Saturday, 11 July 2009

animal rights

I don't think we can grant them any rights to life, or know whether they have a natural right to life or not. Animals don't and usually can't make too many choices that will guarantee survival. We still got to eat some. We are not above nature and hence not the guardians of all animals, we are part of nature, we eat and live and die. We cannot leave nature, though we consider ourselves sophisticated. Because of these, I do not believe in animal rights.

And neither should we worship nature or the planet earth because we always end up formalizing it into some person god(s) or motif, and often end up fighting fellow human beings because you feel you are on nature's side. At this point, you have twisted everything with your ego. But this is what often happens.
What we can do with our intelligence and wisdom, is simply to respect animals and be part of this system. If you have to kill them, then thank them and let them understand we hold high regards for them and their species. While respecting animals may seem so crazy today, I didn't make this up. It is quite evident in Native American culture or in any hunter-gatherer culture prehistorically. 

Respecting your prey may even seem evil, if you happen to believe that all human actions are selfish and that such respect will be a sinister way of covering up guilt. This view doesn't work, because
1. there is no guilt. You kill for food or fun or hunting skill(the modern hunter). So no one is covering up anything.
2. if you see all actions as selfish and hence evil, then all that is said is that we can never be moral, whatever we do. That's not true. If it was, then the only more moral thing you could do is to kill yourself. And even that is selfish.
3. It is true that we lead a selfish existence, but we do so like any other species. We can't change this. The world is a free place. If God exists, he meant that we should all compete but be in ultimate harmony. If he did otherwise, he would be an extremely busy communist.

As for conserving their habitat, that is a different story.

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