Love All Animals

The English writer Terry Pratchett once said: ‘‘In ancient times, cats were worshiped as gods. They have not forgotten that.’’ Indeed, during the Ancient Egypt period, cats were venerated by the human populations. First, cats were seen as the incarnation of the goddess Bastet on Earth, a feline-headed woman. She was the representation of home, the sun’s warmth, maternity and the protector of pregnant women and children. But most importantly, cats were used to protect the crops from what was considered as pests. Thanks to the resonance of Bastet’s symbolism and their utility, cats were domesticated; allowed into the human circles. By being domesticated, they were being elevated from other non-human animals. The fact that they were even sometimes mummified demonstrates how serious the exception was, considering how mummification was a very sacred, noble rite –assuring that the body could be found again by the soul, in another life. What do you say if I tell you this is an early example of Speciesism?

The writing of this article was inspired - in addition to a personal philosophy - by one of the many consequences engendered by the fires in Australia, which started in September 2019. On the 8th of January 2020, it was announced that 10.000 camels would be killed by snipers; a decision supported by the Australian State Environment Ministry. Looking for water, the camels are getting closer to sources of water - precious at such times –and so closer to human populations, creating a risk since they move around the lands in large herds. In distress, they also fight around the water sources and so corpses contaminate the water. Even if the very first introduction of camels in Australia in the 1840s by colons was an enormous mistake since they perturbated the Australian natural ecosystems –and still do -now they are there, and so they are our responsibility. We put them on Australian territory so that their exploitation would help exploring and transporting goods. Of course, the massacre represents a quick and easy answer! However, I believe we shall never take the quick and easy path when sensitive, intelligent beings’ lives areat stake. The risk cannot be ignored, the camels represent a problem and I would not be able to provide any realistic solutions myself –but I’m sure there are, probably demanding more effort and consideration. But I can ask some questions: can we really kill other animals so easily? Can we reduce them to objects to get rid off when they are only trying to survive? The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said: ‘‘the assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.’’

Speciesism is, ‘in applied ethics and the philosophy of animal rights, the practice of treating members of one species as morally more important than members of other species; also, the belief that this practice is justified’. Philosophers Richard Ryder and Peter Singer, who respectively introduced and popularized the idea, speciesism is to be understood as adiscriminatory practice on the same level as sexism or racism. Our modern world and systems rely on a speciesist hierarchy, and the species at the bottom do not deserve our moral consideration: we are legally authorised, for instance, to kill them in mass. Around 65 billion animals are killed every year, only for our alimentary consumption. This hierarchy created by human beings for their own advantages, like all the hierarchies that have been created to classify and thus assign a value to any living, sensitive and intelligent being, is absurd and cruel. As Alice Walker said: ‘The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. Theywere not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.’ Moreover, even if we, ashuman beings, are animals who distinguish themselves from the other species among the animal reign by certain characteristics, we are still part of the animal reign ourselves. Thus, treating other animal species differently is as discriminatory as treating a woman or a person of colour differently from others –except, on a larger scale.

Here comes Anti-Speciesism: the animal reign is no longer to be divided into a pyramidal hierarchy but is rather considered as a circle, in which all the species, human or not, must cohabit. A circle in which human beings must applicate their moral values to their attitude not only towards other human beings, but towards all animals. “But Speciesism is a right given by our superiority”: anti-speciesists will ask you how do we call someone who only declares himself superior and makes it a fact. They will tell you there cannot be question of superiority and inferiority in terms of living beings who all feel pain, fear and stress. They will tell you what we consider being factors of superiority are only differences. And it is not about ignoring these differences, but about celebrating them. They will ask you how should we call someone who mistreat whoever who is not them, based on the other’s difference.

And here lays the main anti-speciesist idea: difference cannot justify discrimination. We do differ from other animals, for instance, by a certain level of intelligence –even if other species’ intelligences allow them to achieve purposes we couldn’t and these intelligences are often our main sources of inspiration to make technological achievements. But intelligence is not only the means to technique, exploitation and profit. Isn’t intelligence what also brings us our moral conscience and the sense of moral duty? Andisn’t moral conscience –allowing the emergence of the notions of what is bad or good –the actual only thing that we cannot find in other animals at all? Therefore, shouldn’t we seriously consider, morally, the way we treat other animals? Anti-speciesistFrench philosopher Aymeric Caron would even ask: have we not a duty to protect these who cannot differentiate good from wrong? “But we, as the human species, always lived like this”: It is not about judging thousands of years of human societies and how they treated and how we still treat other animals, but it is about questioning the human being, looking into the future and imagining a more moral version of ourselves. Does it not reside in our relationships with the other species? What justifies the right we gave ourselves to treat them differently –and violently, deadly?

Speciesism is not only an ‘us against them’ practice. It also concerns the way human beings changes their attitude in terms of morals depending on what categories of other animals they face –categories which are cultural constructs, not based on any biological facts. For instance, antispeciesists often take the example of domesticated animals: would we be able to kill and eat the cat? The dog? Why don’t we have the same empathy for cows and chicken? Anti-Speciesism picks up on the absurdity of our pyramidal vision of living beings. Occidental countries are in shock every year when they hear about the Yulin Festival in China, where dog meat is consumed. Why are we only shocked for dogs? Because they are part of the ones we chose to elevate? Anti-Speciesism picks up on the absurdity of our pyramidal vision of living beings and the illogical aspect of our behaviour.

Actually, anti-speciesists will not ask you to ‘love’ all animals. They’ll refer you to Darwin. There is irony in how humanity often uses the argument of the Theory of Evolution to detach itself from any God and thus to raise, to ascend to a sort of all-powerful status. Darwin wrote “Man in his arrogance believes himself to be a great work worthy of the intervention of a god. It is more humble and I think more true to consider it as created from animals" (Origin of species). Darwin’s theory debunks the myth of human beings as a special oeuvre, a great masterpiece. We are linked to the other animals and this has great philosophical implications that the concept of Speciesism and Anti-Speciesism try to consider. Perhaps we shall not kill our pairs? Freud in his Introduction to Psychoanalysis, talks about Darwin’s theory as one of the three ‘narcissistic wounds’ of humanity, something hard to accept. “The second denial was inflicted on humanity by biological research, when it reduced to nothing the claims of man to a privileged place in the order of creation, by establishing his descendants from the animal kingdom and by showing the indestructibility of its animal nature.” Perhaps we need to kill Narcissus.

The anti-speciesist question deserves, at least, to be asked; especially when ecology is already contradicting our currentsystems, how we chose to evolve, when the ecological emergency proves that systems that have been active for many years are not necessarily the good answers. What is more, the ecological question and the anti-speciesist one share one answer: veganism. If some anti-speciesist movements argue that meat consumption is not incompatible with Anti-Speciesism because the animal nature of human beings is partly made of being able to eat meat, others will argue that human beings doesn’t need to eat meat, they are omnivorous and doted of a moral conscience and thus, they can choose what to eat and completely erase the human participation to other animals’ suffering. Anti-Speciesism is the most radically different point of view from which we can try to imagine another world, and so by contrast, a better world? There is something else to be built, there is a task: and for Albert Einstein: ‘‘our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.’’

In an article for Forbes, David S. Anderson says: ‘‘The iconic image of an Egyptian cat arises from objects such as the leaded bronze statuette from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Numerous statuettes such as this were made during Ancient Egypt’s Ptolemaic and Late periods as vessels to hold the mummified remains of domesticated cats. The commonality of this form, and the dark coloration of the metal, lends to the popular impression of ancient Egyptian cats as black furred.’’ In our collective imagination, ancient-Egyptian cats are pictured as thin and black-furred, and this, only because of one depiction that is more popular than others. Actually, cats in ancient Egypt had tabby coats. This is the truth. The black thin cat is just a construct anchored in the wider culture. But the human being is a creature of habits, even when their habits are basedon lies, tales or wrong facts. Almost unable to completely change and almost unable to admit its faults. But the human conscience, again being the main distinguishing trait of our species, enables evolution. Perhaps it is time to recognize that the Egyptian cat is not black-furred.

Composed by,

Déborah Lazreug, Undergraduate of English Literature and History of Art.