alongside the obvious reasons for global warming, is how much meat and dairy we consume. As long as there is a want and need for meat, global warming will always be a problem. Wanting to eat meat is not horrendous, seeing as humans are omnivores. But there is simply no reason to speed up the natural process of killing these animals by mixing drugs with their food. Most humans know about the daily abuses these animals go through, but we ignore the social world, so we don’t see it, and we sanitize everything; it lets us off the hook. This is called the toilet assumption (Spiegel, 1988). I think in my opinion, we can improve how we treat animals, even land animals. We can better treat others and show more compassion and love for everyone. And my final point is again from (Beckoff, 2010), which is acting compassionately helps all beings and our world. Showing compassion to animals and non-human animals can affect our day-to-day understanding of the world. We all have our own beliefs, and it’s okay to disagree, but respectfully.
