After a recent published issue, I can’t help but reflect on the conflicted relationship the Independent and its readers have with animals.
A couple of weeks ago the Independent was celebrating sentient creatures for all the reasons a compassionate, aware human would. Prior to that issue, the Independent and its readers were celebrating eating sentient beings (Burger Week) while erasing the mind-numbing cruelty and horror those animals endure to end up on a plate.
The Independent will soon be celebrating county fairs and the agitation inflicted on animals with the purpose of putting them in fight-or-flight mode, getting them to run, jump and leap for human amusement. In that future edition, the Independent will also normalize the training of children to regard mutual love between humans and animals as an impediment against raising and then killing that animal for money.
How is it possible for decent people to hold two very contradictory thoughts in their minds: Participate in the mind-numbing industrial cruelty, exploitation, and ultimate consumption of animals (not to mention directly enabling animal agribusiness which is the singular force driving global climate change), and simultaneously love and adore those very same animals?
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Mahatma Gandhi once said. Maybe a fundamental shift towards peace and empathy can occur when we can courageously confront this hypocrisy within ourselves.
