"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." - Gandhi.
I'm not disregarding how humans treat one another, because that has always been an unforgivable evil. We are intentionally cruel and have invented endless means to torture and inflict excruciating pain on one another. We are to be pitied.
But when I think of the hundreds of billions of animals we kill annually, and the horrific conditions they're forced to endure as we dominate and manipulate them, I despair. Humans are not always innocent, so I cannot always grieve them being harmed, but animals are innocent, and what right have we to abuse those that cannot defend themselves from us?
I have seen so many, many awful things and cannot imagine how any human individual has the capacity to do them. But they do, every single day, on a terrifying scale.
The worst of it is that everyone knows it's wrong, and the vast majority excuse themselves of any responsibility for the sake of gluttony, and continue to fund and contribute to it. The cognitive dissonance is astonishing and the hypocritical 'I love animals' while continuing to eat them is infuriating. And it's literally destroying not only the animal victims, but the entire world. Covid is the fault of selfish carnists, as well as so many other zoonotic diseases.
I have naught but contempt for our species. We do not deserve this precious planet and its inhabitants.
www.thesun.co.uk
