Ocean Sentry
(From atlanticfreepress.com)- We mercilessly and thoughtlessly abuse, exploit, and slaughter commodified non-human animals simply to amplify our personal pleasure and fatten our wallets. Despite the slow and choppy moral progress we’ve made in how we treat our fellow human animals, we are still acculturated to view non-human animals as enslaved property or lesser beings, unworthy of the basic rights to life, freedom, and protection from torture.
As utilitarian social reformer Jeremy Bentham once stated, “The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer?’”
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
–William Ralph Inge, Outspoken Essays, 1922
(By Jason Miller)
