For most of our time on Earth, we’ve always seen ourselves as the only beings capable of thought & emotion, viewing ourselves as blessed beings sitting on top of nature.
While this might be partially true, modern science has proven that most animals are sentient and can feel emotions, some of which even being self-conscious. As no animal has even reached human levels of evolution, we still reign supreme, but does that justify using our power to cause suffering to other species?
The answer is clearly a no, and yet we’ve done horrible acts to other animals. We've used their fur to make clothes, their skin to decorate our houses, and even their tusks to make luxury items. But going back way before all that, early humans used to hunt animals to stay alive, just like well, animals.
Truth be told, we’re making quite a bit of progress, cruelty toward animals is illegal in many areas around the world, but animal experimentation is still widely accepted in the medical space, often including higher mammals, such as monkeys, often placing them under terrifyingly cruel conditions.
The history of cancer research has been the history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply didn’t work in human beings. -Dr. Richard Klausner
And even putting our attitude toward animals aside, we still abuse, hurt, and kill each other as humans. While I agree that most people aren’t fully evil nor good, so are other animals.
When we contrast humans to other animals, we’re not really that different at core. We both mainly seek one main objective, existence.
"What’s the point of this whole article?" you might ask. We’re part of nature and we should be embracing that instead of living the deception of superiority, because if we want to actually break free from nature, we’d have to give up being human, and thus give up existing altogether.
We’re filling our atmosphere with CO2, burning down our forests, and destroying our own planet. As if we’ve surpassed nature, not created by it. The fact of the matter is that all living beings, from the simplest to the most complex, are all connected in a way.
