Get Helpful Info - Compassion For Animal Rights Is A Lesson We All Could Learn

From a purely biological outlook, no creature inherently has rights beyond that which it has the ability to impose. What is able to live does, what cannot does not. But our existence is not just biology. It is ethics as well. “Might makes right” cannot be the operating paradigm in a world where freedom, compassion, humanity, and love are desired. Nor are we removed from consideration of the animal rights just because we are paying somebody else to create drugs, scent a deodorant, or raise our food.
Humans with the ability to use their technology to affect and control the world so widely and deeply are constantly faced with many choices. Modern existence is not a matter of mere survival as it was when we were in the wild. It is an opportunity to develop and grow as respectable, sensitive, and ethical people. For example, walking in the woods requires no rules, but driving in traffic does. Drinking from a river is not a problem, but damming the river and flooding thousands of acres is. Breaking down brush with our hands to make a lean-to for shelter is one thing, but denuding the world with machinery is quite another. Killing animals in the woods for food using only unique, strength, and speed is a method totally unlike clearing out whole populations with guns (for ’sport’) or with our urban ways. Farming animals to feed a growing population is required, but denying them any form of natural or decent life, or subjecting them to abuse or cruelty is not a right we can state.
Living in the wild would (represent few ethical choices. Causes and philosophy have a way of taking a back seat when life is consumed with day-to-day survival. But an technological society with almost limitless technological capabilities is another matter. Our ability now to practically cage and control every creature on the planet and virtually destroy the Earth’s life-supporting environment on an Earth-wide scale requires choices and ethical responsibility.
The first decision to be made, it would seem, is whether we wish to survive here long term or not. Assuming the answer is yes, we must take responsibility for the planet and its web of life. But it does not end there, as some humane and green movements would seem to argue. In order to live we must also take the lives of the plant and animal food we consume. That is a fact we face, and, assuming we desire to survive, it is not a matter of ethics. On the other hand, our management and behavior toward other living things-including our food-do present moral choices. It also creates a mood, if you will, setting the tone for how we treat one another. If we find it easy to treat life with insensitivity, it is a small step to treat one another the same way. If we extend care, compassion, and decency out toward the rest of the world, we are far more likely to treat fellow humans similarly.
Killing animals or plants for sport or just because we have the ability to do so is neither rational nor ethical. It is a form of psychopathic behavior that threatens the way of life upon which we depend and desensitizes us to the value of all life.
People who take joy in the pain, suffering, and death of other animals, or justify it because of money to be made, threaten civilization itself. It is not that great a jump for those who behave in this way to extend similar insensitivity to humans. Would we rather live next door to someone who creates habitat for wild animals in their yard and captures house mice to set them free outdoors, or someone who stomps on any bug they see, chains their dog to a stake in the yard, yahoos about shooting birds from their window with a pellet gun, and hunts for trophies leaving carcasses to rot? It is not a coincidence that serial killers often have a history of torturing and killing animals.
Animals raised for food should not be treated as nothing more than production units, confined so as to never see the light of day, and then be handled and killed inhumanely displaying animal cruelty. They should be raised kindly in a free and open environment where they might enjoy the life they have. Hunting should be reserved for the main purpose of obtaining food, not for the pleasure of killing. If there is opportunity to show compassion, why not take it rather than abuse and exploit just because we have the power to do so?