Thoughts on the Equality of Animals

[Fauxmage]

"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different."
~Hippocrates


"Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul."
~Pythagoras


"All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? May all that have life be delivered from suffering."
~Buddha


"All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law. All beings hate pains; therefore one should not kill them. This is the quintessence of wisdom: not to kill anything."
~Jain Religious Text


"Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being."

"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."

"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body."

"I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth."
~Mahatma Gandhi


"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
~St. Francis of Assisi


"Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer


"If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals."
~Albert Einstein

[Rainbow]

I agree whole heartedly with all of the above. I'm sure in their own way the Monty Python team were also attempting to big up the underated species in their song sung, rather appropriately, to the tune of "All Things Bright & Beautiful"

All Things Dull & Ugly:music2:
All things dull and ugly, All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty, The Lord God made the lot;
Each little snake that poisons, Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom, He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous, All evil great and small,
:goodbad: All things foul and dangerous, The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet, Each beastly little squid.
Who made the spikey urchin? Who made the sharks? He did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous, All pox both great and small.
Putrid, foul and gangrenous, The Lord God made them all.:whistle:

[Fauxmage]

:note3: I like it Rainbow! :note3:

[thevegantwins]

Fantastic, Rainbow!

Off the topic, I wasn't sure who Rainbow was until I saw a Monty Python post. Now I'm just about sure. :nahnah:

[SinnerCal]

Thanks for reminding me of that song, Rainbow!! :colors: I had almost forgotten it. :excited:

Great quotes, Fauxmage. :agree:

[Rainbow]

Fantastic, Rainbow!

Off the topic, I wasn't sure who Rainbow was until I saw a Monty Python post. Now I'm just about sure. :nahnah:

TVT you've got a big clue now haven't you :D

[Rainbow]

Why should homo-sapiens decide if one sentient is to be thought of as better or lesser than another - it would seem just as reasonable for the capybaras or aphids to decide!

All species have their individual strengths and weaknesses, making them individual and equal.
(Atleast we can live in the hope that non-human speciess aren't egotistical!!!)

[Gliondrach]

More being found about chimps' intelligence.

Chimpanzees Recognize When Collaboration Is Necessary And Choose The Best Collaborative Partner

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2006) — In the animal kingdom cooperation is crucial for survival. Predators hunt in prides and prey band together to protect themselves. Yet no other creature cooperates as successfully as we do. But where did this ability come from, and is it uniquely human? In a new study to be published in Science on 3 March 2006, Alicia Melis and co-authors from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany show that our close relatives, chimpanzees, are much better cooperators than we thought.

‘We’ve never seen this level of understanding during cooperation in any other animals except humans,’ says Melis. Cooperation happens all the time in the animal kingdom. A pride of lions cooperates to hunt down a gazelle. A herd of elephants band together to protect themselves from predators. But there may not be much thinking going on behind this kind of cooperation. It could be that by each animal wanting the same thing and working at the same time, success happens by accident.

In Melis’ study which took place at Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, not only did chimpanzees understand when they needed help, they understood their role, their partner’s role, and chose who they wanted to work with.

To reach a food tray, the chimpanzees had to pull two ends of a rope which dragged the tray towards them. Both rope ends had to be pulled at the same time or the rope was simply pulled out. Melis found that the chimpanzees only let a partner into the room (by opening their door) when the rope ends were too far apart to pull them on their own.

‘Not only did they need to know when they needed help, they had to go out and get it.’ Melis says. ‘Then they had to wait until their partner came in and pull on the rope at the same time. The chimps really had to understand why they needed their partner.’

Just like people, there were better cooperators than others. Mawa, the dominant chimpanzee, was not a very good cooperator. He didn’t wait for his partner and often pulled the rope from the tray. Bwambale, on the other hand, was a great cooperator. He always waited for his partner and was nearly always successful in getting the food. At first, the chimpanzees chose Mawa and Bwambale equally, but when the chimpanzees learned what a hopeless cooperator Mawa was, most chose Bwambale on the next trial.

Melis was excited by the results. ‘This is the first study that lets chimps choose who they want to cooperate with. We found that chimps choose a partner based on their effectiveness. Clearly, chimps can remember who’s a good and who’s a bad collaborator. Bad collaborators suffer by not being chosen next time.’

This complexity of cooperation means that humans and chimpanzees might have inherited our cooperative abilities from our common ancestor 6 million years ago. However, Melis is quick to draw the line between chimpanzee and human cooperation.

‘There is still no evidence that chimpanzees communicate with each other about a common goal like children do from a very early age. There’s also no evidence that chimpanzees can learn how good a partner is by watching them interact with others. It just suggests that when chimpanzees cooperate they understand a bit more than we thought. Hopefully, future studies can show us what it is that makes human cooperation so unique.’

Melis’ studies are among the first to be done in a chimpanzee sanctuary in Africa. ‘Sanctuaries are doing an incredible job saving chimps whose families were killed by the bush-meat trade. They also provide a wonderful service to us and the research community. Hopefully, as these and similar results become more widely known, it will raise awareness that these are intelligent animals who deserve respect and protection.’

ht--tp://w--ww.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060303023647.htm

A warning! Each page has lots of links on the right-hand side. If you start clicking on them you could spend all day at your computer. It can become addictive.

[Oracl]

Interesting, thanks Gliondrach! :thumbsup:

[Bowwowmeow]

"Personally, I would not give a fig for any man's religion whose horse or dog do not feel its benefits. Life in any form is our perpetual responsibility. Its abuse degrades those who practice it."
~ Reverend Dr. S. Parkes Cadman

"Veganism originated from the idea that any sentient being has rights. In the sovereignty of nature these are ignored, but we're human, presumably - we've moved on and we respect life."
~ Donald Watson

[Tiggerwoos]

I love the song Rainbow and the Quotes, BWM, particularly the one by the Buddah. A lesson all omnis could think of when tucking into their next dish,

[Oracl]

"Personally, I would not give a fig for any man's religion whose horse or dog do not feel its benefits. Life in any form is our perpetual responsibility. Its abuse degrades those who practice it." ~ Reverend Dr. S. Parkes Cadman
Nice quote. :agree: :)

[Bowwowmeow]

"To a man whose mind is free, there is something more intolerable in the suffering of animals than in the suffering of men. For with the latter, it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime. That alone is the justification of all that men may suffer. It cries vengeance upon all the human race. If God exists and tolerates it, it cries vengeance upon God. If there exists a good God, then even the most humble of living things must be saved. If God is good only to the strong, if there is no justice for the weak and lowly, for the poor creatures who are offered up as a sacrifice to humanity, then there is no such thing as goodness, no such thing as justice...." ~ Romain Rolland ("Jean Christophe")

[Oracl]

"there is something more intolerable in the suffering of animals than in the suffering of men....."
I have always felt this way about animal suffering. :(

[Bowwowmeow]

Yes, me too Oracl. I think its because any human person has the ability to end oppression, if they are willing to take the necessary risks. They often choose not to. But animals, who are willing to risk their lives for their freedom without question, have no opportunity. They are utterly trapped and powerless.

[my3labs]

Some of my favorite quotes:

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
--Charles Darwin


The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
--Mark Twain


A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
--Albert Einstein, New York Post, 28 November 1972

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated... I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
--Mahatma Gandhi

It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else.
--Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204)

Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
--Albert Schweitzer

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes - by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for Peace on Earth.
--David Coats, Old MacDonald's Factory Farm

Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures.
--The Dalai Lama

For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world.
--The Dalai Lama

[my3labs]

Oh, and one more:

You are not required to complete the tast of repairing the world, neither are you free to abstain from it.
--Pirke Avot

[Bowwowmeow]

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes - by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for Peace on Earth.
--David Coats, Old MacDonald's Factory Farm
Wow. I like this one. :agree:

[NYC Rocker]

I have always felt this way about animal suffering. :(

Oracl, me too.

[Gliondrach]

Here's an entry from Gary Francione's blog:

ht-tp://garyfrancione.blogspot.com/2006/12/veganism-fundamental-principle-of.html

Broken link. New link: see post 39 of this thread.

[Bowwowmeow]

Wow, that's excellent! I might have to ask him if I can transcribe some of that into my forum profile description, or my Vegan FAQ section. There's some good signature material, there, too. Thanks Martin! :thumbsup:

(Mr Francione also has very good taste in fonts, too. :flirt: )

[Oracl]

Mr Francione also has very good taste in fonts, too. :flirt:
:rolleyes: :D

It is an excellent blog site. :agree: I have added it to my favourites. :) Thanks Gliondrach. :thumbsup:

[Gliondrach]

My pleasure.

[KRITER]

Tha David Coats quote is a reel good one.Its just how I think.Cuz Ill never understand why we think we are so important.That we are the best thing for the world.Fact is we cood be but we aint.We need water to drink but we pollute it.We need air to breath but we pollute that too.Without those two basic things we die along everything els.We need the trees to clean the air but we cut them down for more roads to fill up with cars and biger shoping malls and subdivisions for us to fill up with ourselfs.We bellyach about waiting in lines,traffic and high taxes and having to many youngins in the classrooms but we keep having babys.The majority of people dont giv any of this any thinking time.We killing every form of life on Earth for the economy and convent living.We cut ourselfs off from nature like it dont mater.The things we do just aint proper.
Sory for ranting or sounding hateful.I lov the woods,sand dunes,rivers,the ocean and the mountains and the wild critters.I see it all dieing everyday yall.Either with a bulldozer or a rifle.

[Keykeypie]

Cuz Ill never understand why we think we are so important.That we are the best thing for the world.Fact is we cood be but we aint

That's so true:agree:

[Gliondrach]

That reminds me of what Chief Seattle said.

[KRITER]

The Earth does not belong to us.We belong to the Earth.

[Gliondrach]

Persactly. Whoever said it.

[KRITER]

Chief Seattle

[Fauxmage]

Our illustrious leader had this to say regarding his position against stem cell research:

"In our day there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person," Bush said Friday. "When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others instead of their own inherent worth."

I would change this a little, thus:

Humans have always been tempted to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the inherent value of the person*. When that happens, the most vulnerable among us will be valued for their utility to others instead of their own inherent worth.

*When I use the word "person", I mean everyone, human and non-human. Animals are people too.

[Oracl]

Your position is the one I would choose! :agree:

[my3labs]

Has anyone read "Introduction to Veganism - Your Child or the Dog", by Gary Francione?
Good reading? Worth it?

[Oracl]

I think you mean "Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?".

I have a copy and I think it is the best book I have read on animal rights. It is clear and easy to read. It helped me to get my own thoughts on the subject much better organised. It made me rethink the whole subject of animal welfare versus animal rights. The 20 questions and answers at the end of the book are extremely useful for coping with the idiot questions encountered every day by vegans. :)

[thevegantwins]

The 20 questions and answers at the end of the book are extremely useful for coping with the idiot questions encountered every day by vegans. :)

But where do you get your protein?
If you were on a deserted island with only animals, would you eat them?
What would happen to all the cows, pigs, sheep etc.. if we stopped eating them?

Huh???

:laugh:

[my3labs]

But where do you get your protein?
If you were on a deserted island with only animals, would you eat them?
What would happen to all the cows, pigs, sheep etc.. if we stopped eating them?

Huh???

:laugh:
In the last few weeks I've had the "If your house was burning..." and "If we stopped eating them, they would overpopulate..." comments. Pretty weird that the same stupid/ignorant comments/questions cycle through.

[my3labs]

I think you mean "Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?".
Yeah, that's it. I've added about six vegan, A/R related books to my amazon wish list.

[Tails4wagging]

Yeah, that's it. I've added about six vegan, A/R related books to my amazon wish list.


Not heard of this book, will have to see where I can get it.

[Tails4wagging]

Ive just tried accessing garys blog, but it says no access!?


As I write this I am stuck in the middle of the settee with a dog either side of me, so I think that says it all really about equality.. :)

[Oracl]

Ive just tried accessing garys blog, but it says no access!?

I just tried and it was fine! Did you go to: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/ ?

[Tails4wagging]

Thanks me duck, got it now and saved it.

[Gliondrach]

Animal, Vegetable, Miserable

The New York Times.

By GARY STEINER Op-Ed Contributor
Published: November 21, 2009

LATELY more people have begun to express an interest in where the meat they eat comes from and how it was raised. Were the animals humanely treated? Did they have a good quality of life before the death that turned them into someone’s dinner?

Some of these questions, which reach a fever pitch in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, pertain to the ways in which animals are treated. (Did your turkey get to live outdoors?) Others focus on the question of how eating the animals in question will affect the consumer’s health and well-being. (Was it given hormones and antibiotics?)

None of these questions, however, make any consideration of whether it is wrong to kill animals for human consumption. And even when people ask this question, they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare. Strict ethical vegans, of which I am one, are customarily excoriated for equating our society’s treatment of animals with mass murder. Can anyone seriously consider animal suffering even remotely comparable to human suffering? Those who answer with a resounding no typically argue in one of two ways.

Some suggest that human beings but not animals are made in God’s image and hence stand in much closer proximity to the divine than any non-human animal; according to this line of thought, animals were made expressly for the sake of humans and may be used without scruple to satisfy their needs and desires. There is ample support in the Bible and in the writings of Christian thinkers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas for this pointedly anthropocentric way of devaluing animals.

Others argue that the human capacity for abstract thought makes us capable of suffering that both qualitatively and quantitatively exceeds the suffering of any non-human animal. Philosophers like Jeremy Bentham, who is famous for having based moral status not on linguistic or rational capacities but rather on the capacity to suffer, argue that because animals are incapable of abstract thought, they are imprisoned in an eternal present, have no sense of the extended future and hence cannot be said to have an interest in continued existence.

The most penetrating and iconoclastic response to this sort of reasoning came from the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer in his story “The Letter Writer,” in which he called the slaughter of animals the “eternal Treblinka.”

The story depicts an encounter between a man and a mouse. The man, Herman Gombiner, contemplates his place in the cosmic scheme of things and concludes that there is an essential connection between his own existence as “a child of God” and the “holy creature” scuffling about on the floor in front of him.

Surely, he reflects, the mouse has some capacity for thought; Gombiner even thinks that the mouse has the capacity to share love and gratitude with him. Not merely a means for the satisfaction of human desires, nor a mere nuisance to be exterminated, this tiny creature possesses the same dignity that any conscious being possesses. In the face of that inherent dignity, Gombiner concludes, the human practice of delivering animals to the table in the form of food is abhorrent and inexcusable.

Many of the people who denounce the ways in which we treat animals in the course of raising them for human consumption never stop to think about this profound contradiction. Instead, they make impassioned calls for more “humanely” raised meat. Many people soothe their consciences by purchasing only free-range fowl and eggs, blissfully ignorant that “free range” has very little if any practical significance. Chickens may be labeled free-range even if they’ve never been outside or seen a speck of daylight in their entire lives. And that Thanksgiving turkey? Even if it is raised “free range,” it still lives a life of pain and confinement that ends with the butcher’s knife.

How can intelligent people who purport to be deeply concerned with animal welfare and respectful of life turn a blind eye to such practices? And how can people continue to eat meat when they become aware that nearly 53 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for human consumption? The simple answer is that most people just don’t care about the lives or fortunes of animals. If they did care, they would learn as much as possible about the ways in which our society systematically abuses animals, and they would make what is at once a very simple and a very difficult choice: to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds.

The easy part of this consists in seeing clearly what ethics requires and then just plain doing it. The difficult part: You just haven’t lived until you’ve tried to function as a strict vegan in a meat-crazed society.

What were once the most straightforward activities become a constant ordeal. You might think that it’s as simple as just removing meat, eggs and dairy products from your diet, but it goes a lot deeper than that.

To be a really strict vegan is to strive to avoid all animal products, and this includes materials like leather, silk and wool, as well as a panoply of cosmetics and medications. The more you dig, the more you learn about products you would never stop to think might contain or involve animal products in their production — like wine and beer (isinglass, a kind of gelatin derived from fish bladders, is often used to “fine,” or purify, these beverages), refined sugar (bone char is sometimes used to bleach it) or Band-Aids (animal products in the adhesive). Just last week I was told that those little comfort strips on most razor blades contain animal fat.

To go down this road is to stare headlong into an abyss that, to paraphrase Nietzsche, will ultimately stare back at you.

The challenges faced by a vegan don’t end with the nuts and bolts of material existence. You face quite a few social difficulties as well, perhaps the chief one being how one should feel about spending time with people who are not vegans.

Is it O.K. to eat dinner with people who are eating meat? What do you say when a dining companion says, “I’m really a vegetarian — I don’t eat red meat at home.” (I’ve heard it lots of times, always without any prompting from me.) What do you do when someone starts to grill you (so to speak) about your vegan ethics during dinner? (Wise vegans always defer until food isn’t around.) Or when someone starts to lodge accusations to the effect that you consider yourself morally superior to others, or that it is ridiculous to worry so much about animals when there is so much human suffering in the world? (Smile politely and ask them to pass the seitan.)

Let me be candid: By and large, meat-eaters are a self-righteous bunch. The number of vegans I know personally is ... five. And I have been a vegan for almost 15 years, having been a vegetarian for almost 15 before that.

Five. I have lost more friends than this over arguments about animal ethics. One lapidary conclusion to be drawn here is that people take deadly seriously the prerogative to use animals as sources of satisfaction. Not only for food, but as beasts of burden, as raw materials and as sources of captive entertainment — which is the way animals are used in zoos, circuses and the like.

These uses of animals are so institutionalized, so normalized, in our society that it is difficult to find the critical distance needed to see them as the horrors that they are: so many forms of subjection, servitude and — in the case of killing animals for human consumption and other purposes — outright murder.

People who are ethical vegans believe that differences in intelligence between human and non-human animals have no moral significance whatsoever. The fact that my cat can’t appreciate Schubert’s late symphonies and can’t perform syllogistic logic does not mean that I am entitled to use him as an organic toy, as if I were somehow not only morally superior to him but virtually entitled to treat him as a commodity with minuscule market value.

We have been trained by a history of thinking of which we are scarcely aware to view non-human animals as resources we are entitled to employ in whatever ways we see fit in order to satisfy our needs and desires. Yes, there are animal welfare laws. But these laws have been formulated by, and are enforced by, people who proceed from the proposition that animals are fundamentally inferior to human beings. At best, these laws make living conditions for animals marginally better than they would be otherwise — right up to the point when we send them to the slaughterhouse.

Think about that when you’re picking out your free-range turkey, which has absolutely nothing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. All it ever had was a short and miserable life, thanks to us intelligent, compassionate humans.

Gary Steiner, a professor of philosophy at Bucknell University, is the author of “Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Status and Kinship.”

nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22steiner.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2