Love: The Grand Ethic
This Christmas, we choose love. Read below to discover what we believe such love entails:
A genocide of epic proportion rages every moment of every day, on every continent, in every town. So vast and horrific the scale of this genocide, that 3,000 lives every second does it claim. Multiply the human population seven times over and you still fall drastically short of the number each year slain. In the US alone, 8.3 billion beings are smothered from existence each year. But across the world, this number swells to more than 56 billion, rising by more than 100 million heads annually. And even this figure drastically underestimates the totality of death by tens if not hundreds of billions of lives lost each year at sea, whose numbers are so great they are measured only in tons. “What is this genocide?” you may ask. This, and only this, is the genocide of animalkind.
Though you may criticize me for placing so much emphasis on this so-called genocide, I will qualify it beyond any reasonable doubt as the single greatest atrocity committed in history of mankind. But my purpose today is not to condemn mankind for his selfishness, cruelty, and arrogance; rather, it is to identify the means by which we may overcome these vices, and your unique role in this ascension.
Today, I unveil a marvelous thesis, as admirable as it is enviable, the import of which, the richest and most valuable you may ever hear. In this manner am I glad that I with this final presentation cap a semester of brutal deadlines, constant humiliation, and yet fine achievement on the part of everyone. In fact, I may legitimately state that there were only two failures of a speech this entire semester, one if not both of which were mine. Regardless if not also in light of my past failures, I now render before you the grand nature of my sweeping thesis, as well as the overarching structure of the presentation it inspired and which you now behold.
Today, I argue love is the panacea to the most treacherous and despicable evils of our era, chief among them the human genocide, the animal massacre, and the global terror. I shall then extemporize upon the philosophy of love, and the power of this grand ethic to vanquish the world of its myriad grotesqueries. An understanding of this philosophy then in hand, I shall delve into the animal massacre, and what we can do to sanctify our world of this infernal scourge. I will argue for a just and equitable world, founded on sound morality rather than primitivistic barbarism; I will argue for us all to embrace a vegan lifestyle and abandon our primitive ways; and most importantly of all, I will argue for an existence cast in the purest and most beatific ray of love, that the earth may shine in its resplendent glory until time immemorial.
It is as then I shall discuss this grand ethic in relation to the greatest evils which plague our world—namely the human genocide, the animal massacre, and the global terror, the destruction of each other, animals, and our planet, respectively. Yet one word has the power to unravel this dreadful cobweb of evil which ensnares our world. This is the word of “love.” This is the meaning of the grand ethic. Before we proceed, let us briefly examine the philosophy of love, as only then can we understand how this grand ethic may, as I argue, vanquish the evils of our world.
In a cruel and barbaric world, love is the philosophy of kindness, that we should treat others with dignity, that we should act generously, that we should be understanding, forgiving, and helpful. Love is the philosophy of gentleness, that we should treat others graciously, that we should we should outstretch comfort to an ailing heart, that we should tread lightly upon one another, our planet, and all its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman. Most of all, love is the philosophy of goodness, that we should treat others with courtesy, that we should act compassionately, that we may thereby perfect our world as one of progress, prosperity, and peace. Love we may therefore regard as a universal ideal, which we realize precisely through the kindness, gentleness, and goodness with which we endow this world. And for love is neither hate, nor spite, nor malice, but goodwill and good deed, it unites us in spirit, while from the cauldron of hatred spews a toxic slurry that dissolves our very souls.
Equipped now with a terse, yet compelling understanding of the philosophy of love may we now peer over the brim of that foul cauldron and inhale its toxic brew. But before we delve into this underworld of darkness, I shall reaffirm those evils we hold self-evident—the human genocide, the animal massacre, and the global terror. Whereas my overarching thesis focused on the totality of these evils, my secondary thesis, merely a supporting beam of the primary, shall strive to convince you that the human genocide and the animal massacre are but different sides of the same foul token—murder—and that we should neither choose nor yet blindly accept either, that we should rally against these evils instead and dispel them from our world forevermore.
Having both established the tenets of love and predicated the cause for a world steeped in this splendid philosophy, I proceed now to the practical application of my theses. In the brief remainder of time, I shall demonstrate that to love ourselves, our animal brethren, and our planet, we must embrace a vegan lifestyle. I will conclude with a creed I disburse to all humanity for the very sake of humanity, an ode, presage, and call to the world of love for which we should all wish, and toward which we should all strive, that we may know kindness rather than hate, empathy rather than cruelty, good rather than evil.
As chance would have it, despite my poor performance in past presentations, I have consumed a buffet of books each time, and I gorged myself more so before this presentation than any other. But the considerations I explored in these books were more philosophical, rather than statistical, in nature, striving to perfect our ethical systems and examine the implications thereof for animalkind. I happened to pluck from the many-shelved labyrinth of the library a most masterfully written work, Defending Animal Rights by Tom Regan.
To recapitulate his central argument, if sentience, the ability to feel pain, joy, and fear, is a sufficient condition to extend rights to human beings, it is also a sufficient condition to extend rights to all sentient beings, nonhuman animals included. In fact, it is a necessity of consistency, lest we condone unnecessary cruelty, cause needless suffering, and perpetrate literally fatal hypocrisy. To lend more strength to this argument, we know from our dogs, cats, and even turtles that no two are alike, and that each possesses a distinct personality. We moreover know that these animals retain an intimate stake in their well-being, that they would rather remain whole than be dismembered, exist in a state of pleasure rather than torment.
In an argument I penned some weeks ago, I furthermore concluded we may reasonably and strongly infer many animals feel pain to same extent and in the same capacity as do we. Our brains operate by the same chemistry, utilize the same pain-pleasure pathways, and share the same structures of the limbic system, the emotional center of our brain. Among neuroscientists, there now exists widespread consensus that not only do animals feel pain, but that such pain is generally equivalent in intensity to what a human would experience given the same stimulus, particularly among the higher mammals—dogs, cows, and pigs, to name but a handful. In matters of pain and pleasure, the only characteristic that truly distinguishes human suffering from animal suffering is the ability of the former to describe this subjective experience in the human tongue. Though animals never articulated a language as advanced or a reason as evolved as that of mankind, neuroscientists agree the higher mammals possess cognitive capacities similar to that of human 5 year-olds, learning aversion to painful and noxious stimuli just as a human child learns to fear an abusive parent.
I also had the pleasure of temporarily crashing my sister’s birthday party at an Indian restaurant several years ago, citing the other myriad and overwhelming arguments against the consumption of meat, and commenting on the profoundly unethical manner not only in which animals daily live, but by which humans daily die. Every year in the US, we waste enough grain on factory-farmed animals to feed nearly a billion starving people, and this has been the case for well over 20 years, before even the year 1997 when Cornell University researchers first brought this startling fact to the attention of the scientific community. More than a billion people suffer from chronic hunger while we Americans grow obese and waste our tremendous bounty, which we as a people mismanage so profoundly I now believe we simply don’t deserve it. 21,000 people die of hunger every day; more than 7 million people die from hunger every year. With a final flourish, I pushed from my chair, and stood before my table. Risen to such crescendo, in earshot of everyone, I parted with the most vehement words I had ever dealt my family and friends, “if this, eating meat, tormenting animals, and allowing millions to starve, isn’t immoral, then I don’t know what is.”
My argument therefore rests that the animal massacre is both and product of and a contributor to both the human genocide and the global terror. But my argument also rests on a crux of hope. And my hope is none other than love, permeating every existence, our every affair, and even the whole universe. I believe firmly that love has the power to absolve the greatest atrocities of the world. To overcome these evils, we must love one another, our animal compatriots, and our planet in all the splendrous beauty of that thin veneer of life. Humanity had a beginning, and shall almost certainly have an end. Let us forge a history and blaze a path for the eons to remember, not for the technological terror and destruction we can reap on each other, animals, and our planet, but for lending a graceful, merciful, and compassionate existence to an otherwise cold, hostile, and indifferent universe.
