Showing Animals Respect and Kindness - S.H.A.R.K.
What you see in this video is the logical result of our species' unjustifiable belief that the interests of nonhumans should not be considered in our moral decision making. We treat them as unconscious objects - they're its that don't feel or need or want or desire. We've reduced them from individuals to things. Every animal in this video not only exists in this world as does a rock but they experience the lives that they live - this hell we have constructed for them to suffer in is felt.
Think about it, the hunger you sometimes feel, the pain you experience, the sadness, all that happiness, those simple pleasures like hugging your mother: As potent as those emotions, psychological, and physical experiences are for you, every nonhuman suffering in this video can relate. Can you even imagine that? And it's done for our entertainment.
I might appeal to Kantian ethics whereby nonhumans ought to be protected against such cruelty due to its indirect effects on some members of our species: We have an indirect duty to avoid cruelty because it may make us more prone to be cruel to some other human beings - we'd become hardened to the plight of other moral agents therefore violating direct duties we owe them.
Sounds reasonable, but I frankly couldn't possibly care less. It's not: We shouldn't torture another sentient being because maybe I'll be more likely to kick a cowboy's face in with a steal toed boot, which would be immoral (according to Kant) - It's rather: We shouldn't torture a nonhuman because that nonhuman experiences the torture:
Every harm, all that suffering we inflict, they themselves, as individuals, experience - Not you! Nor I! Nor your mother or father! Nor your child! They feel it; they scream. And because of this, they are owed, as a matter of justice, the right to be free from this treatment. Suffering ought to be avoided and happiness ought to be realized.
Look at your own ethics, it's all right there. This is about the suffering (in all it's horrible forms) and happiness (in all it's wonder) of other sentient beings. It is irrationality and prejudice that prevents you from admitting this.
I often wish Hell existed because we all belong there.
Will be crossposted @ Vegan Soapbox
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