'Animal Rights and the New Enlightenment

Dr. Steve Best

Five million years ago, our ancestors branched off from ancient apes; 
within the next two million years, hominid lines of evolution underwent 
tremendous changes in the transition to evolve into a species that was 
not only bipedal, but also big-brained and in command of language 
and technology.

In the last hundred thousand years, human beings changed very little in 
their biology, but they evolved rapidly in their social and technological 
capacities. Unfortunately, our technological evolution has greatly 
outdistanced our moral evolution. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther 
King Jr., "We live in a world where misguided men use guided missiles."

Human beings have made moral progress, but slowly. In Western culture, 
it took over two thousand years to dismantle the ignorance, prejudice, 
and biases informing the myths that legitimated inequality, hierarchy, and 
inferiority as rooted somehow in human nature or the natural scheme of 
things.

Western society has made rapid moral progress since the 1960s. 
The student, black, brown, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements 
advanced the universalization of rights process, overcame major barriers 
of prejudice, and deepened human freedom.

During this turbulent period of social strife, riots, mass demonstrations 
against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and worsening problems with poverty, 
homelessness, and class inequality, Martin Luther King formulated a 
vision of a "world house." In this cosmopolitan utopia, all peoples around 
the globe would live in peace and harmony, with both their spiritual and 
material needs met by the fecundity of the modern world.

But to whatever degree this dream might be realized, King's world house 
is still a damn slaughterhouse, because humanism doesn't challenge the 
needless confinement, torture, and killing of billions of animals. The 
humanist non-violent utopia will always remain a hypocritical lie until so-
called "enlightened" and "progressive" human beings extend nonviolence, 
equality, and rights to the animals with whom we share this planet.

The next logical step in human moral evolution is to embrace animal rights 
and accept its profound implications. Animal rights builds on the most 
progressive ethical and political advances human beings have made in the 
last two hundred years. Simply put, the argument for animal rights states 
that if humans have rights, animals have rights for the same reasons. 
Moral significance lies not in our differences as species but rather our 
commonalities as subjects of a life.

This is the challenge of animal rights: can human beings become truly 
enlightened and overcome one of the last remaining prejudices enshrined 
in democratic legal systems? Can they reorganize their economic systems, 
retool their technologies, and transform their cultural traditions? Above 
all, can they construct new sensibilities, values, worldviews, and identities?

The animal rights movement poses a fundamental evolutionary challenge 
to human beings in the midst of severe crises in the social and natural 
worlds. Can we recognize that the animal question is central to the 
human question? Can we grasp how the exploitation of animals is 
implicated in every aspect of the crisis in our relation to one another and 
the natural world? 

Animal rights is an assault on human species identity. It smashes the 
compass of speciesism and calls into question the cosmological maps 
whereby humans define their place in the world. Animal rights demands 
that human beings give up their sense of superiority over other animals. 
It challenges people to realize that power demands responsibility, that 
might is not right, and that an enlarged neocortex is no excuse to rape 
and plunder the natural world.

These profound changes in worldview demand revolutionizing one's daily 
life and recognizing just how personal the political is. I teach many radical 
philosophies, but only animal rights has the power to upset and transform 
daily rituals and social relations. "Radical" philosophies such as anarchism 
or Marxism uncritically reproduce speciesism. After the Marxist seminar, 
students can talk at the dinner table about revolution while dining on the 
bodies of murdered farmed animals. After the animal rights seminar, they 
often find themselves staring at their plates, questioning their most basic 
behaviors, and feeling alienated from their carping friends and family. 
The message rings true and stirs the soul.

Let's be clear: we are fighting for a revolution, not for reforms, for the 
end of slavery, not for humane slavemasters. Animal rights advances the 
most radical idea to ever land on human ears: animals are not food, 
clothing, resources, or objects of entertainment.

Our goal is nothing less than to change entrenched attitudes, sedimented 
practices, and powerful institutions that profit from animal exploitation. 
Indeed, the state has demonized us as "eco-terrorists" and is criminalizing 
our fight for what is right.

Our task is especially difficult because we must transcend the comfortable 
boundaries of humanism and urge a qualitative leap in moral consideration. 
We are insisting that people not only change their views of one another 
within the species they share, but rather realize that species boundaries are 
as arbitrary as those of race and sex. Our task is to provoke humanity to 
move the moral bar from reason and language to sentience and subjectivity.

We must not only educate, we must become a social movement. The 
challenge of animal rights also is our challenge, for animal rights must not 
only be an idea but a social movement for the liberation of the world's 
most oppressed beings, both in terms of numbers and in the severity of 
their pain. As with all revolutions, animals will not gain rights because 
oppressors suddenly see the light, but rather because enough people 
become enlightened and learn how to rock the structures of power, to 
shake them until new social arrangements emerge.

Are we asking for too much? Justice requires only what is right, and is 
never excessive. Is the revolution remotely possible? In a thousand ways, 
the revolution is gaining ground. From the near nation-wide ban on 
cockfighting to making animal abuse a felony crime in 37 states, from 
eliminating the use of animals to train doctors in two thirds of U.S. medical 
schools to teaching animal rights and the law seminars at over two dozen 
universities, from increasing media coverage of animal welfare/rights issues 
to a 2003 Gallup Poll finding that 96% of Americans say that animals 
deserve some protection from abuse and 25% say that animals deserve 
"the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation" it 
is clear that human beings are beginning to change their views about other 
species.

Human beings simply will have to reinvent their identities and find ways to 
define humanity and culture apart from cruelty. Whether people realize it 
or not, this is not a burden but a liberation. One no longer has to live the 
lie of separation and the opening of the heart can bring a profound healing.

Animal rights is the next stage in the development of the highest values 
modern humanity has devised - those of equality, democracy, and rights. 
Our distorted conceptions of ourselves as demigods who command the 
planet must be replaced with the far more humble and holistic notion that 
we belong to and are dependent upon vast networks of living relationships. 
Dominionist and speciesist identities are steering us down the path of 
disaster. If humanity and the living world as a whole is to have a future, 
human beings must embrace a universal ethics that respects all life.

Growth is difficult and painful, and the human species is morally immature 
and psychologically crippled. Human beings need to learn that they are 
citizens in the biocommunity, and not conquerors; as citizens, they have 
distinct responsibilities to the entire biocommunity.

The meaning of Enlightenment is changing. In the eighteenth century it 
meant overcoming religious dogma and tyranny; in the late twentieth 
century, it demanded overcoming racism, sexism, homophobia, and 
other prejudices; now, in the twenty-first century, it requires overcoming 
speciesism and embracing a universal ethics that honors all life.

We can change; we must. The message of nature is evolve or die. 

http://www.drstevebest.org/Essays/AnimalRightsandtheNewEnlightenment.htm

"O.pearl"  wrote in message 
news:twQjm.29797$j7.493382@news.indigo.ie...
> 'Animal Rights and the New Enlightenment
>
> Dr. Steve Best
>
> Five million years ago, our ancestors branched off from ancient apes; 
> within the next two million years, hominid lines of evolution underwent 
> tremendous changes in the transition to evolve into a species that was not 
> only bipedal, but also big-brained and in command of language and 
> technology.
>
> In the last hundred thousand years, human beings changed very little in 
> their biology, but they evolved rapidly in their social and technological 
> capacities. Unfortunately, our technological evolution has greatly 
> outdistanced our moral evolution. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King 
> Jr., "We live in a world where misguided men use guided missiles."
>
> Human beings have made moral progress, but slowly. In Western culture, it 
> took over two thousand years to dismantle the ignorance, prejudice, and 
> biases informing the myths that legitimated inequality, hierarchy, and 
> inferiority as rooted somehow in human nature or the natural scheme of 
> things.
>
> Western society has made rapid moral progress since the 1960s. The 
> student, black, brown, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements advanced 
> the universalization of rights process, overcame major barriers of 
> prejudice, and deepened human freedom.
>
> During this turbulent period of social strife, riots, mass demonstrations 
> against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and worsening problems with poverty, 
> homelessness, and class inequality, Martin Luther King formulated a vision 
> of a "world house." In this cosmopolitan utopia, all peoples around the 
> globe would live in peace and harmony, with both their spiritual and 
> material needs met by the fecundity of the modern world.
>
> But to whatever degree this dream might be realized, King's world house is 
> still a damn slaughterhouse, because humanism doesn't challenge the 
> needless confinement, torture, and killing of billions of animals. The 
> humanist non-violent utopia will always remain a hypocritical lie until 
> so-
> called "enlightened" and "progressive" human beings extend nonviolence, 
> equality, and rights to the animals with whom we share this planet.

Their would a whole lot less of these animals you say you care about if 
people could no longer make a living breeding, looking after them and 
slaughtering them for food. What you advocate would decimate the animal 
population of this world.

>
> The next logical step in human moral evolution

Logic and moral have nothing much to do with each other.

is to embrace animal rights
> and accept its profound implications. Animal rights builds on the most 
> progressive ethical and political advances human beings have made in the 
> last two hundred years. Simply put, the argument for animal rights states 
> that if humans have rights, animals have rights for the same reasons.

Of course they have rights, to not suffer needlessly etc.


> Moral significance lies not in our differences as species but rather our 
> commonalities as subjects of a life.

What about plants then, or bacteria (throw away those anti-biotics).

>
> This is the challenge of animal rights: can human beings become truly 
> enlightened and overcome one of the last remaining prejudices enshrined in 
> democratic legal systems? Can they reorganize their economic systems, 
> retool their technologies, and transform their cultural traditions? Above 
> all, can they construct new sensibilities, values, worldviews, and 
> identities?

Probably artificial meat and fish is not too far away. It'll probably be 
cheaper and guilt free for you so enjoy (though I'm sure there will be some 
nuts who find a reason against even that).

>
> The animal rights movement poses a fundamental evolutionary challenge to 
> human beings in the midst of severe crises in the social and natural 
> worlds. Can we recognize that the animal question is central to the human 
> question? Can we grasp how the exploitation of animals is implicated in 
> every aspect of the crisis in our relation to one another and the natural 
> world?
> Animal rights is an assault on human species identity. It smashes the 
> compass of speciesism and calls into question the cosmological maps 
> whereby humans define their place in the world. Animal rights demands that 
> human beings give up their sense of superiority over other animals. It 
> challenges people to realize that power demands responsibility, that might 
> is not right, and that an enlarged neocortex is no excuse to rape and 
> plunder the natural world.
>
> These profound changes in worldview demand revolutionizing one's daily 
> life and recognizing just how personal the political is. I teach many 
> radical philosophies, but only animal rights has the power to upset and 
> transform daily rituals and social relations. "Radical" philosophies such 
> as anarchism or Marxism uncritically reproduce speciesism. After the 
> Marxist seminar, students can talk at the dinner table about revolution 
> while dining on the bodies of murdered farmed animals. After the animal 
> rights seminar, they often find themselves staring at their plates, 
> questioning their most basic behaviors, and feeling alienated from their 
> carping friends and family. The message rings true and stirs the soul.
>
> Let's be clear: we are fighting for a revolution, not for reforms, for the 
> end of slavery, not for humane slavemasters. Animal rights advances the 
> most radical idea to ever land on human ears: animals are not food, 
> clothing, resources, or objects of entertainment.
>
> Our goal is nothing less than to change entrenched attitudes, sedimented 
> practices, and powerful institutions that profit from animal exploitation. 
> Indeed, the state has demonized us as "eco-terrorists" and is 
> criminalizing our fight for what is right.
>
> Our task is especially difficult because we must transcend the comfortable 
> boundaries of humanism and urge a qualitative leap in moral consideration. 
> We are insisting that people not only change their views of one another 
> within the species they share, but rather realize that species boundaries 
> are as arbitrary as those of race and sex. Our task is to provoke humanity 
> to move the moral bar from reason and language to sentience and 
> subjectivity.
>
> We must not only educate, we must become a social movement. The challenge 
> of animal rights also is our challenge, for animal rights must not only be 
> an idea but a social movement for the liberation of the world's most 
> oppressed beings, both in terms of numbers and in the severity of their 
> pain. As with all revolutions, animals will not gain rights because 
> oppressors suddenly see the light, but rather because enough people become 
> enlightened and learn how to rock the structures of power, to shake them 
> until new social arrangements emerge.
>
> Are we asking for too much? Justice requires only what is right, and is 
> never excessive. Is the revolution remotely possible? In a thousand ways, 
> the revolution is gaining ground. From the near nation-wide ban on 
> cockfighting to making animal abuse a felony crime in 37 states, from 
> eliminating the use of animals to train doctors in two thirds of U.S. 
> medical schools to teaching animal rights and the law seminars at over two 
> dozen universities, from increasing media coverage of animal 
> welfare/rights issues to a 2003 Gallup Poll finding that 96% of Americans 
> say that animals deserve some protection from abuse and 25% say that 
> animals deserve "the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and 
> exploitation" it is clear that human beings are beginning to change their 
> views about other species.
>
> Human beings simply will have to reinvent their identities and find ways 
> to define humanity and culture apart from cruelty. Whether people realize 
> it or not, this is not a burden but a liberation. One no longer has to 
> live the lie of separation and the opening of the heart can bring a 
> profound healing.
>
> Animal rights is the next stage in the development of the highest values 
> modern humanity has devised - those of equality, democracy, and rights. 
> Our distorted conceptions of ourselves as demigods who command the planet 
> must be replaced with the far more humble and holistic notion that we 
> belong to and are dependent upon vast networks of living relationships. 
> Dominionist and speciesist identities are steering us down the path of 
> disaster. If humanity and the living world as a whole is to have a future, 
> human beings must embrace a universal ethics that respects all life.
>
> Growth is difficult and painful, and the human species is morally immature 
> and psychologically crippled. Human beings need to learn that they are 
> citizens in the biocommunity, and not conquerors; as citizens, they have 
> distinct responsibilities to the entire biocommunity.
>
> The meaning of Enlightenment is changing. In the eighteenth century it 
> meant overcoming religious dogma and tyranny; in the late twentieth 
> century, it demanded overcoming racism, sexism, homophobia, and other 
> prejudices; now, in the twenty-first century, it requires overcoming 
> speciesism and embracing a universal ethics that honors all life.
>
> We can change; we must. The message of nature is evolve or die.
> http://www.drstevebest.org/Essays/AnimalRightsandtheNewEnlightenment.htm

On Aug 22, 7:20 am, "O.pearl"  wrote:
> 'Animal Rights and the New Enlightenment
>
> Dr. Steve Best
>
> Five million years ago, our ancestors branched off from ancient apes;
> within the next two million years, hominid lines of evolution underwent
> tremendous changes in the transition to evolve into a species that was
> not only bipedal, but also big-brained and in command of language
> and technology.
>
> In the last hundred thousand years, human beings changed very little in
> their biology, but they evolved rapidly in their social and technological
> capacities. Unfortunately, our technological evolution has greatly
> outdistanced our moral evolution. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther
> King Jr., "We live in a world where misguided men use guided missiles."
>
> Human beings have made moral progress, but slowly. In Western culture,
> it took over two thousand years to dismantle the ignorance, prejudice,
> and biases informing the myths that legitimated inequality, hierarchy, and
> inferiority as rooted somehow in human nature or the natural scheme of
> things.
>
> Western society has made rapid moral progress since the 1960s.
> The student, black, brown, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements
> advanced the universalization of rights process, overcame major barriers
> of prejudice, and deepened human freedom.
>
> During this turbulent period of social strife, riots, mass demonstrations
> against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and worsening problems with poverty,
> homelessness, and class inequality, Martin Luther King formulated a
> vision of a "world house." In this cosmopolitan utopia, all peoples around
> the globe would live in peace and harmony, with both their spiritual and
> material needs met by the fecundity of the modern world.
>
> But to whatever degree this dream might be realized, King's world house
> is still a damn slaughterhouse, because humanism doesn't challenge the
> needless confinement, torture, and killing of billions of animals. The
> humanist non-violent utopia will always remain a hypocritical lie until so-
> called "enlightened" and "progressive" human beings extend nonviolence,
> equality, and rights to the animals with whom we share this planet.
>
> The next logical step in human moral evolution is to embrace animal rights
> and accept its profound implications. Animal rights builds on the most
> progressive ethical and political advances human beings have made in the
> last two hundred years. Simply put, the argument for animal rights states
> that if humans have rights, animals have rights for the same reasons.
> Moral significance lies not in our differences as species but rather our
> commonalities as subjects of a life.
>
> This is the challenge of animal rights: can human beings become truly
> enlightened and overcome one of the last remaining prejudices enshrined
> in democratic legal systems? Can they reorganize their economic systems,
> retool their technologies, and transform their cultural traditions? Above
> all, can they construct new sensibilities, values, worldviews, and identities?
>
> The animal rights movement poses a fundamental evolutionary challenge
> to human beings in the midst of severe crises in the social and natural
> worlds. Can we recognize that the animal question is central to the
> human question? Can we grasp how the exploitation of animals is
> implicated in every aspect of the crisis in our relation to one another and
> the natural world?
>
> Animal rights is an assault on human species identity. It smashes the
> compass of speciesism and calls into question the cosmological maps
> whereby humans define their place in the world. Animal rights demands
> that human beings give up their sense of superiority over other animals.
> It challenges people to realize that power demands responsibility, that
> might is not right, and that an enlarged neocortex is no excuse to rape
> and plunder the natural world.
>
> These profound changes in worldview demand revolutionizing one's daily
> life and recognizing just how personal the political is. I teach many radical
> philosophies, but only animal rights has the power to upset and transform
> daily rituals and social relations. "Radical" philosophies such as anarchism
> or Marxism uncritically reproduce speciesism. After the Marxist seminar,
> students can talk at the dinner table about revolution while dining on the
> bodies of murdered farmed animals. After the animal rights seminar, they
> often find themselves staring at their plates, questioning their most basic
> behaviors, and feeling alienated from their carping friends and family.
> The message rings true and stirs the soul.
>
> Let's be clear: we are fighting for a revolution, not for reforms, for the
> end of slavery, not for humane slavemasters. Animal rights advances the
> most radical idea to ever land on human ears: animals are not food,
> clothing, resources, or objects of entertainment.
>
> Our goal is nothing less than to change entrenched attitudes, sedimented
> practices, and powerful institutions that profit from animal exploitation> Indeed, the state has demonized us as "eco-terrorists" and is criminalizing
> our fight for what is right.
>
> Our task is especially difficult because we must transcend the comfortable
> boundaries of humanism and urge a qualitative leap in moral consideration> We are insisting that people not only change their views of one another
> within the species they share, but rather realize that species boundaries are
> as arbitrary as those of race and sex. Our task is to provoke humanity to
> move the moral bar from reason and language to sentience and subjectivity> We must not only educate, we must become a social movement. The
> challenge of animal rights also is our challenge, for animal rights must not
> only be an idea but a social movement for the liberation of the world's
> most oppressed beings, both in terms of numbers and in the severity of
> their pain. As with all revolutions, animals will not gain rights because
> oppressors suddenly see the light, but rather because enough people
> become enlightened and learn how to rock the structures of power, to
> shake them until new social arrangements emerge.
>
> Are we asking for too much? Justice requires only what is right, and is
> never excessive. Is the revolution remotely possible? In a thousand ways,
> the revolution is gaining ground. From the near nation-wide ban on
> cockfighting to making animal abuse a felony crime in 37 states, from
> eliminating the use of animals to train doctors in two thirds of U.S. medical
> schools to teaching animal rights and the law seminars at over two dozen
> universities, from increasing media coverage of animal welfare/rights issues
> to a 2003 Gallup Poll finding that 96% of Americans say that animals
> deserve some protection from abuse and 25% say that animals deserve
> "the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation" it
> is clear that human beings are beginning to change their views about other
> species.
>
> Human beings simply will have to reinvent their identities and find ways to
> define humanity and culture apart from cruelty. Whether people realize it
> or not, this is not a burden but a liberation. One no longer has to live the
> lie of separation and the opening of the heart can bring a profound healing.
>
> Animal rights is the next stage in the development of the highest values
> modern humanity has devised - those of equality, democracy, and rights.
> Our distorted conceptions of ourselves as demigods who command the
> planet must be replaced with the far more humble and holistic notion that
> we belong to and are dependent upon vast networks of living relationships> Dominionist and speciesist identities are steering us down the path of
> disaster. If humanity and the living world as a whole is to have a future> human beings must embrace a universal ethics that respects all life.
>
> Growth is difficult and painful, and the human species is morally immature
> and psychologically crippled. Human beings need to learn that they are
> citizens in the biocommunity, and not conquerors; as citizens, they have
> distinct responsibilities to the entire biocommunity.
>
> The meaning of Enlightenment is changing. In the eighteenth century it
> meant overcoming religious dogma and tyranny; in the late twentieth
> century, it demanded overcoming racism, sexism, homophobia, and
> other prejudices; now, in the twenty-first century, it requires overcoming
> speciesism and embracing a universal ethics that honors all life.
>
> We can change; we must. The message of nature is evolve or die.
>
> http://www.drstevebest.org/Essays/AnimalRightsandtheNewEnlightenment.htm

For some reason those who advocate “animal rights” speak almost
exclusively of the rights of quite large animals.  This is odd because
large animals like whales, polar bears and chickens are numerically a
very small part of the animal kingdom.  It is the small (relative to
human beings) animals who represent the majority of animal life on
earth.  Insects, bacteria and protozoa represent far and away the
largest mass of animal life.

Animal rights advocates often are most interested in the right to life
and to a lesser degree the right not to be enslaved.  Humans kill
small creatures in far, far greater numbers than the larger animals
often cited as examples.  We enslave bacteria and protozoa to live in
our gut and digest our food for us.  Yeasts are forced to produce our
alcohol.  If there is any area where there is need to address the
moral issue of humans versus animals it is here, with the small
animals where the slaughter is so much bigger.

If I’m wrong and size is part of the moral issue, then we need to
carefully consider the moral relationship between humans and animals
that are even larger than we are, like whales, squid, alligators and
monitors.

Ed

In a country where it's legal for the state to kill (execute) humans,
what hope have animals got?

On Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:20:56 +0100, "O.pearl"  wrote:

>'Animal Rights and the New Enlightenment
>
>Dr. Steve Best
>
>Five million years ago, our ancestors branched off from ancient apes; 
>within the next two million years, hominid lines of evolution underwent 
>tremendous changes in the transition to evolve into a species that was 
>not only bipedal, but also big-brained and in command of language 
>and technology.
>
>In the last hundred thousand years, human beings changed very little in 
>their biology, but they evolved rapidly in their social and technological 
>capacities. Unfortunately, our technological evolution has greatly 
>outdistanced our moral evolution. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther 
>King Jr., "We live in a world where misguided men use guided missiles."
>
>Human beings have made moral progress, but slowly. In Western culture, 
>it took over two thousand years to dismantle the ignorance, prejudice, 
>and biases informing the myths that legitimated inequality, hierarchy, and 
>inferiority as rooted somehow in human nature or the natural scheme of 
>things.
>
>Western society has made rapid moral progress since the 1960s. 
>The student, black, brown, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements 
>advanced the universalization of rights process, overcame major barriers 
>of prejudice, and deepened human freedom.
>
>During this turbulent period of social strife, riots, mass demonstrations 
>against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and worsening problems with poverty, 
>homelessness, and class inequality, Martin Luther King formulated a 
>vision of a "world house." In this cosmopolitan utopia, all peoples around 
>the globe would live in peace and harmony, with both their spiritual and 
>material needs met by the fecundity of the modern world.
>
>But to whatever degree this dream might be realized, King's world house 
>is still a damn slaughterhouse, because humanism doesn't challenge the 
>needless confinement, torture, and killing of billions of animals. The 
>humanist non-violent utopia will always remain a hypocritical lie until so-
>called "enlightened" and "progressive" human beings extend nonviolence, 
>equality, and rights to the animals with whom we share this planet.
>
>The next logical step in human moral evolution is to embrace animal rights 
>and accept its profound implications. Animal rights builds on the most 
>progressive ethical and political advances human beings have made in the 
>last two hundred years. Simply put, the argument for animal rights states 
>that if humans have rights, animals have rights for the same reasons. 
>Moral significance lies not in our differences as species but rather our 
>commonalities as subjects of a life.
>
>This is the challenge of animal rights: can human beings become truly 
>enlightened and overcome one of the last remaining prejudices enshrined 
>in democratic legal systems? Can they reorganize their economic systems, 
>retool their technologies, and transform their cultural traditions? Above 
>all, can they construct new sensibilities, values, worldviews, and identities?
>
>The animal rights movement poses a fundamental evolutionary challenge 
>to human beings in the midst of severe crises in the social and natural 
>worlds. Can we recognize that the animal question is central to the 
>human question? Can we grasp how the exploitation of animals is 
>implicated in every aspect of the crisis in our relation to one another and 
>the natural world? 
>
>Animal rights is an assault on human species identity. It smashes the 
>compass of speciesism and calls into question the cosmological maps 
>whereby humans define their place in the world. Animal rights demands 
>that human beings give up their sense of superiority over other animals. 
>It challenges people to realize that power demands responsibility, that 
>might is not right, and that an enlarged neocortex is no excuse to rape 
>and plunder the natural world.
>
>These profound changes in worldview demand revolutionizing one's daily 
>life and recognizing just how personal the political is. I teach many radical 
>philosophies, but only animal rights has the power to upset and transform 
>daily rituals and social relations. "Radical" philosophies such as anarchism 
>or Marxism uncritically reproduce speciesism. After the Marxist seminar, 
>students can talk at the dinner table about revolution while dining on the 
>bodies of murdered farmed animals. After the animal rights seminar, they 
>often find themselves staring at their plates, questioning their most basic 
>behaviors, and feeling alienated from their carping friends and family. 
>The message rings true and stirs the soul.
>
>Let's be clear: we are fighting for a revolution, not for reforms, for the 
>end of slavery, not for humane slavemasters. Animal rights advances the 
>most radical idea to ever land on human ears: animals are not food, 
>clothing, resources, or objects of entertainment.
>
>Our goal is nothing less than to change entrenched attitudes, sedimented 
>practices, and powerful institutions that profit from animal exploitation. 
>Indeed, the state has demonized us as "eco-terrorists" and is criminalizing 
>our fight for what is right.
>
>Our task is especially difficult because we must transcend the comfortable 
>boundaries of humanism and urge a qualitative leap in moral consideration. 
>We are insisting that people not only change their views of one another 
>within the species they share, but rather realize that species boundaries are 
>as arbitrary as those of race and sex. Our task is to provoke humanity to 
>move the moral bar from reason and language to sentience and subjectivity.
>
>We must not only educate, we must become a social movement. The 
>challenge of animal rights also is our challenge, for animal rights must not 
>only be an idea but a social movement for the liberation of the world's 
>most oppressed beings, both in terms of numbers and in the severity of 
>their pain. As with all revolutions, animals will not gain rights because 
>oppressors suddenly see the light, but rather because enough people 
>become enlightened and learn how to rock the structures of power, to 
>shake them until new social arrangements emerge.
>
>Are we asking for too much? Justice requires only what is right, and is 
>never excessive. Is the revolution remotely possible? In a thousand ways, 
>the revolution is gaining ground. From the near nation-wide ban on 
>cockfighting to making animal abuse a felony crime in 37 states, from 
>eliminating the use of animals to train doctors in two thirds of U.S. medical 
>schools to teaching animal rights and the law seminars at over two dozen 
>universities, from increasing media coverage of animal welfare/rights issues 
>to a 2003 Gallup Poll finding that 96% of Americans say that animals 
>deserve some protection from abuse and 25% say that animals deserve 
>"the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation" it 
>is clear that human beings are beginning to change their views about other 
>species.
>
>Human beings simply will have to reinvent their identities and find ways to 
>define humanity and culture apart from cruelty. Whether people realize it 
>or not, this is not a burden but a liberation. One no longer has to live the 
>lie of separation and the opening of the heart can bring a profound healing.
>
>Animal rights is the next stage in the development of the highest values 
>modern humanity has devised - those of equality, democracy, and rights. 
>Our distorted conceptions of ourselves as demigods who command the 
>planet must be replaced with the far more humble and holistic notion that 
>we belong to and are dependent upon vast networks of living relationships. 
>Dominionist and speciesist identities are steering us down the path of 
>disaster. If humanity and the living world as a whole is to have a future, 
>human beings must embrace a universal ethics that respects all life.
>
>Growth is difficult and painful, and the human species is morally immature 
>and psychologically crippled. Human beings need to learn that they are 
>citizens in the biocommunity, and not conquerors; as citizens, they have 
>distinct responsibilities to the entire biocommunity.
>
>The meaning of Enlightenment is changing. In the eighteenth century it 
>meant overcoming religious dogma and tyranny; in the late twentieth 
>century, it demanded overcoming racism, sexism, homophobia, and 
>other prejudices; now, in the twenty-first century, it requires overcoming 
>speciesism and embracing a universal ethics that honors all life.
>
>We can change; we must. The message of nature is evolve or die. 
>
>http://www.drstevebest.org/Essays/AnimalRightsandtheNewEnlightenment.htm

In article ,
 George Orwell  wrote:

> In a country where it's legal for the state to kill (execute) humans,
> what hope have animals got?


And if eating animals is so bad, then why are they made out of meat?

On Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:11:16 -0500, John Stafford 
wrote:

>In article ,
> George Orwell  wrote:
>
>> In a country where it's legal for the state to kill (execute) humans,
>> what hope have animals got?
>
>
>And if eating animals is so bad, then why are they made out of meat?

So are humans. Should we eat them too?
.

In article ,
 Dave U. Random  wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:11:16 -0500, John Stafford 
> wrote:
> 
> >In article ,
> > George Orwell  wrote:
> >
> >> In a country where it's legal for the state to kill (execute) humans,
> >> what hope have animals got?
> >
> >
> >And if eating animals is so bad, then why are they made out of meat?
> 
> So are humans. Should we eat them too?

Why not? If they are dead. But I rarely eat meat. Only when my main dog 
dies, then we eat him. It's part of the tribal way.

On Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:01:17 -0500, John Stafford 
wrote:

>In article ,
> Dave U. Random  wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:11:16 -0500, John Stafford 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> >In article ,
>> > George Orwell  wrote:
>> >
>> >> In a country where it's legal for the state to kill (execute) humans,
>> >> what hope have animals got?
>> >
>> >
>> >And if eating animals is so bad, then why are they made out of meat?
>> 
>> So are humans. Should we eat them too?
>
>Why not? If they are dead. But I rarely eat meat. Only when my main dog 
>dies, then we eat him. It's part of the tribal way.

Like em tough hey?

On Aug 22, 8:20 pm, "O.pearl"  wrote:
> 'Animal Rights and the New Enlightenment

Death to the cats that kill rats, yeah rats have rights, ewe wanker.


MG

On Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:20:56 +0100, O.pearl wrote:

> Human beings have made moral progress, but slowly. In Western culture,
> it took over two thousand years to dismantle the ignorance, prejudice,
> and biases informing the myths that legitimated inequality, hierarchy,
> and inferiority as rooted somehow in human nature or the natural scheme
> of things.

First and foremost. Today's (human) Children's Welfare services are 
modeled on a pre-exiting Animal Welfare System. Animal Welfare 
Institutions came before Institutions for Child Welfare.

Secondly, Morality is not a sequential construct. This article is way too 
blithe in dismissing the horror of the perpetual nearly culturally 
embedded 'military action'. Now so accepted that ongoing War is being 
presented as a necessity to a ongoing Peace. "War is Peace" of Orwell's 
fiction has entered the realpolitik of this very day. 

Lastly, obviously this article does not apply to people who live 
(willingly or not) with cats. It is unfathomable to even image what 
'rights' these animals do not already have to the point of questioning 
who is given what to whom? The most delusional people are those who, 
quite pathetically, think themselves as being cat 'owners'.

In article ,
 ZerkonXXXX  wrote:

> Lastly, obviously this article does not apply to people who live 
> (willingly or not) with cats. It is unfathomable to even image what 
> 'rights' these animals do not already have to the point of questioning 
> who is given what to whom? The most delusional people are those who, 
> quite pathetically, think themselves as being cat 'owners'.

I wonder what the ratio is for those who own cats AND homes and those 
who own cats and do NOT own homes. :) (Folks, this goes back to 
ZerkonXXX's earlier posts regarding the double-think of home ownership.)

I live in a small Midwest, rural city. This year we have had two 
convictions of citizens shooting cats with bow-and-arrow within the city 
limits, and articles regarding the harvesting of feral cats in the 
countryside. See, if you shoot a loose cat in the city, it is cruelty to 
an animal, but outside city limits it is just taking care of natural 
space. Thank Borg for the coyote that they take most feral cats, and in 
turn there is an open season on coyote. Yumm! Cat-fed coyote!

Spay and castrate your pets.

On Aug 23, 9:22 pm, Shrikeback  wrote:
> Spay and castrate your pets.

Oh wait.  My wife pointed out that many animal
rights activists are all in favor of involuntary spaying
and castrating of homo sapiens too.  I guess it's not
a reductio.

On Aug 23, 4:25 am, Michael Gordge  wrote:
> On Aug 22, 8:20 pm, "O.pearl"  wrote:
>
> > 'Animal Rights and the New Enlightenment
>
> Death to the cats that kill rats, yeah rats have rights, ewe wanker.

Well, yeah.  What's up with predators?  Do they
have a right to eat or not?  Maybe animals only
have rights over homo sapiens; that has to be it.
Otherwise it just doesn't make sense.  So, what
animal rights is really about is reducing human
rights to meaninglessness.  Maybe it's like certain
leftards in this newsgroup say: human rights are
just a matter of taste.  Which brings us back to
the question: if Gawd didn't mean for mankind to
eat animals, why would She have made them of
meat?

"Shrikeback"  wrote in message 
news:5cf13107-8c4c-4a10-b9c0-78f1b31cda14@q40g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
On Aug 23, 4:25 am, Michael Gordge  wrote:
> On Aug 22, 8:20 pm, "O.pearl"  wrote:
>
> > 'Animal Rights and the New Enlightenment
>
> Death to the cats that kill rats, yeah rats have rights, ewe wanker.

Well, yeah.  What's up with predators?  Do they
have a right to eat or not?  Maybe animals only
have rights over homo sapiens; that has to be it.
Otherwise it just doesn't make sense.  So, what
animal rights is really about is reducing human
rights to meaninglessness.  Maybe it's like certain
leftards in this newsgroup say: human rights are
just a matter of taste.  Which brings us back to
the question: if Gawd didn't mean for mankind to
eat animals, why would She have made them of
meat?

=And dirty great fangs in our mouths.