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Why Should Animals Matter
by Joe Haptas

Why Shouldn't Animals Matter? That really should be the question that everyone asks in our world. Instead of course, the assumption is made ipso facto that animals can be used for nearly anything we want.

In the modern age, we can safely say that we have overcome many of our evils and wrongs of the past. Human slavery, ethnic cleansing, female genital mutilation and infanticide (although they all still happen) are seen by nearly everyone in 'civilized' society as wrong. Additionally, nearly everyone you will talk to believes in some sort of moral or ethical progress and agree that this is a good thing as related to creating a better society. So, while much of our world can agree on these ideas, why is it that animals have fallen through the cracks for so long? One it seems could strongly make the argument that we have depended on animals to survive in the past. Now though, this is simply not the case in the developed world. We know now that an animal centered diet is less healthy and far more problematic than vegan/vegetarian diets. We also know that except for the use of animal by-products which sneak into a lot of daily items we have absolutely no need to consume or use animal products to survive and thrive anymore.

Published in Harper's Magazine in August 1997 was an essay by Joy Williams which may be the best short paper ever written about human treatment of animals and animal rights. An excerpt from her work:

"Humans don't want to enter in to a pact with animals. They don't want animals to reason. It would be an unnerving experience. It would bring about all manner of awkwardness and guilt. It would make our treatment of them seem, well, unreasonable. The fact that animals are voiceless is a relief to us, it frees us from feeling much empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, if they could speak with the tongues of angels-- at the very least with the tongues of angels-- it is unlikely that they could save themselves from mankind. Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs, and coats and skins and shells, nor have their strengths, their skills, their swiftness, the beauty of their flights. We discover the remarkable intelligence of the whale, the wolf, the elephant--it does not save them, nor does our awareness of the complexity of their lives. It matters not, it seems, whether they nurse their young or brood patiently on eggs. If they eat meat, we decry their viciousness; if they eat grass and seeds, we dismiss them as weak. We know that they care for their young and teach them, that they play and grieve, that they have memories and a sense of the future for which they sometimes plan. We know about their habits, their migrations, that they have a sense of home, of finding, seeking, returning to home. We know that when they face death, they fear it. We know all these things and it has not saved them from us.

Anything that is animal, that is not us, can be slaughtered as a pest or sucked dry as a memento or reduced to a trophy or eaten, eaten, eaten. For reasons of need or preference or availability. Or it's culture, it's a way to feed the poor, it's different, it's plentiful, it's not plentiful, which makes it more intriguing, it arouses the palate, it amuses the palate, it makes your dick bigger, it's healthy, its somebody's way of life, it's somebody's livelihood, it's somebody's business."

Perhaps one of the stronger cases that can be made for fair treatment of animals is through the idea that a society's care of animals is the best measurement of our true moral character. If that is so and is important to us to be good and moral, it sure doesn't reflect on us very well:

A FUNDAMENTAL DEBACLE

"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipients has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test(which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it." --Milan Kundera(Author and Playwright)

"Show me the enforced laws of a state for the prevention of cruelty to animals and I in turn will give you a correct estimate of the refinement, enlightenment, integrity, and equity of that commonwealth's people." --L.T. Danshiell

"Every civilizing step in history has been ridiculed as 'sentimental', 'impractical', or 'womanish', etc., by those whose fun, profit or convenience was at stake."--Joan Gilbert

Perhaps and just maybe some of the time(if not more) animals are simply better than us and we can learn something from them. Carl Sagan in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors tells of a truly barbarous experiment with amazing results:

"In the annals of primate ethics, there are some accounts that have the ring of parable. Consider, for example, the macaques. Also known as rhesus monkeys, they live in tightly knit cousins' clubs... In a laboratory setting, macaques were fed if they were willing to pull a chain and electrically shock an unrelated macaque whose agony was in plain view through a one-way mirror. Otherwise, they starved. After learning the ropes, the monkeys frequently refused to pull the chain; in one experiment only 13% would do so--87% preferred to go hungry. One macaque went without food for nearly two weeks rather than hurt its fellow. Macaques who had themselves been shocked in previous experiments were even less willing to pull the chain."

We all know people who have amazing stories of animals that perform heroic acts and show amazing insight and understanding of this world we live in and yet we try to write these stories off as anctedotal or irrelevant. Charles Darwin(a strong animal supporter) also wondered aloud of the moral standing of animals:

"For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, from descending the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions."

In the end though, the animals themselves are the reason we must give them true ethical consideration and treatment:

"One must be blind, deaf and dumb, or completely chloroformed by the foetor judaicus, not to see that the animal is in essence absolutely the same thing that we are, and that the difference lies merely in the accident of the intellect, and not in the substance, which is the will."--Arthur Schopenhauer

"Those who are born with intellectual or artistic gifts have not themselves done anything to deserve preferred treatment, any more than those who are born lacking these gifts have done anything to deserve being denied those benefits essential to their welfare. No theory of justice can be adequate that builds justice on so fortuitous a foundation, one that could sanction forwarding the "higher" interests of some over the vital interests of others, even to the point where the latter could be enslaved by the former, thereby having their liberty and other benefits acutely diminished in the name of justice." --Tom Regan (The Case for Animal Rights)

The time has come for us to realize that animals really matter and that the way we treat them is morally wrong. Let us act to make this a better world for all life.