“The Animals’ Agenda brings us closer to the
day when our behavior toward our fellow species is determined not by
convenience or greed but by compassion.” Sy Montgomery
It is a common “mistake” to make
generalizations about groups of people, and this mistake is also made in
relation to animals. Just like people, animals have individual personalities.
Their intelligence and intuition allow them to adapt to their environment. They
have emotions and they experience trauma. Despite the scientific progress made
in understanding animal cognition and behaviors, the poor treatment of animals
continues to ignore the suffering and pain humans inflict upon them.
The
Animals' Agenda by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce is a detailed account of our
interactions with animals; the authors propose solutions that can be applied to
address these issues.
Animal sentience is well established in the
scientific community, so why is it okay to disregard the ethical implications
of this knowledge?
What is the meaning of freedom? According to
Hope Ferdowsian, physician and bioethicist, freedom for animals has the same
meaning that it has for humans. “Freedom to meet our basic physical needs,
whatever those might be by species and individual—including freedom of movement
(bodily liberty); safe and secure from harm from humans (bodily integrity—and this
should include freedom from harm to the mind); freedom to love and bond with
whom we wish; respect for our choices, and freedom from humiliation and
intentional shaming.”
The Animals' Agenda reveals the ways in which we mistreat animals, and it opens the door
to a new possibility: the hope to turn the Anthropocene, or Age of Humanity, into
the “Compassionocene.” First, The Animals’ Agenda sets the path to acknowledge
how the consequences of our actions have effects on our own lives,
so we are not immune to these consequences.
There
is no way out of the chaos unless we choose a path of compassion and
understanding.
What we do to others, we do to ourselves.
Changes need to happen from the heart. Caring for others is intelligence in
action.
It was devastating and disturbing to learn about
the details of the massacre in a school in Texas. As a mother myself, my heart
breaks for the lives of the kids and the teachers lost. A hater shot 19
children and two teachers, but first he shot his grandmother. Then he had
enough time to crash his grandmother’s car and to perform these atrocities
inside the school building while enforcement officials hesitated outside and
stopped parents from breaking into the building to be with their children.
The hater had bought the ammunitions on his
eighteenth birthday. Every detail of this horrifying event is traumatizing.
There are no words to describe the desperation I feel as I type this paragraph.
The hater responsible for killing 21 people had a history of abusing animals. Not only did he abuse animals but he also promoted the abuse of animals by sharing photos on social media.
Animal abuse should never be ignored.
The
white supremacist in Buffalo, New York, who killed ten people at the grocery
store two weeks ago, has a history of animal abuse, and it had never been
reported. Why?
How is
it possible that the person who whines about “politicization” of the shootings receives
large amounts of money from pro-gun groups for his political campaigns? His
statement is not only contradictory, but the whole situation seems to have been taken
from a terrifying dystopian novel. And why is animal abuse not taken seriously?
I wrote about the association between cruelty toward animals and criminal behavior when I reviewed the book Second Nature by Jonathan
Balcombe. You can also learn about this by reading the link of the Humane Society I provide at the bottom of this post.
The way we treat animals is indeed a
reflection of how we fail on many levels.
I am sharing an articles that may be of interest to you:
https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/the-link-between-animal-cruelty-and-human-violence
