On the dock of the bay... I grew up in the country, where we were much closer to the action than city folk. You know what I mean? At the age of four, I knew that our breakfast milk came out of a cow’s teats, and with my little hands I could even manage to pull a stream or two, to the unending amusement of Maloni, our version of the milkman. Eggs and bacon came from the yard, not from a supermarket cooler, and I was both intrigued and appalled when I saw Mayovo chopping a chicken’s head off with an axe for our Sunday roast. I didn’t know until my teenage years what an abattoir was, and nothing that we did on our farm ever desensitised me enough to prevent my puking in horror when I finally learnt what they actually did in those splendidly isolated, sombre factories of death. And then I found out about chicken batteries. And force-feeding of turkeys. And trapping for fur. And clubbing of seals. And the slaughter of dolphins and whales and sharks and rhinos to fuel erotic fantasies. That has been the dichotomy that framed my guilt. I know we have to eat and clothe ourselves and procreate, but do we really have to do it in such an abominably cruel and callous manner? Despite my fascination for the engineering that goes into the design and function of guns, I just cannot bring myself to find justification for sport hunting. Killing animals for fun is psycho. Really. Think about it. But I don’t think we can help ourselves, any more than we could, say, do away with war. It’s in our bones. So I sit here on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. What can I do? Ultimately, not much at all. I belong to the Wild Life Society, and support PETA and the Animal Anti Cruelty League and CROW. I campaign for rhino justice, fight with Zulu royalty about cultural cruelty, and try to persuade them that leopard skins should be on leopards, not draped around their shoulders. I know deep down inside that at the end of the day, I can’t fight City Hall, in this case the chemical code that instructs us to do these terrible things. All I can really do is embrace a Buddhist ethic, try to cleanse my own soul, and exercise a preference for the company of other hopeless idealists who think noble thoughts. youtube/watch?v=UCmUhYSr-e4
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:28:47 +0000
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