Do you ever think before you kill a fly?
Russell Brand says, “say a fly comes in me house, I tolerate that little asshole, because I feel like he’s a fly, he’s just on his journey here through life.”
Have you ever thought about what gives us the right to kill a fly? I mean, who are we to decide if a fly should live or die? Who are we to decide its fate?
Is it because we as humans believe we are smarter? More capable? Because we can? And what is the sole purpose of killing that fly? Because its bothersome? What if we took away the life of every person or animal that was bothersome? What would that make us? What if we killed for fun? Oh wait…we do.
This planet we call Earth, was gifted to every creature and living thing that is upon it, equally. I mean, we weren’t even the first ones here. Yet, we as human beings, stomp around like we own the place. Not only do we pretend we own the place, we destroy it with our excessive need for power and greed.
Animals have continuously lived in their habitats without the need to disturb human beings, nor do they actively hunt or kill us for sport. Trees provide us with the very thing we need to breathe and in return we chop them down, while stripping away the very place that hundreds of thousands of animals call home. We exchange our clean air and our abundance of oxygen, for materialistic items that we are guaranteed to never request while we lie on our death beds, struggling to breathe.
We take baby animals from the moment they are born and we decide their fate. We decide that they will be used for the sole purpose of feeding our greedy bellies. We don’t just implement that decision, we hold them hostage and never let them experience what it means to live. Like children, they cannot speak up for themselves nor can they gather the means to fight back. They are brainwashed by human beings, just like the slaves of their masters once were. Like slave owners, we call these animals “dumb” and look beyond the pain in their eyes, and view them as our property to do with what we please.
Just who do the hell do we think we are?
We justify our actions by dumbing down the intelligence and feelings that animals undoubtedly possess. We tell ourselves that “they don’t have feelings like you and I.” We convince ourselves that these animals need us and that without us they would die. But, did you know that through teamwork, a herd of buffalo, relatives of the cow, have the intelligence to protect their calves and the stamina to outrun a lion? We rip the “exotic” looking animals from their vast homes and confine them to cages for display, just so our greedy human selves can point and gawk at them for entertainment. When we treat people the same way we treat animals, we call it slavery and torture. We are their masters, and they are our slaves.
What would it look like if we allowed nature to be as it was intended? Would we suddenly be attacked by pigs, cows, sheep, and chickens?
By claiming the power to determine the fate of an animal, we have changed the way human beings see them. We spend billions of dollars to feed, breed, and kill them only to feed our own gluttonous bellies, meanwhile millions of people still starve. Though we have the means to live on less, we allow our selfish mindsets, who never have enough, to have more, while doing whatever it takes to get there.
Too much plastic and waste? Solution: Dump it into the oceans.
Not enough food to serve the “worthy”? Solution: Pump up the majority of our food with antibiotics and GMOs.
Not enough palm oil? Solution: Destroy all the forests it takes to get it.
This is an incredibly backwards ass way to show our gratitude and appreciation for the gift of life that has been given to us.
We have been behaving like spoiled-rotten children and its time to wake up because we can’t have everything our greedy egos want, not without destroying everything around us.
Life is a playground, however, we have spent too much of our time being the bully.
I dream of a world where all living things live freely and as ONE…
ONE LOVE
The post Who Gave Humans the Right to Decide the Fate of All Living Things? appeared first on Educate Inspire Change.