Originally posted by ghaleon12
Who cares about animals, we have humans that are dieing and being abused. That's a little more concerning for me. Tears are wasted on animals, once
we can help all humans, then we can worry about the animals.
Tears aren't wasted on animals, which includes humans. Humans have a responsibility of stewardship for the world, and the animals, including other
humans, that inhabit it because we have the power to literally shape the world around us. We can't help all humans, until we can help all animals.
How are you going to help that human that needs to eat, have something to wear, someplace to live, or medical care? Throw money at them? So they can
go get animal parts to eat, animal parts to wear, plant parts to live in, and medicine made from plant parts that were tested first on animals. I
don't see any reason to mistreat an animal before we eat it, wear it, or benefit from medical experimentation. That's just cruel, and there's no
reason for excessive or wanton cruelty. It's enough that we kill the animals (food, hides), harvest from them (eggs, hair), and change them through
selective breeding until they are unable to function in the wild (pets, fur animals) without going through the excess of making them suffer in the
process.
As far as human suffering, in and of itself goes, we are at the top of the food chain in so many ways. We hunt animals unfairly with guns and bows,
then brag that we got that big kill. We are all predators, and the real challenge is to pit ourselves against other big predators... which are other
humans. We do it with guns, social pressures, money differences, personal combat ranging from outright violence to mental cruelty. That's just the
way of the world. I shed less tears for humans because, for the large part, we bring it on ourselves.
Animals do what they do to survive, we do what we do to survive, and there are times we do that in ways that are just outright cruel. We feed on
their flesh to sustain our bodies, walk around in their hides to protect our bodies, and some of us feed our black souls on the cruelty we can inflict
for the thrill of it for the baser humans. Anyone who thinks they are insulated from it are either delusional, or have dark hearts.
I eat meat, I wear hide, but I make the conscious choice to use animal parts that were not taken in cruel conditions where possible.
. Meat doesn't (and shouldn't ever) have to = cruelty and sadism.
