CreatureTenderness

This afternoon I made my way to the forks on the hunt for ethically raised beef. I have been a vegetarian on and off over the years. But, admittedly, I have usually put my wallet in front of the desire to know just where my food was coming from. There was always something about the consumption of meat that bothered me, but coming from a family that is very full filled by the preparation of food (especially meat) I have usually let my concerns float to the back of my mind. This week I have been reminded of my hesitations at the butcher. I have been reading Erika Fudge's Animal and, although I do not always agree with her, I find her argument compelling. What I have taken away from her book is this: we need to be more kind. Humans need to be more tender. The paradox that Fudge outlines is that we can be kind to the extreme to our pets, but we are not to the animals that we eat or wear. I would like to push this further. We are kind to the creatures (including humans -- because, after all, we are creatures) that are near to us -- our family, friends, pets -- but we do not always consider the delicate feelings of others. More than that, we often ignore the fact that they are creatures and feelings involved in our decisions. Over the last couple of months my MA research has lead me in a number of different disturbing directions. I have found myself welling up over the terrible experiments that were inflicted upon human beings. But, it only occurred to me today, as I was reading an article on the testing of hormones on rats, that I noticed that I was much more sympathetic to the human beings than the rats. I think this is because we can understand human suffering but we cannot understand rat suffering. Does a rat suffer? No, not in the way we believe it does. The only understanding we have is the one that we exist within. Rats have a distinctly different culture than human beings, and thus we cannot possibly understand their perception. But, that does not mean that we should ignore the cruelty that exists in our behaviour of these animals. The cruelty is the same whether we inflict it on humans or rats.  
There seems to me to be a lot of hardness in the world. Does it matter that we can truly "know" the suffering of another creature in order to stop the cruelty against them? Does it matter what the corporate justifications are for fracking a piece of land that holds historical and cultural significance to a group of people, if the result is the damaging of the land, the water and human health? At the core of our rational minds and hearts there must be the ability to know the difference between right and wrong. I know that I am talking about personal ethics and that some would argue that these ethics are debatable and individual. I do not think it is that difficult. In our hearts we must know the difference between what is right and what is wrong. Would you want this to happen to you? If not, you should not let it happen to other people. Can ethics be that simple? I believe they can be. Perhaps that makes me naive, and if so, then I am quite happy to be so.
We need to be better, bottom line. We need to work harder to empathize, to be reasonable, and to stand up for the rights of other creatures. It is not reasonable to destroy the earth. It is not reasonable to intentionally harm another being without provocation. Even with provocation, I find it hard to justify violence.
We will never be perfect, and we will always be stretching toward a better version of ourselves. The key to the betterment of our world is through the mutual tenderness and patience of each of us. We cannot expect perfection, or Utopian idealism, but we can expect betterment. We can expect compassion. We should expect more from our world and those people in it. We need more people like these strong women: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2011/09/blood-nation-women-arrested-during-blockade-fracking

We can only hope that we can all follow in their example.