He Is Still Fighting - A Reflection on Animal Rights
100% effort – a lot of “deep thinking”.
No – but close
He is still fighting
His little but powerful legs managed to move three steps backwards before he got yanked forward. He again moved resiliently backwards only to be chocked forward. His eyes displayed a hint of growing fear and confusion but what was most visible in his eyes was his furious will to survive. He had a thin line of mucus clinging to his face right below the right nostril, which it had sprayed out of, but only after many snorts and screams. The muscles around his neck were being contracted fully as he again struggled for the only thing he had left, his life. His face now displayed a growing sense of animosity and disparity, as he made several more defying steps backwards. This is all I witnessed I never got the privilege of seeing this fantastic fairy tale end, however I know the ending. I speak of him in past tense because I know he is dead. Although, it is comforting to know that his death was not a waste, some people got the satisfaction of eating his flesh and digesting him. I wonder if the individuals who “dined on his flesh” appreciated the struggle that he produced, appreciated the fear that embodied him as he got yanked closer and closer to his own demise. His refusal to surrender had to be attributed to his love for life. And the face of this baby cow, which possessed this lust for life, is still itched in my mind. I use “he” but in reality I have no idea what sex this creature was I only know of its struggle. And although I am aware of its struggle I still “dine on the flesh of animals”.
This creatures struggle was displayed to me through the video “Meet Your Meat” and although I have done a fair amount of research and many readings on this topic, nothing quite disturbed me like the image of this creature. There were much more horrific sights on the video then this scene, however this touched me because this cows will to live is a universal quality in which I was forced to relate to.
At this point in my life I am still contemplating whether or not to give up that “rotting flesh” which I enjoy so much. The truth of the matter is that the reason it is so easy for me to ignore the suffering of other creatures is because it is cold violence, however this cow came into my life and made it hot violence.
The one essay that has really penetrated my mind is “Waking up to Animal Rights” by William Kunstler. As a person who’s goal in life is to break down the walls that separate us from each other, combating racism, sexism, ageism and anything else that leads to the degradation of our society; this essay really challenged me because it discussed the idea of ““speciesism””. First he correlated a direct link between our exploitation of animals and “our exploitation of our perennial human victims: African – Americans, poor whites, Latinos, women, lesbians and gays, social activists, Native Americans, and Asians.” The idea, that we should be allowed to take advantage of animals simply because we have the physical capacity to do so, is the same logic that we had used to justify oppression of other groups such as the American Indians. Phrases that we hear in our society today that one uses when defending eating animals, “they were made for us”, “were superior” are the same phrases that condoned slavery and Nazism. So what is the difference between oppressing living beings due to their sex, race, or age and oppressing them because they are a different species? My first reaction to this argument was how can the majority of my society be doing something so morally wrong, but a quick glance back on some of the greatest injustices in history would reveal that it wasn’t uncommon that the majority of society agreed with them. Slavery being one of the most obvious examples in American history was condoned for a great period of time. Another defense to eating meat, is that ones religious ideology may approve of it but going back to the slavery example there are remnants of the bile that approved of slavery, and religion was again one of the main justifiers of slavery and other atrocities. As Kunstler says “If we are speciesist and feel that we may exploit nonhumans simply because we are more powerful, and we judge that we will benefit from that exploitation, then discrimination against other disadvantaged groups becomes that much easier.” As much as I would like to think otherwise it is hard for me to justify the killing of Nine billion animals a year just in the U.S. And it occurred to me that if our society has no qualms with talking this much life, no wonder we are so desensitized and have no problem ignoring human suffering both in our own backyard and around the world, such as the atrocities talking place in Sierra Leone.
Now I do feel that the above argument is pretty self-interested on our behalf, and that just as we have interests so do animals. “Their value does not depend on their use to us any more than does the inherent value of a human being depend on that person’s use to others.”
I don’t think everyone in our society is as fortunate as we were to be exposed to the horrors of the meat industry. Because for most people it remains cold violence, I agree with Kunstler when he says “We all need to educate ourselves about the ways in which we support animal exploitation in our daily lives.” Relating this back to historical injustices, although many injustices have been supported by societies, a lot of the time it tends to be blind support, meaning that in many cases people were not aware of the full ramifications of what was going on.
“The ultimate consumer of the veal, pork chicken, and eggs simply has no more conception of what went on before these neatly packaged farm products arrived at the retail level than the purchasers of Civil War clothing had of the conditions under which enslaved black hands planted and picked the cotton from which its threads were made.”
I am of the belief that by not doing something or not reacting in many cases you can be doing a lot.
Although I am aware that one can have a nutritious diet without meat, my personal dietary lifestyle is founded on eating meat. In order for this to be a healthy transition for me I realize some serious dietary research would be necessary and this is something I am currently doing and plan on going into more in-depth.
It may seem quite hypocritical for me to pose these arguments without fully making the transition to a vegetarian, but the reason for this is because I am currently reevaluating my moral fibers and beliefs. The arguments I posed are a few of the infinite ones that could be used; however for me these are the ones that stirred my moral imagination, forced me to view the argument from the cows perspective, and presented the correlation between the mistreatment of animals and the mistreatment of humans. Even though these are profound theories the main reason for my sudden moral revaluation is that cow. So even though he is dead his fight and struggle is very vivid in my mind. So, as I fight my own moral battles, he to continues to fight;
He is still fighting.