for the animals

I don’t think we can reach some profound and lasting change by force, be it according to or against the laws being. We do not have that much tanks or ballistic missiles, or enough money to corrupt the world government. And what if the end does not justify the means and the means can shift the end? That would be a good thing to hear for the inquisition and all who want to change the world to their eyes with a stick.

If I do believe, I believe in that we can change the culture whose part we are and that if we change it, the rest will go and follow. The politics, the economy, the society.

Not to be unrightfully preaching for the paradise, I must add that I don’t believe in vegan revolution or in the profound and lasting change, but I do believe in the possibility of a better world than that which we have today and where we beg or wrest for chance or just wait and hope that something better comes.

A human is an animal

One of the things I see as a resistance to that change is the separation of the human from the animals. I think it is as stupid as to say - an apple, and a fruit - because as much as an apple is a fruit, so human is one of the animal kinds. Simply animal. Bones, flesh, fat, and energy which sustains. I don’t view it as anything degrading or offensive but I do know people who do, and who have great difficulties giving up their species’ exclusivity.

These people say that human is so completely different from animals. That I cannot compare human with rat or cow. Well, I can. The term - animal - is enough wide to include a water bug, a human, a dolphin and an elephant. And a cow and a rat too. We are included in this term based on our common features, which do not deny differences. A dolphin is not a water bug, a rat is not a cow, a human is not an elephant. But we are all animals. If you understand this belonging, a different world will open up to you.

As for me I can say I learn it.

So as some idealise the exclusivity of humans, others mythicise and idealise other animals. I often hear that an animal will sense a bad person. One girl told this to me about dogs. But I know good people bitten by dogs and I know dogs loving their masters who are cruel and harm where they can. Even dogs in laboratories may love the human who experiments on them and they will lick their hand and face, so as the pig may fall in love with his or her butcher. (By the way, even humans lick faces and hands of those who experiment on them, and they love their butchers. That’s only to say about the politics, religion and business.)

Sometimes I meet someone with a tee where it’s written, Animals don’t lead wars and don’t drug. That’s not true. Even animals other then human lead wars. Inside or outside their own species. Ants against ants and against the termites, some species of tropical frogs, rats against rats, where they profoundly get to know the territory, destroy enemy food storages, lead mass raids to enemy lands and clearly kill all the rats on the gained territory.

Not even drugging is reserved for humans. Cows, horses, or squirrels repeatedly use psilocybe. Baboons eat overripe litchi after which they yell, fight, and engage in orgy. Ants have domesticated rove beetles producing narcotic secretion, which ants frequently drug to the extent they even forget about their youngs. One possible explanation of this is that animals other than human too can act against their well-being and are not only led by their instincts to survive.

Naivety, anger, jealousy, nothing of it is only domain of humans. Nor is love, compassion, or grief.

Be it human exclusivity or idealisation and mythicisation of other animals, the result is they separate humans from other animals and from nature as a whole. I am convinced that we should strive for the opposite. Human belongs to the animal kin and together with other animals is part of the nature.

I for myself do not want to be cultivated human, but a wild one, and do not want to be domesticated, but free.