Animals and Culture, Part Deux

Part of our culture is the media that confirms the values we're supposed to have. In most of the United States, when we're young, we play with all manner of furry creatures and stuffed animals, and most of us enjoy that experience and feel a kinship with other creatures. At the same time, our parents and the world around us tell us that our instinct of kinship across-the-board is not acceptable, and they begin to whittle away at any connection we naturally experience with other creatures, with the exception of those we have domesticated and consider "pets" (i.e., cats, dogs and horses). Our impulse to play, love, care for, or even simply respect the lives of most other species is pummeled, daily, by just about every message we receive, consciously or otherwise.

The values I innately had as a child were destroyed and replaced with values that are convenient for American culture, and treated as sacred. But in reality they're arbitrary. They're really not values at all; they're a set of consumer specifications. American culture trains me to be a certain kind of consumer--one who fits easily into the existing configuration of industries and priorities, while making the least amount of trouble.

Of course, that all came crashing down when I made the conscious decision to take back my morality and my definition of justice, and alter my behavior accordingly. And fortunately, I haven't been alone on the journey to reclaim the ethics of our relationship with nonhuman animals.

Morality involves intention and deliberation, but the perpetuation of our American culture (or any culture) relies on our refusal or inability to attend to the most important aspects of our daily lives, such as where our food comes from. Looking at our behavior through a lens that deconstructs our ethics is not supported in our culture.

It's time for that to change. It's time to raise a generation of people who say: Why do we eat chickens if they feel pain and pleasure and terror just like dogs do? Why do we find the pain of another creature entertaining, as we do in the rodeo? And when they hear about the biggest beef recall in history, these children will ask: Why was the focus on tainted meat entering the food supply rather than on an industry (dairy) that uses cows until they're crippled and can't even stand long enough to be slaughtered?

It's time to ask why we do the things we do. And if the answer is unacceptable, we must have the courage to change what we do.