#antispeciesim — Public Fediverse posts

HYPOCRITICAL ANTI-SPECIESISM
And I speak for myself.

Anti-speciesism is an ethically and morally irreproachable position. In that sense, I consider myself anti-speciesist and I defend that all animals have the same rights, from a human being to the smallest of invertebrates.

If this statement makes you laugh, I am not going to be the one to tell you in this article how evolution works or the accumulation of catastrophes, extinctions and chance events that have made a primate and not a reptile, for example, the “dominant” living being on this planet.

We are a coincidence and that deprives us of any rights over other animals. To think that because we have a more developed brain, it gives us the right to take over the planet and the life it contains is not far from the Genesis of the Judeo-Christian Bible, where it is said that a god created plants and animals and, finally, before resting, created the human being to do with them whatever he wanted.

If you believe in the latter, I'll smile back at you.

If you don't believe it, but you still think that first there are the rights of man and then, maybe, there are the rights of other (some) animals, you are playing with fire by giving rights, scales and positions only based on a subjective criterion created by yourself: intellectual ability. Would you be first on the list using that criterion within your own species? Should we use another criterion? What do you think about skin color, physical ability, place of birth or economic power? Yes, it's exactly the same.

All this can lead us to think that the fairest option is to put all animals on the same level as our own. We consider ourselves anti-speciesists because we believe in animal equality (that of all animals), we are vegans, we are against any type of cruelty and exploitation and we seek community well-being. Not that “well-being” of whitewashing dairy companies.

We say that we no longer participate, consume, or do any activity that involves harming or killing any animal for our own benefit.

Can we congratulate ourselves? Perhaps. Although we must be aware that unless we live in a lost tribe in the Amazon and a few other exceptions, what we can do is welcome the grey and distressing world of contradictions. Or, at least, the world of hypocrisy.

At least I have no choice but to consider myself a hypocrite, and I am sorry.

I defend the life of all animals, but at the same time, every day, I end the lives of many of them and, what is worse, knowingly. Not on purpose, of course, I hope that people read me before judging me.

Without much effort I can think of a lot of everyday situations in which I am destroying animal life, contravening my own animalist and anti-speciesist ideals. Here are a few examples:
- I take the car or any means of transport to go to work (or whatever). On the way I know that I end the lives of many insects and other animals, flying or not. More so in the summer, day or night. I know it and I continue to do it. In the barely twelve minutes from my town to the city I “consume” more insects than a couple of swallows in the whole day, or bats at night.
- I will never be sure that all the vegetables I consume could have been grown and harvested protecting all animal life. I know it, I live in the countryside, I see how agriculture works. I even have a personal garden. But I also eat vegan food that I didn't grow or harvest myself.
- I go hiking, or just go for a walk, run or bike ride. There are insects on every path, many of which I step on by accident or because I don't see them. And I keep getting away.
- I have dogs. I protect them from ticks in many ways, but if I see one stuck I know how to remove it. Then I don't let it live. This spring has been incredible. The same if I catch a mosquito biting me.
- One of those dogs is a "hunting" dog. I adopted her precisely with the intention of removing her from that world that I clearly censure. But I can't take away from her the instinct that other people developed in her breed. So, although I try to protect wildlife when I go out with her, sometimes unsuccessfully, in my garden and in my orchard, where she has freedom, she hunts mice, birds and voles. I am responsible for those deaths, not the dog.

I am possibly, and individually, directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of more animals in a single day than any other non-human being who exists or has ever existed throughout his or her day. And there are another 8 billion like me. I trust that most of them are much less destructive.

What should I consider myself, anti-speciesist in theory and speciesist in practice? And who dares to throw the first stone at me?

Not all of the above situations are inevitable, and in many of them there is implicit speciesism, a prevalence of some species over others as reprehensible as the one that simply says that the human being comes first (*). Do we make distinctions? If the human being comes first, who comes next? And the third ones? In what positions are the insects? Do the bees come first?

Any attempt to order living beings based on their worth or importance is speciesism. All species have their function, their value and their purpose, in ecology we use for this the concept of ecological niche and all species have their own within an ecosystem. And within it there is no more important or more valuable because that is meaningless. It is basic ecology of 1st year of High School studies. It is not a fashion, nor is it trendy, it is not even because it is the most ethical and morally acceptable. It is because it is natural if we want the ecosystem to be maintained. All species have the same value (**). Including us. With our overdeveloped brains, our science, our technology, our advantages and our shortcomings.

And also with our hypocrisy, at least mine.

The immediate question is that, if in the end I am not able to fulfill my own ideals, what is the point of continuing to believe in them? What is the point of continuing to be an animalist and anti-speciesist? Is it useful? The answer is yes, it does make sense and yes, it is very, very useful. Infinitely more useful than doing nothing or throw in the towel.

It is useful, even if I have a huge guilty conscience for not achieving or not getting what I wanted. Even if I did not get involved at all in making my ideas known or planting tiny seeds in people's consciences so that some of them germinate in the future, very slowly. Because this takes time. It took me years myself and that is even though I have the advantage of my studies (biology).

It is worth it simply for personal development. The guilty conscience is there and it doesn't go away, but it is compatible with the mental well-being of contributing in small ways. We will continue to see the insects on the windshield of our car, but perhaps we will slow down; we will pay more attention to the road and avoid all the ants we see; we are already vegans and we do not contribute (as far as we know) to the mistreatment, cruelty and exploitation of animals. Yes, of course, these and other micro-contributions are infinitely anecdotal because there are 8 billion of us in our species, but I trust that our minority will gain more and more weight and the seeds we plant will germinate even if we never see it.

Being anti-speciesist may cost us a lot more. In fact, we have it so ingrained that, as I pointed out at the beginning, many people think that "does a mosquito have the same rights and freedom as me? is a joke!". I simply think that, if we understand the concept, we should not be ashamed to think that this is the case, and we act whenever we can in accordance with this… everyone wins.

And if, going beyond our personal sphere, we dare to do more, even better.

(*) If these insects were little flying angels, and it was enough for them to have a miniature human appearance (think of Peter Pan's Tinkerbell), we would have invented means of transport to protect them many years ago. This is speciesism. But what nonsense I say! They are “only” flies, grasshoppers, moths, even if there are dozens of them; some absent-minded bird; maybe some mouse, foxes, cats…; the list increases with roe deer, wild boars, deer… We can rest easy, right? There are only serious problems if a human being is run over.

(**) But if we want to be extravagant, in an ecosystem, any species that is not a producer (plant or algae) or a decomposer (fungi and bacteria) could be dispensable because “nothing else” contributes complexity, diversity, genetic richness and biological variety. Among them, as one more, is Homo sapiens.

#vegan #veganism #vegano #veganismo #animalismo #derechosanimales #animalrights #antiespecismo #antispeciesim