Earthlings: Part Deux

Perhaps I am "beating a dead horse,"  (Forgive the phrase. That's horrible imagery.) but I really feel it necessary to revisit this. It is not just animals being used in food, clothing, entertainment, etc. that we should worry about. Commodification and disrespect is embedded deep within the human psyche.

"Though among the members of the human family we recognize the moral imperative of respect (every human is a somebody, not a something), morally disrespectful treatment occurs when those who stand at the power end of a power relationship treat the less powerful as if they were mere objects." ~ Earthlings

Warning: explicit images

Various celebrities in PETA pro-vegetarian/spay/neuter and anti-fur campaign advertisements. 

 As a side note, unless this was meant to be  ironic, does anyone else find it hypocritical to talk about objectification (be it human or animal) in advertisements? 

My point is that humans, as a whole, do not seem to really put enough focus on the value of anything in context of its inherent worth. Rather, if we are very focused on self, and many are, we look at bottom lines and how everything reflects upon us. Qui bene?

Think of how desensitized these individuals were to the violence they were inflicting. There were some rather rough individuals in the film. 

*PETA's Barnum & Bailey footage

However, are these jobs cruel themselves, or are cruel people just drawn to these jobs because they are able to excel at them.
After all, it is a fact that almost all murderers or abusers are knows to have begun their violence on animals. 

"The statistics supporting the animal abuse to other crimes connection are overwhelming. For instance, in one twenty-year study, 70% of animal abusers committed other crimes, and 44% went on to harm people. In another recent study, 99% of animal abusers had convictions for other crimes, 100% of people who committed sexual homicide (like Jeffrey Dahmer) had abused animals, and 61.5% of animal abusers had assaulted a human as well. A 1997 study showed that when comparing 153 animal abusers to neighbors of similar age and gender, animal abusers were five times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, three times more likely to commit drug-related crimes, even three times more likely to get traffic tickets."

Here is a link to the article: http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=8011

Indeed, the Medical News Today website has published an article titled “How the Brain Controls Emotion” This article claims that “researchers have now discovered that the brain is able to prevent emotions from interfering with mental functioning by having a specific "executive processing" area of the cortex inhibit activity of the emotion-processing region”. Our emotions, similar to the brain, we notice the pain that is being inflicted on an animal or individual and then we consider whether it is relevant of our attention. When we drive our cars, for instance, we notice that there billboard signs all over the city, but because our brain is structured so that we learn to discriminate between what is important at the moment or not, we do not focus on billboard signs, instead we focus on the road. 


In Eating Animals, Jonathan Foer introduces the reader to a backup killer from a poultry factory farm. The nameless narrator admitted that he “killed thousands of birds that way. Maybe tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. In that context, you lose track of everything: where you are, what you’re doing, how long you’ve been doing it, what the animals are, what you are. It’s a survival mechanism, to keep you from going sane” (608). 


Consider the Stanford Prison experiment. If humans were in a position of control and superiority, we would exert sadistic behaviors towards those who are weaker. I associate this behavior with the fear humans have of being dominated or put in a position where we are powerless. 

It is a question of overcoming our psychology, then. It is a fundamental question of what we will do in power. Perhaps, this is where I could segue into the Sztybel article, for I believe he really drew upon this in his Holocaust argument. 

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." ~Tolstoy

How true.

Blackberry: Men have always hated us. 
Holly: No. They just destroyed the warren because we were in their way. 
Fiver: They'll never rest until they've spoiled the earth. 

~ Richard Adams, Watership Down