Animal rights, a new religion for the empty hearted
Pleased to meet you
"Sympathy for the devil"
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
Rolling Stones
In its simplest expression, ostentation means showing off: "Hey, look,
what a great person I am, I love animals. In our culture, anything goes
to get ahead in life, boost our self-esteem or ego. In the absence of
real deeply felt emotions, people manufacture ersatz ones. This is what
consumerism is all about: feeling good from the outside. It just shows
though, how bad we really feel deep down in the first place.
To get a little zest out of life, material objects like an animal or
food for example can be used but also, and less obvious, a cause, like
militating for animal rights.
Love of animals has become a religion for the empty hearted. Going to
the veterinarian, the shelter, the dog park, or to agility contests are
its rites, vegetarianism, defending and praising animals, its liturgy
and mass. The high priests in this sordid affair are veterinarians,
psychologists, lawyers and animal activists, its worshippers, pet-owners.
Have you ever asked yourself why animal activists have more pets than
most people? Isn't it strange that they don't include in their
often-violent crusades, the use of animals for companionship.
Considering the atrocities that are inflicted to the overwhelming
majority of these animals, it's quite surprising to say the least. Even
animal rights lawyer Gary Francione, the Sir Lancelot of the animal
rights movement, is fond of purebred dogs. This is very odd indeed. No
one is better informed than he of the terrible suffering endured by most
of these genetically flawed pitiful-little-Frankensteins. It's his job
to know. Even more compelling, most members of the radical Animal
Liberation Front have pets that they board when jailed for some heroic
action like liberating the minks of a fur farm - who cares if none of
these animals can survive on their own.
How can these obvious contradictions be explained?
Most of the problem stems from the fact that owning animals or defending
them looks so virtuous on the surface. How could anyone in their right
mind suspect for instance that someone who gives countless hours to a
shelter, who defends animals, who spends hundreds of dollars on their
care, is actually exploiting them? You see, will for power and escapism
can use affection, better known as love and compassion, as their
instrument making it very difficult to see reality for what it is. You
could justly argue though that this form of barbarism with a smiley face
is a lot more cruel and perverse by its subtlety than the
straightforward use of animals as a source of food for instance. Meat
being considered, rightly or wrongly, a vital necessity there is no need
to be hypocritical about it. It's hardly the case for the type of
illegitimate use I am referring to. Although I do not vindicate these
activities, it might be time for hunters, meat eaters and all the other
scapegoats used to inflate the lonely crowd's ego, to stop feeling
guilty. They have much more integrity than most of these do-gooders.
At first, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals better known by
its acronym PETA - with its 800 000 members, the largest animal defense
organization in the world - was for abolition without exception but when
it realized that most of its donators were pet owners, it changed its
orientation to exclude the use of animals for recreative and therapeutic
reasons, as long as they are treated decently, whatever that means. PETA
has since gained a lot of momentum becoming an ultra sophisticated
promotion agent for the pet industry. In their vocabulary, the term
«animal rights» has become a euphemism for animal welfare. The intent is
to fix things around the edges, what agents of virtue call «doing good
without being perfect», so the worshippers can continue enjoying their
beloved pets in peace. The alibi or the ploy is the very loud and
self-righteous rhetorical war on the more explicit forms of animal
abuse, the credo, is reformism. In order to have a certain amount of
credibility - people are not so dumb - they do deliver no doubt a
minimum amount of goods, but when you look beyond the surface, it's easy
to see that the overall intent is quite superficial. In one hand they
will cry wolf while with the other, Adam’s invisible hand, they will
cash in, in terms of public sympathy, donations and notoriety.
Under the same banner, they all use the same template, you can stick
humane societies, the SPCA, WWF, Greenpeace, wildlife rescue shelters,
and whatever charitable organization that claims to want to help.
Caught in their own game, once they start having power, non-lucrative
organizations that depend on the donations of their supporters for their
survival and prosperity need to preserve at all costs their façade of
efficiency. In order to stand out, they will gear their activities to
the sensational and the short-term going as far as to fool the public by
exaggerating the results of their actions. Their communication agents,
lawyers, strategists and image makers, at least for the ones who can afford it, will go a
long way to protect their interests and control the information given to
the media in order to better manipulate and influence public opinion.
Because they operate in the greatest secret, it's difficult to know the
truth.
To be honest though, because of the important social role these outfits
play, the public is quite complacent. Besides inflating our collective
ego and promoting the use of animals they also help to assuage any guilt
feelings we might otherwise have about what we are collectively doing to
animals. As long as we pay our dues, as long as a group like PETA is
around, we feel clear of conscience. We feel it's up to them to do the
rest while we indulge ourselves in fantasies about the human-pet bond,
confident that we've done our part to improve the fate of animals. We
feel like a part of the solution.
To say it differently, as paradoxical as it may sound, wanting to give
rights to animals or defending them the «petaway» is a cultural
undertaking, a covered up attempt to enslave them further. You cannot
change the animal condition with the very same values, which are
responsible for it.
Eventually, these phony, ephemeral and cynical shows of affection lead
to compassion inflation. As we all know you can never have enough of
that which you really do not want. There must be thousands of these
groups busy compiling citations on compassion from Gandhi and the like
on their website, passionately patrolling the streets or the woods
stalking animals to save, speaking out in endless forums on their love
for animals and what not, marching on the streets, trumpeting their
anger... their beloved pet tethered to their feet. But not one is
addressing the issues at the root where it really counts: the human
condition. When you're in the business of compassion you need abused
subjects to dispense your compassion to.
Quite predictably, with large-scale industrial farming, the demographic
explosion of the pet population, the ransacking of nature for the exotic
animal trade for example, the animal condition has deteriorated in the
past 50 years in spite, or rather, thanks mostly to the mediocre efforts
of the compassion people. The seal hunt is back. Furs have never been so
popular.
But luckily.. hope is on the way: after many years of hard lobbying and
campaigns, PETA has succeeded in bending the will of the ruthless
chicken industry, which has pledged at an unspecified future date to
increase the sides of its battery cages by... 2 inches! Or is it 2 cm?
Wanting to give rights to animals or defending them the «petaway» is
akin to putting a filter on a cigarette, not addressing the real
problem. In the context of our legal systems, animals will always come
last. We all know it's easier to write laws than to enforce them. Where
will we get the resources? Will we have a special animal brigade, the
equivalent of the Miami vice squad? A lot of good that will do... The
feeling is that it will only make lawyers richer and animal activists
more passionate. And why do we insist so much on defining the needs of
animals according to our own anthropocentric criteria's?
Our attitude towards animals is dominated by a battery of old laws,
policies and ideas that arose a long time ago under a wholly different
economical and sociological context but that remain in effect due to
inertia, powerful lobbying forces and a lack of public awareness. By
omitting to address these «lords of yesterday» animal activists are
implicitly condoning them and viciously giving them strength.
What's really at stake here is our character, our values and traditions,
and how we deal with the world and each other. It's about power, greed,
egocentrism, consumerism, ostentation, hypocrisy and ideological
immunity. It's about core values being projected unto innocent
bystanders, animals and nature. It's about reweaving the whole fabric of
society, redefining our beliefs and who we are. It's really about
protecting biodiversity, in short, our own survival.
If you do genuinely care about animals, don't just adopt an animal, give
him raw meaty bones, wear an empathy ribbon, or give money to a pound or
PETA. If you want to stop animal abuse, leave your ego at home, try to
know yourself a little better, ask yourself why you really need an
animal, and more important consider your motives for helping them, and
the real consequences of your words and actions. Most of all, next time
you profess that you care about animals try to look at the facts behind
the good intentions. More often than not, the only person you really
care about is you.
I am not suggesting that we should liberate all the animals in
captivity. This of course would be absurd.
I am proposing rather that we simply stop using them for all the wrong
reasons. By buying or adopting an animal from a pound, or defending them
the «petaway», we are perpetuating a style of living, which is
destructive at this point in time. For every animal saved countless
others will be pulled in this vicious inferno. Every animal on a leash,
or lavishly displayed on the PETA website for instance, becomes a
walking publicity board that says implicitly: «the use of others
(nature, people and other animals) for our sole pleasure and comfort is
morally right, natural, legitimate, and irreversible»
Is it really the case though?
And if not, when will we change?
How many more studies, forums, laws, protests and campaigns do we have
to orchestrate before we realize that we are just holding on to a way of
life, which is actually killing us?
Everyone is aware of the loss of biodiversity, pollution, the depletion
of our natural resources, terrorism, the widening gap between rich and
poor, to name but a few of our contemporary problems, yet no one seems
to want to change their ways fundamentally.
Instead of blaming corporations, meat eaters, president Bush, or
whomever, let’s take a good look at what we are all innocently doing in
our own homes.
Like chronic smokers we are always rationalizing in some way or another
in order not to quit. Unfortunately, unless you want to remain a
«smoker», until death do us part, sometimes, you just have to throw the
baby out with the dirty water.
Thoreau in Walden could not be more right in saying «There are a
thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the
root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and
money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce the
misery which he strives in vain to relieve.»
We love animals only for the interests and passions they arouse.
If we really loved them we would just leave them alone.
References:
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of the world, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Charlotte Montgomery, Blood relations: Animals, Humans and Politics,
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Eric Hoffer, The passionate state of mind and other aphorisms, Buccaneer
Books, 1955.
Gary L. Francione, Rain without thunder: the ideology of the animal
rights movement, Temple university Press, 1996.
Graham Hancock, Lords of poverty: The power, prestige, and corruption of
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Henry david thoreau, Waalden, Gallimard, 1922.
Martina Nie, Beyond wolves: The politics of wolf recovery and
management, University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
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Michel, 1997.
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