Quote:
Originally Posted by Barkingturtle
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But they do. The majority of people would be enraged if they saw a dog being tortured. So they clearly value some animal life. The issue here is that people are speciest, assigning value to certain lifeforms while commodifying others. Frankly, if this weren't the case we wouldn't need to invent alternate names like beef, pork, etc in order to make it palatable to kill cows, pigs, etc. This is also why people are unwilling to witness what goes on in a slaughterhouse but are okay with consuming the product. I know I use this term a lot, but come on: this is text-book cognitive dissonance.
And it's understandable! It's a huge part of our culture. I mean, even the authorities tasked with advising the American populace on health and diet, the USDA and the FDA, have boards comprised of lobbyists who are paid by the very corporations they're supposed to regulate! From youth we're sold various diet structures, food-pyramids, by for-profit industries posing as government agencies who care about our well-being. But do some research. Better yet, watch Cowspiracy on Netflix. It does an excellent job of exposing the incestuous relationship between agriculture and the federal government.
The thing is, once we know better, we have to do better. And we are. I've been vegan a long time now. I've never seen anything like this past year. The movement is flourishing as people become aware and decide to take action. More and more people are knowing and doing better, and it's definitely snowballing.
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That's true, I didn't mean most people support the killing and/or torture of animals but it's as you said a cognitive dissonance and I myself am quite guilty of that.
I say it as a joke, that I love animals more than people but I definitely do hold my pets to a very high level of worth, as I view their lives as I do a family member.
However this amount of empathy and love I have for my family of pets has never translated into my love for the farm animals that are bred to be consumed.
I remember at work, a lady was talking about how she grew up on a pig farm, these pigs were raised for food purposes. I never knew someone like that. We talked in length about it, and we got intot alking about how intelligent pigs were, as I always read about this but never had a pig to see it with my own eyes.
She went on to explain a personal story of a certain pig that really seemed quite intelligent, it always seemed to seek her out whereas the rest of the pigs just did their own thing. For some reason, this specific pig would take notice of her, and she developed a routine of interacting with this pig and enjoyed the fact he seemed to be so aware and interactive with her. I asked her if she saved the pig, seeing how he was so special to her, and she just laughed and said no, he was there for one purpose and that was it.
This made me feel sorry for this pig, because it was clear these animals are nothing less than my own cats and dogs that I have had as pets, yet they are not seen as such. To deal with the sadness and guilt I felt for not having recognized this sooner, I simply chalked it up to as impractical and impossible to change how things are. This is just how it is, I told myself.