I talked in my previous blogpost:
about how the slender billed curlew is extinct. There are no more of them left. Any sighting you get of one, will be a photograph. Any sound you hear from them, will be a recording.
Now, let’s contrast that with another bird. The domestic chicken. How many of them are there? 26.56 billion. That is an insane number. I don’t know how else to put it.
https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/how-many-chickens-are-in-the-world/
When an animal isn’t useful to humanity, they are endangered, or are, dead. When an animal is useful to humanity, they are, at least numerically, thriving. There are more than three times as many chickens on Earth as there are humans on Earth.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a science fiction book that had a big impact on me, called All Tomorrows, by C. M. Kösemen. All Tomorrows is a speculative future billion year history of humanity. Although the time frame described in the book is quite long, to put it mildly, the part of the book that is most well known is when humanity encounters an alien race called the Qu. And it does not go well for humanity. The Qu believe it is their absolute right to remake other lifeforms, through genetic engineering, into whatever forms they desire. After a war with humanity in which the Qu wins due to superior technology, the Qu begins modifying humans in whatever way they like into often horrifying forms.
The most infamous modification happens to a group of humans that would come to be known as the Colonials. Against all odds, they managed to defeat the Qu twice, but the 3rd time the Qu managed to subdue them. The Qu took it as a great insult that humans managed to defeat them, so this group of humans were punished in the most horrific way possible.
The Qu turned them into completely immobile slabs of flesh, with their consciousness and eyes retained, so they could see and experience what was happening to them. Completely unable to move, or interact with their environment in any way, until they eventually experienced the release of dying of old age. But this complete immobility wasn’t the end of the Colonial’s horrific punishment. They were engineered to process the Qu’s waste. That’s right, completely unable to move, and eating nothing but waste until the day they died.
How would we feel about the Qu if they were a real species? Would we consider them so dangerous that we would want them either imprisoned or executed? Would we want to visit on them a fate as or more vicious than what they did to the Colonials? Is the treatment of the Colonials really any different from how factory farmed chickens are treated?
It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The Qu, thankfully, don’t exist, and we, unless we encounter a really vicious alien race in the future, don’t have to worry about being turned into waste eating flesh cubes. But, and I’d love to know whether this was intentional or not on Koseman’s part, the best real world analog for the Qu’s horrific treatment of humans, is humanity’s horrific treatment of animals.
I read this brilliant article on how humans treat dogs, and it is so, so analogous to how the Qu treated humans:
https://aeon.co/essays/breeding-dogs-to-be-cute-and-anthropomorphic-is-animal-cruelty
Dogs are, too often, brought into the world, not just to, be dogs, to be animals, but to serve the emotional needs of humans. And much like the Qu genetically engineering humans into horrific forms without any concern for the welfare of humans, so do dog breeders, too often, breed the “cutest” dog, with no regard for whether or not this breeding subjects the dog to physical pain, or makes it more difficult for them to interact with other dogs.
Dogs brought into the world, not to be dogs, but to be objects there to benefit humans.
The Sad Fate Of The Auroch
Do you know what an auroch is?
https://www.britannica.com/animal/aurochs
The probable ancestor of the cow. The cows we see in fields. The cows that are killed for meat. The cows that are put through horrible humiliation and pain in order to get their milk. There are two “versions” of this animal. The one that lived wild, not as a servant of humans, but on its own terms. And that version is dead. That’s the auroch. But the version that is allowed to exist, to serve humans, well that version is “thriving”, at least in a numerical sense. The amount of factory farmed cows in the United States alone, is 66 million:
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed
Yeah, if you’re an animal, that is just, living a life as an animal should, you are likely to be driven to extinction. It seems the only way animals have a guarantee of staying alive, is to be completely subservient to the wishes of humanity.
Time To Address The Vegetarian Elephant In The Room
I’m a vegetarian, I have been for more than six years. I reached a point in my life where I couldn’t stomach, both figuratively and literally, the thought of eating defenseless animals as part of my diet. So, is my diet cruelty free? Have I eliminated the suffering, and death of animals from my diet?
Not even close. You see, I’m not vegan. I don’t eat animals, but I still eat things that come from animals. Most of my consumption of cow’s milk has been eliminated, replaced by oat milk, but I eat a lot of chocolate, and that of course that contains cow’s milk. I also eat eggs. I won’t even entertain the possibility of picking up a carton of eggs unless it says “free range” on it, but I do this, knowing that it’s possible for a farm to get the “free range” label on eggs even if the laying hens are still subjected to great suffering.
I hate the very thought of treating animals as mere objects to serve human ends. And yet, I’m complicit in it.
Can Things Be Different?
I have a nightmare in my head, where the only animals that exist on Earth, are animals that are useful to humans. Domestic pets, animals bred for food, milk or eggs, or zoo animals. You might say, the scenario I describe is highly improbable, because many wild animals are necessary for the benefit of humanity, and that’s exactly my point, for the benefit of humanity. So in my nightmare, it’s not that there are no animals left, there are plenty, but my nightmare is that, all animals that are left on Earth, either directly or indirectly, serve human interests. No animal is allowed to just be, an animal. In my nightmare, birds of prey might well still fly through our skies, but, for no other reason than because they keep down the numbers of animals they feed on, which is deemed “useful” to humans. In my nightmare, foxes still live freely, live wild, in our countryside and even some urban areas, but purely, and for no other reason, than for the benefit of fox hunters. In my nightmare, there have been people born who have never once seen or heard an animal that doesn’t directly or indirectly benefit humans, unless it’s a picture or a recording of that animal.
The question, is it possible, feasible, or likely, that humanity will ever stop exploiting animals completely, I don’t know the answer to that question. After all, for everything I’ve talked about today in this post, I still eat eggs and chocolate. If somebody like myself who’s actually concerned about this stuff hasn’t managed to completely eliminate animal exploitation, then it’s going to be harder still to persuade people who don’t think about these issues on a daily basis at all.
Is technology the answer? Will we be able to just, give up all animal products through lab grown meat, lab grown milk and lab grown eggs? Well, none of this stuff has made it to the shelves of my local supermarket yet. Maybe it’ll just take a bit longer. Perhaps, but an old saying comes to mind, “Nuclear fusion is only 30 years away, and it always will be.” It would be great if there are just a small few hurdles to sort out with lab grown meat and lab grown animal products, and then we’ll be seeing that stuff on our shelves, I certainly hope that’s the case. But I’ve been reading about lab grown meat for a long time, and not seeing it getting any closer to my local supermarket. My fear is that this could be one of those technologies that is always, permanently, 30 years away.
Look, 21st century technology is great, I think it has enriched my life and many other people’s lives (but it certainly has drawbacks too.) But bringing new technologies such as lab grown meat into our lives is hard, by definition, that’s why it hasn’t already been done. So, let’s say it takes a century for lab grown meat to become something that you can pick up in any food shop. Do we just sit and wait for it to arrive, continuing to treat animals in a barbaric fashion for the next one hundred years? That doesn’t sound like an ethical solution.
I have thought many, many times about whether or not I should go vegan, and the answer I come back to, for good or bad, is that, I’ve managed to completely eliminate meat from my diet, for six years, but if I go vegan, that’s a blind leap. I don’t know whether going vegan will be bad for me. I don’t know if it will cause me health complications. But wasn’t going vegetarian on day one just as much of a blind leap? Not to the same extent. There are many more vegetarians in the world, so it felt like vegetarianism had been tried by a sufficient number of people that I could feel it was a safe and healthy option. I mean, 29.5% of people in India are vegetarian:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/vegetarianism-by-country
More than a quarter of the population of a country right there, and in absolute numbers, that’s a quarter of a billion people in India alone.
But with vegan percentages, it doesn’t get higher than 9%, a tie between India and Mexico. So it just seems riskier, with smaller numbers, there is a greater chance those people just got lucky with their genetics and that’s why they were able to thrive on a vegan diet.
Am I saying “I’ll try veganism when everyone else tries it?” Kind of, yes. Am I aware of how absolutely pathetic that sounds? Also yes.
But, it may be the case that we’ll never get most people to go vegan, short of a breakthrough such as lab grown meat, but surely it’s possible for people to just, consume less animal products? When I ate meat, I used to eat two servings of meat, a day, every day. Did I need that much? Was it healthy? If most people were willing to bring it down to, one or two servings of meat, a weak, then, that’s a lot less farmed animals being subjected to horrific cruelty.
If we can’t find it in ourselves to stop eating animals products, we can surely just, do it less.
Spaces For Animals To Just Be Animals
One of my favourite places for birdwatching and insect watching is the Glen River Park. Right in the middle of the suburbs, it’s a place where you can see shield bugs, red soldiers beetles, and all manner of bees and spiders during the Summer, you’ll often hear the screech of a buzzard, or if you’re really lucky, the screech of a sparrowhawk as you walk through this park. During the Summer months the beautiful song of chaffinches delights my ear, and the river that the park is named after often contains, mallards, teals, moorhens, and a solitary heron.
But one of my favourite parts of the Glen River Park, is actually a part of it, completely overgrown with vegetation. It wouldn’t be nice to try and go in there, it would be quite muddy when it rains, and trying to battle through all those layers of vegetation would be a deeply unpleasant experience.
So, there’s this one section of the park, that is of no use to humans. Nobody in their right mind would want to go in there, because it would just be horrible. But, you can hear many a bird singing in there. That’s right, it’s not a space for humans, but it’s a space for birds, and just for birds!
This part of the park I’m talking about, is maybe, at most, five meters long, maybe five meters wide. And it’s just for birds. Nothing about it serves humans. Sure, it’s wonderful to hear the birds singing, but this admittedly tiny part of a somewhat big park shows what needs to happen.
There needs to be more and more spaces on our planet, that are just for animals, to do their thing, to live their lives and seek their fortunes, and the fact that the sight or sound of the animals may delight humans, needs to be seen as an added bonus. I’ve talked a few days ago about Harper’s Island near Cork City:
Harper’s Island is I think, first and foremost a place for animals. And while in a sense you could say it’s “for humans” in the sense that people can go there to see and hear the animals, it’s a space for humans to watch animals, doing whatever they want to do. Indeed, when I get out my Tascam when I see the curlews, I’m sometimes disappointed, it’s a day when the curlews don’t really want to sing. But that disappointment is soon replaced with joy, the curlew didn’t sing, because they didn’t want to, it didn’t matter that I wanted them to sing, because no human is their master. Isn’t that wonderful?
It’s Time For A New Kind Of Human Privilege
Humans are privileged. We have the ability to wipe out any animal we like, we have the ability to keep animals as food objects, and we have the ability to subject animals to grotesque and disgusting breeding experiments, where completely innocent dogs must live a life of pain because some human wanted them to “look cute”.
That’s the horror of human privilege. Every animal on this planet, is essentially ours to do with what we will. It’s absolutely horrific. And again, it brings me back to C.M Koseman’s masterpiece All Tomorrows and the Qu. When you read in this book the horrifying treatment of the Colonials, well, is there any huge difference between this and how humans treat animals?
But we need a new kind of privilege. We need to well, feel privileged! To live on such an amazing planet. As I write this, I have started hand flapping, it’s something autists such as myself do, often when we are filled with immense joy. Because when I go outside, I may well hear an amazing and haunting cry. And if I look up, I will see a buzzard, a majestic and magnificent creature, soaring through the air above me. As I walk under some powerlines, I may hear some magnificent sci-fi style bleeping. If I look up, I will will see some starlings on the powerlines, with their wonderful avant garde style sounds. Of late I’ve really started to think of starlings as the Frank Zappa of bird song! If I head out to the country, I may well see a shy character cautiously walk towards me, but ever so careful, and rightly so, to keep their distance. It’s a fox! Me and the fox will regard each other briefly, but then the fox will decide humans are not to be trusted, and then dart off into the distance. If I have a look at a flowerbed, I may well see, even this late in the year, a bombus pascorum or two, a type of bee with beautiful golden fur around their heads, like they have golden hair!
We need to stop occupying a privileged position on this planet, where we can do whatever we like to the animals that also live here. They are our fellow creatures, our neighbours. And they need to be treated as such. But we need to feel a hell of a lot of privilege. That we live on a wonderful planet, with such amazing animals. We must understand how well and truly blessed we are to live in such an amazing part of the universe!
Ponderings Of An Autist 