Liberation from “Total”

Dear fellow AR activist,

​I personally don’t know where even any total liberation activists stand in detail. Of course it’s decisively crucial that the interest in nonhuman-related-ethical-issues is continuously gaining momentum, and every event (or activity, or even thought) that is taking place to grow this momentum is an active expression of an overall ethical development evoluting in our societies. I believe in such developments, and I believe they are driven by many different forces and factors.

I am however generally suspicious of the internal structures of movements, for as long as an idea hasn’t taken ground and formed solidly enough in a society for it to be expressed pluralistically enough, so that you can argue with a full spectra of positions.

The canon of Animal Liberation or AR has strong tendencies to be unisono, and I blame that on the movements inner dynamics. And it is this narrowness within the movement why  I always try to double check what exactly is being practised and promoted beyond the bigger messages of any strongly idealistic event.

With total liberation events so far nothing seems transparent to me, structurally more than from the given goals and intentions.

I for myself prefer solutions to be less “total” and more sticking to the realities of the details.

Yours,
Just another fellow AR activist

No, by all means, no

The Humane Society of the United States is worse than I ever wanted to believe. How can the abolitionist approach by any means go together with the (not even) welfarist approach, as is suggested by Melanie Joy for instance as read in a reprinted article by hers on http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2560. (The divergence here is really about how factually nonhuman animals are understood and politically defended.)

Anyway, the Humane Society:

An Open Letter to the Humane Society of the United States from United Poultry Concerns

http://upc-online.org/thinking/121031hsus_open_letter.html

HSUS outreach director sends pigs “raised like children” to slaughter

HSUS staffer Maxwell speaks of “moving 900 to 1100 fat hogs each week,” for which he is paid $1.04 a pound, and tells how he sees his job as expanding the market for “humane” meat.

Source: Omaha World Herald   Oct 2011   10/19/2011

http://www.humanemyth.org/mediabase/1413.htm

HSUS: Carving Out a Niche for Family Farmers One Campaign at a Time

http://my-face-is-on-fire.blogspot.de/2011/12/hsus-carving-out-niche-for-family.html

I don’t think it’s necessary that the different sides get along with each other, when the point of the argument is irreconcilable. I think it’s more important to look for a consensus between people who are seriously concerned about animal issues, outside and inside of the pro animal rights movement.

Animal rights are as immediate a concern to many humans, as human rights are.

That you are concerned with animal rights issues, doesn’t mean that you are in any group or organization, etc. It doesn’t even mean that you feel represented by any existing approach to animal rights.

Still people within and without the “movement” can, as long as they are positively concerned, find common grounds on which they can

a.) reinforce and be mutually supportive and innovative about the practice of living an ethically responsible lifestyle as what regards nonhuman animal concerns,

and b.) people within and without the “movement” can find common grounds as what regards their attitude towards nonhuman animals, on which they can establish and grow a political fundament for phrasing a future full-rights-establishing-language of an animal rights law.

Normally religious beliefs are incompatible with Animal Rights, Earth Rights, and individual rights overall

Religions and the sacrifice of nonhuman animals , some links ( all accessed 21th Oct 2012 )

Animal slaughter in Islam is ritualisticNo human behavior is more hidden or misunderstood than offering sacrifice, both animal and humanAnimal Sacrifice … in the 21st century!Unethical Practice of ANIMAL SACRIFICEOver 100 million animals are slaughtered annually during Eid ul-Adha across the Islamic world within a 48 hour period

Buddhism banned animal sacrifice in the regions where it predominantly occured. However on Buddha’s birthday animal sacrifices take place, an gruesome mass killing carried out by various Hindu sects … http://www.buddhisma2z.com/content.php?id=470http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Animal-Sacrifice-on-Buddhas-Birthday/407150862641376http://www.stopanimalsacrifice.org

“China: Buddhism and Taoism generally prohibit killing of animals; some animal offerings, such as fowl, pigs, goats, fish, or other livestock, are accepted in some Taoism sects and beliefs in Chinese folk religion. In Kaohsiung, animal sacrifices are banned in Taoist temples” says Wikipedia, this however is not totally true, there is a Buddhist temple http://wikimapia.org/142877/Tzu-Chi-Temple where a horrific form of animal sacrifice take place, as I mentioned in this blog post about the murder of pigs in the Sanhsia Tzushi Temple.

The majority of pagans today in the Western societies are supposedly vegetarian or vegan

Vegan Pagans http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vegan-Pagans , http://veganpagans.tribe.net , http://diannesylvan.typepad.com , Animal Rights: My Pagan Value

Overall I want to note: Most religions are incompatible with Animal Rights and Earth Rights, simply because they put a god or gods, a divine concept, on top of all existence in a hierarchical manner. Paganism and some religions stand inbetween, depending on the features of their god/gods. The best is to let your reason speak, and not any contractualist and homoncentrically driven collectivist selfishness.

To argue that our secular societies also kills nonhuman animals, on an industrial scale, does not take anything away from the moral blindness that religions display in regard to other than human life, individual life and justice based on ‘common sense’ reasoning; after all religions falsely claim they have something to do with “love” and “the creation”. Any society has to face the consequences of the factul atrocities it commits – be it in the name of progress or a religious belief held.

The incapacity of humans to relate to the world and the universe in a co-creative, mutually respectful and sensitive way, brings with it an undesired incapacity to deal with one another as humans in a peaceful way. You can’t have the one without the other, you can’t arbitrarily draw a line between all the factors that matter for a morally sound coexistence … . But try to convince people of that … the things that never seemed to matter morally so much, someone might think, how could these things matter now? Well, welcome to the 21 Century!