Within ancient Jewish culture, your name wasn’t simply what you were called; rather it spoke of your very essence. Today, animals are named as product, experiment, sport, and ingredient. To encourage rethinking of how society regards non-human life, Sarx is now receiving entries to our Named in Love competition.
“For wool or for meat! $150 for the two of them!”
Stop. Wait. What? I could feel my blood curdle slowly within me. My breathing became jagged as I typed frantically, as if without thinking at all about what my fingers were doing, “I’ll take them. Just tell me when I can come and get them, and I’ll take them both”
How should we as humans relate to our fellow sentient beings – those we coexist with now, and whom we may encounter in the future? Animal People’s online exhibit, ‘Beyond Human: Animals, Aliens, & Artificial Intelligence,’ explores what we know of non-human intelligence and the questions it raises.
In Western religion, the Earth is merely the host on which we feed in our earthly passage, and the underlying assumption of the new stewardship dogma is that we should preserve nature in order to continue to exploit it. We need a revolutionary transformation that will free us from religious bondage and open our eyes to the beauty, wonder and Mystery of this Earth.
Confucius taught that a noble person should not abandon morality for the space of a single meal. From his time 2500 years ago until the present day, one question has loomed especially large over the Chinese dinner table: is it morally acceptable to kill animals for food?
Stories featuring anthropomorphic animals have been a staple of human culture for millennia, but Disney’s new animated film stands out from the herd by depicting animals not just as stand-ins for humans, but unique sentient beings with interests and value of their own.
Egyptian writer Fatima Naoot has been sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting Islam” by criticizing the Eid al-Adha animal sacrifice. Yet there are many devout Muslims who argue against the Eid slaughter as contrary to their religion’s true values.
In H.G. Wells and Animals, A Troubling Legacy, I struggled to reconcile the seemingly pro-animal themes of Wells’ famous stories with his own defense of vivisection later in life. In Wells’ 1928 essay Popular Feeling and the Advancement of Science. Anti-Vivisection, transcribed here, he details his own personal views on vivisection.
H.G. Wells’ 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau is remembered as a powerful attack on vivisection, yet he himself would come to defend the practice later in life. How can we resolve the paradox between the strong pro-animal themes of Wells’ famous stories, and his own callousness toward animals harmed in the name of science?
His Holiness Chatral Rinpoche, the inspiration for the Jangsa Animal Saving Trust and who dedicated his life to saving the lives of other beings, passed away on January 5, 2016. This is a transcribed text of His Holiness Chatral Rinpoche, on his reasons for being a vegetarian.
“Most leftists, I believe, don’t have a problem with such comparisons. It’s only when human suffering is compared to animal suffering that these analogies become truly objectionable…”
Perhaps Mars once did have “life”.
Perhaps there were once dragonflies and porcupines
Elephants and roses
And there had to be humans…