Don't ask Benjamin Mackenzie
what animals are for?
Perhaps I should ask
young Benjamin Mackenzie because in a debate with him on Neath Voice
for Everyone he told me that as he had worked in a slaughter house he
was more of an expert on animals than I was.
I realised that he had asked
the question what are animals for. And saw them in the crude way the
market sees any object or unit of production? For close on 8,000
years since we have domesticated them we have been troubled on what
they are for?
Are they for our entertainment,
are they here to feed us or are they here to be part of an
interconnection with us in the a fragile biosphere to be maintained.
It is no accident that we domesticated animals, created slavery and
and subjugated women at the same historical point. Would we ask slave
owners to determine the difference between slave rights and slave
welfare. Would we ask sexists to determine the rights and welfare of
women? I think not. Its not been long since animals were said by the
church to lack souls, in the 16th century many preachers denied that
women had souls and in the deep south of the USA 150 years ago many
of Benjamin's ilk would have said that slaves were not human.
The truth is that we humans are
animals be it a very complex one. We are the only species that makes
war, organises the slaughter industry into a rational business
manner. You may know that in the 1930s the Nazi visited the American
Slaughter industry and designed the concentration camps after the
manner of the slaughter house.
Now of course a few tame Tigers
in Tonna last September is a light year from this. However if we can
use animals in entertainment we deny them anything more than being
here for us , to be used to feed us, to entertain us, to be a
commodity to be exploited and nothing more.
Its not long ago that we had
freak shows, that we had gladiatorial combat. Around the year 1400
the people of Sumatra, found what they considered to be a white ape
washed up on the beach. It was obvious to them it was just an animal.
They put it in a cage and tied it to a post and they found after it
had died strange marks scratched on that post. It was clear that they
were meaningless. Some 200 years later the post was examined the
scratches turned out to be ancient Greek letters and words in
Latin....the white ape was a well educated European. He had been made
to dance and jump to entertain his owners....they did not know what
they had in the cage.
We are only just beginning to
understand , the complexity of "animal emotions" of their
sophistication. So I wont be fooled by the Benjamin claim .I dont
eat meat, the idea of it sickens me, I abhor hunting , when we say "
they are only animals" at best we mock a sophisticated non human
person....at worst we open the doors to the gas chambers.
Our language is littered with
the use of animals as terms of abuse. David Cameron denigrated the
refugees at Calais as a swarm. So going to see a few tame tigers in a
zoo is like visiting a large mansion in the Confederate South in the
1840s...there are the comic house slaves, brought up well , fed well
all their needs met and outside in the estate there are the slaves
brutally treated, mere "beasts" of burden, no more than the
product of their labour, to be sold and used..their humanity and
rights denied. The King James 1 Bible translated the Hebrew to read
that humans were "masters" of nature, the original Hebrew
should have read “steward” and stewards do not use that role to
entertain....... over to you Benjamin...........
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