NOBLE COW: MUNCHING GRASS LOOKING CURIOUS AND JUST HANGING AROUND
Preface
The holocaust didn't end, it's rampant, it's merely turned to other species.
What is your definition of holocaust? Is it a massacre of human beings, or a massacre of innocent beings? All over the globe, we murder 55 billion land animals and 90 billion marine animals every year. Not for health, survival, sustenance, or self-defense - people eat meat, fish and eggs for 4 reasons: habit, tradition, convenience, and taste.
Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, made the comparison in several of his stories, including Enemies, A Love Story, The Penitent, and The Letter Writer. In the latter the protagonist says, "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." In The Penitent the protagonist says "when it comes to animals, every man is a Nazi."
Belgian writer Marguerite Yourcenar also made the comparison. She wrote that if we haven’t accepted the inhumane transportation of animals to the slaughterhouses we wouldn’t have accepted the transportation of human being to the concentration camps. In another article, making the same connection, she wrote that every act of cruelty suffered by thousands of living creatures is a crime against humanity.
J. M. Coetzee, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003, invoked the image of the slaughterhouse in describing the Nazi's treatment of Jews: "... in the 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter — or what they preferred to call the processing —of human beings."
Contrary to political and religious dogma, animals do not belong to us. They are not commodities. They're not property and they're not inanimate stupid objects that can't think and feel. That Cartesian way of looking at animals like they're machines is outdated and quite frankly,
100% insane.
In 2001, Meat.org included an "Animal Holocaust" section containing photographs of animals with captions such as "Holocaust Victim," arguing that it's "easy to see the resemblance of the systematic destruction and slaughter of over six million Jews by the Nazis before and during World War II and the over 20 million animals that are executed every day in America alone. Many of the Jews of the Holocaust were transported to concentration camps in cattle cars to their death. The concentration camps very much resemble the common slaughterhouses of today."
In his autobiography, My Life and Work (1922), Ford revealed that his inspiration for assembly-line production came from a visit he made as a young man to a Chicago slaughterhouse. "I believe that this was the first moving line ever installed. The idea [of the assembly line] came in a general way from the overhead trolley that the Chicago packers use in dressing beef." A Swift and Company publication from that time described the division-of-labor principle that so impressed Ford: "The slaughtered animals, suspended head downward from a moving chain, or conveyor, pass from workman to workman, each of whom performs some particular step in the process." It was but one step from the industrialized slaughter of animals to the assembly-line mass murder of people.
Why is it always such a surprise to us humans that other animals have feelings, form bonds, and relationships and have ways of communicating still not understood by us. Are we really so stupid that we believe we are the only species that do this?
The great blind spot of our modern Civilization for that matter is the mistreatment and disregard for non-human animals in nearly every capacity.
How would you feel if the day you were born somebody else had already planned the day of your execution? That's what it's like to be a cow, pig, chicken or turkey on this planet. This type of behaviour is inexcusable and unbecoming of a species that claims to understand right from wrong. The animals have not done one single thing to us to deserve the wrath and cruelty that we hurl on them.
This book deals with the ability of animals to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think ("reason") from the ability to feel ("sentience"). In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences. For Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights, because sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, which entails certain rights.
The holocaust didn't end, it's rampant, it's merely turned to other species.
What is your definition of holocaust? Is it a massacre of human beings, or a massacre of innocent beings? All over the globe, we murder 55 billion land animals and 90 billion marine animals every year. Not for health, survival, sustenance, or self-defense - people eat meat, fish and eggs for 4 reasons: habit, tradition, convenience, and taste.
Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, made the comparison in several of his stories, including Enemies, A Love Story, The Penitent, and The Letter Writer. In the latter the protagonist says, "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." In The Penitent the protagonist says "when it comes to animals, every man is a Nazi."
Belgian writer Marguerite Yourcenar also made the comparison. She wrote that if we haven’t accepted the inhumane transportation of animals to the slaughterhouses we wouldn’t have accepted the transportation of human being to the concentration camps. In another article, making the same connection, she wrote that every act of cruelty suffered by thousands of living creatures is a crime against humanity.
J. M. Coetzee, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003, invoked the image of the slaughterhouse in describing the Nazi's treatment of Jews: "... in the 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter — or what they preferred to call the processing —of human beings."
Contrary to political and religious dogma, animals do not belong to us. They are not commodities. They're not property and they're not inanimate stupid objects that can't think and feel. That Cartesian way of looking at animals like they're machines is outdated and quite frankly,
100% insane.
In 2001, Meat.org included an "Animal Holocaust" section containing photographs of animals with captions such as "Holocaust Victim," arguing that it's "easy to see the resemblance of the systematic destruction and slaughter of over six million Jews by the Nazis before and during World War II and the over 20 million animals that are executed every day in America alone. Many of the Jews of the Holocaust were transported to concentration camps in cattle cars to their death. The concentration camps very much resemble the common slaughterhouses of today."
In his autobiography, My Life and Work (1922), Ford revealed that his inspiration for assembly-line production came from a visit he made as a young man to a Chicago slaughterhouse. "I believe that this was the first moving line ever installed. The idea [of the assembly line] came in a general way from the overhead trolley that the Chicago packers use in dressing beef." A Swift and Company publication from that time described the division-of-labor principle that so impressed Ford: "The slaughtered animals, suspended head downward from a moving chain, or conveyor, pass from workman to workman, each of whom performs some particular step in the process." It was but one step from the industrialized slaughter of animals to the assembly-line mass murder of people.
Why is it always such a surprise to us humans that other animals have feelings, form bonds, and relationships and have ways of communicating still not understood by us. Are we really so stupid that we believe we are the only species that do this?
The great blind spot of our modern Civilization for that matter is the mistreatment and disregard for non-human animals in nearly every capacity.
How would you feel if the day you were born somebody else had already planned the day of your execution? That's what it's like to be a cow, pig, chicken or turkey on this planet. This type of behaviour is inexcusable and unbecoming of a species that claims to understand right from wrong. The animals have not done one single thing to us to deserve the wrath and cruelty that we hurl on them.
This book deals with the ability of animals to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think ("reason") from the ability to feel ("sentience"). In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences. For Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights, because sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, which entails certain rights.