Speciesism
"A striking fact now rendered familiar, even platitudinous, by the triumphs of recent genetic science is how closely all living things are related. Humans share more than half their genes with worms and fruit-flies, and almost all their genes with chimpanzees. Yet this intimate familyhood of life does not stop people from spearing worms onto fish-hooks, or testing drugs on chimpanzees. Nothing surprising there, you might say, given the way humans treat humans; in the face of gas chambers, racism, war and other avocations, what chance has a monkey or a cow?"
"There is a parallel between our excuses for maltreating apes and those for maltreating fellow humans. We locate a difference that we find threatening, or that we despise; we thereby make the other fully Other, so that we can close the door of the moral community against him, leaving him outside where our actions cannot be judged by the same standards as apply within. Racism and speciesism are thus the same thing ? they are myths about who belongs and who is alien.
?? a person?s integrity is never more fully tested than when he has power over a voiceless creature; and the route from pulling wings off flies to committing crimes against humanity is not a notably circuitous one.?
gawd almighty, don't you guys get it? It's so easy for us to say we are the superior species. Love has not had much to do with our history. Of course, if experimenting on animals would cure my mother of the effects of her heart disease/stroke, I'd say, go for it. That does not make me a better species. It merely means I can get away with it. We are different from other species.
The point I'm making is that humans, for all of our supposed higher evolution, have been the ones to cause the torture, degradation, horrors and what have you all throughout our history. That's it. That's the point. We've done that. To ourselves. To each other. To other species. And that makes us better. Yeah, right.
Unless, of course, you're a Raelian, then you believe creatures from outer space did it.
