Animals and people

For cen­turies the re­la­tion­ship be­tween hu­mans and an­i­mals was with­out any com­pli­ca­tions, an­i­mals were to serve what­ever pur­pose hu­mans saw fit to give them. Surely the lesser forms of life were here to ben­e­fit us pic­tures of God. And then came Dar­win with his the­o­ries and ru­ined that world or­der.

Not that it meant any im­me­di­ate im­prove­ments in the treat­ment of an­i­mals, but ever since we have had to deal with the knowl­edge that what we used to con­sider as noth­ing but a con­ve­nience, or an in­con­ve­nience, is ac­tu­ally some­how re­lated to us. And slowly we have started to pay at­ten­tion into how we treat those fel­low species. And so, to­day the ques­tion need­ing to be asked is how far should we go in equal­ity with an­i­mals?

Some say we should stop tak­ing ad­van­tage of an­i­mals al­to­gether, that we should be able to live from plant-based prod­ucts only. Maybe even give some an­i­mals, such as chim­panzees and dol­phins, or even dogs and cats, some­thing re­sem­bling hu­man rights. Af­ter all it’s proven that they re­sem­ble many traits con­sid­ered as hu­man.

Kesäisin mi­et­tein

But in a way all that is but one form of the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the same prob­lem we have had all along. Our way of think­ing just tends to be in­cred­i­bly hu­man cen­tric, an­i­mals don’t need the right to be hu­mans but the right to be an­i­mals. They were fair­ing quite well un­til we came along, so they prob­a­bly won’t need our pro­tec­tion and we aren’t high and mighty enough not to need them. Af­ter all, all of us an­i­mals need each other.