Breathing through the wrong skin...

So did you ever wonder why it is that we know that if you put a frog in regular temperature water and then start to boil it that it will not jump out of the pot but slowly boil to death?  Well it’s simple.  Because someone thought it would be interesting to boil a frog in a pot.  I have a fundamental issue with this.  Now I understand there is a general argument for the fair and ethical treatment of animals and that is a well documented principle followed by many, and personified by the organization PETA.  So this is no revolutionary ideal.  But the average person is simply thinking about respecting animals and not hurting them.  Maybe they just love their animal and think all should be treated with respect or maybe it is that they have a holistic principle that entails that animals and humans are equal (or at least should be treated equally).  This is a fair start in regards to why the above treatment should not be done.  The bottom line is that an animal’s life is no more or less important than a human beings life.

As human beings – the dominant species on the planet – we collectively believe that we can do as we wish with the world and those in it.  There is no amount of respect, responsibility, or civilization in humanity as a whole.  This does not stop at mere animals, our closest relative, but goes further to all living – and perhaps non-living things – on this earth.  I always find it amusing to hear a vegetarian say that they are against the killing of animals and thus they do not eat meat, but they have no problem with the cutting, killing, and eating of plants.  What is the difference?  Only in our mind is there something different between the two.  We can break down the world in different species, but the problem then arises when we consciously and subconsciously rank them as too order of importance.  People have no problem killing a spider, or a bug of some sort.  “icky” little creatures that inspire fear in many.  So we just kill them.  This is wrong.  I mean it goes without saying that we live in one ecosystem that balances itself through the lives and non-lives of all mater and things in it.  Everything has its place and its role.  Remove something and perhaps something else will step into that role – but at what cost?  And is it sustainable?  This line of inquiry is again simple and obvious for people to grasp, yet this rationale does not seem to be doing the trick as people don’t follow it.

Ultimately, this all comes back to our everyday ‘ranking’ system of importance in the world.  By doing this we are claiming that we as human beings are ‘better’ than other things in the world.  It is odd that if you ask a number of people are they better than another person – I mean 'inherently' and wholly prior to development and socialization (i.e. One person feeling better than a black person because they are white).  A great deal (and hopefully a huge majority) of people would not claim that they are intrinsically better than another human being, but what if you asked them: are you better than a spider, a cockroach, a monkey, what about an amoeba?  I don’t think most people would get past laughing to actually truly answer the question.  It is taken for granted that human beings are the ‘higher’ species on the planet and that we can control – and deserve to control – the rest of the world simply due to our dominant abilities.  But where is the responsibility in this situation (after all 'with great power, comes great responsibility”), where is the civility?  I keep coming back to the idea of civilization.  But I truly believe that this is encompassed in the ability to rise above basic animal instincts, to dismiss the desires to do as you wish, to dominate others, and to act in the greater good of humanity and the world in a 'civilized' manner.

What does this mean though?  “The greater good of humanity and the world.”   People don’t tend to be able to put things in context, to see beyond the world directly in front of their face.  Is this because we are inherently shallow as human beings or because we just have not been socialized or taught to see holistically and/or in terms of the world as it exists itself?  I would say it is because this is not what we are taught to do.  I remember early in a graduate program one professor challenging my depth of thinking on one issue and pushed me to take my thinking wholly and completely outside the box and to creatively go beyond the simple object in front of me.  It hit like a light switch, and all of a sudden I saw things differently.  Why would it be that only I would be the one to experience such a thing and to see things in this context.  I learned this, as many others have.  It is just that we – as a collective social whole – have not been presented with and taught to see contextually in this respect.

We must rise above the narrow view of here and now, and understand that ‘here and now’ are much broader than we generally imagine today.  Only by seeing the world collectively/wholly together and respecting it collectively/wholly together – bugs, plants, animals, bacteria, dirt, etc – can we attempt to show the world, and all it entails, the mutual love that it deserves.