Every time I see a modern chicken farm on TV, I wonder, isn't it hard for those chickens to live in such a small iron cage? Won't they go crazy? This question has been bothering me, and I didn't understand the truth until I met Peter Singer.
It turned out that in order to minimize the cost and maximize the profit, the farm imprisoned tens of thousands of chickens in a dark and narrow space. Each chicken only occupies a place as small as 32 sheets of homework paper. On this page of homework paper, they can't walk or turn around, but they just stand and are forced to do painful "homework". Standing, standing, this stop is a lifetime.
How long do they live? In the past, it took at least two years for broilers to eat naturally: if they can enjoy the natural years, the life span of chickens can reach about 10 years. In modern chicken farms and chicken "concentration camps", broilers can only live for 50 days and be slaughtered; Laying hens, because they are laying machines, can live longer, and once they pass the peak of laying eggs, they will be slaughtered immediately.
Their recipes show that people have done everything possible to exploit small life by using intelligence to tamper with nature. Hormones, antibiotics and sedatives are added to chicken feed (to prevent them from crowding, obesity and hyperactivity)
Excitement, irritability, depression, madness) and other chemicals, chickens eat these carefully prepared toxic foods, and can only grow meat and lay eggs quickly in a very short time in accordance with chemical instructions and commercial intentions, producing a steady stream of protein and fat for human beings who endanger them, and completing a mandatory fate of "body mechanism".
In their short life, they have never seen a ray of sunshine, a green leaf, a heterosexual, a stretch, a moment of free running, and a sweet cry. They are alive and have never had any happiness.
Chicken, as a docile and lovely animal that has been with human beings for thousands of years, has been reduced to such a miserable situation. Looking at such a modern chicken "concentration camp", if you didn't believe that there is a hell in the world before, now you can only say that you not only believe it, but also see it.
Peter Singer wrote Animal Liberation not because he particularly likes "pets" or "loves" animals, let alone sentimentality, but to expose "human atrocities against nonhuman animals" and discuss how we should treat animals on a serious political and moral level, "in order to change your ideas and practices towards a very large life group from the heart". This life group is all kinds of animals except us. "
This book is about human atrocities against non-human animals. Just like the atrocities committed by whites against blacks for centuries, such atrocities have brought and are bringing great pain and disaster to animals today. The struggle against such atrocities is as important as any struggle on moral and social issues in recent years.
Peter Singer's Animal Liberation reveals how humans slaughter and mistreat animals on a large scale, including animal husbandry, clothing, recreational animals, companion animals, experimental animals and so on. This book shows us that our planet has become a huge slaughterhouse, and how cruel and ignorant human beings are without realizing it. For animals, the earth is like hell.
Like us humans, these animals have an incredible sense of magic. Like us, they not only exist in the world, but also realize their existence; Like us, they also have an inner world. They are all different and unique individuals.
Like us, they are citizens of the earth. Like us, they struggle for survival. They, like us, can seek comfort from themselves in difficulties. Like us, they expressed different feelings. In short, they are living beings like us.
If you study how important animals are to human survival, you will find that we are totally dependent on them: companions, food, clothes, sports and entertainment, medical research. On the contrary, what we see is the complete contempt of human beings for these non-human contributors. There is no doubt that this is the so-called "bite the hand that feeds you".
Some ignorant people pretend that animals with lower intelligence are more numb to pain than people. In fact, we don't know the true "feelings" of animals at all. It is nonsense to say that animals will not suffer under torture. For animals, pain is also a real feeling, which is transmitted to the brain through nerves. In addition to the nerves related to intelligence, there are also visual, olfactory, tactile and auditory nerves. In some animals, these nerves are more evolved than humans. Animals also have the right to live, and animals also suffer and fear.
Because we all live on the same planet, all life is citizens of the earth. As citizens of the earth, there is no gender discrimination, racial discrimination or species discrimination between them. It contains every kind of life on the earth, warm or cold-blooded, mammals, vertebrates or invertebrates, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and humans. Therefore, human beings are not the only species on this planet. Millions of other creatures, like humans, have evolved together and lived together on this planet. However, human beings want to monopolize the earth, and often treat other kinds of residents or life on the earth as things. This is the so-called species discrimination. Any kind of life has suffering, and we have a moral responsibility to think about it. No matter what the nature of life is, the principle of equality requires that if one life suffers, it means that all lives suffer the same pain. Life has identity, just wearing different faces, even if these animals don't have as many desires as humans, even if they don't know everything like us; However, like us, they all have some of the same needs, can feel some of the same things, long for food, water, shelter and friendship, and hope to have freedom of movement and avoid pain.
Non-human animals are owned by humans. Like humans, many non-human animals can understand the world in which they were born and raised. Otherwise, they will not survive. So although there are many differences, there are still many similarities. Like humans, these animals have incredible consciousness. Like us, they not only exist, but also realize their existence. Like us, they have their own unique sense of life.
Writer Peter Singer wrote in his best-selling novel Enemy, A Love Story, "When Herman witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish many times, he kept thinking in his heart: human beings are as cruel to other lives as Nazis, and human beings are arrogant in front of other species, which fully shows omnipotent racism. They think that having violence means having truth. Let's compare these deliberate and obvious killings, one group lives in another group. Some people claim that the suffering of animals cannot be compared with that of Jews or slaves. Actually, they are the same. For the victims of the Holocaust, their disasters and sufferings continue. Henry Beston wrote in his work The Far House: "If we think that animals are not as complete as human beings, or because they are not as handsome as human beings in form, then we are greatly wrong. We can't measure animals in a world that is older and more complete than our human society by human scale. They are exquisite and perfect. They are born with a super feeling that we humans have lost or never had, and live by a sound that our human ears can't capture. Although they are not our race, they are not ours. They belong to another country, but they are trapped in the net of life and time with human beings and experience the glory and suffering of the earth together.
After reading "Animal Liberation", I suddenly felt very sad and deeply repented for my unrestrained meat eating experience. In the process of watching, my heart became heavier and heavier, which brought me unprecedented mental pain. I suddenly thought of the end of the world. This is really not a prophecy. Isn't destruction getting closer and closer to mankind? We humans are really industrial civilization without progress. To be exact, we are going backwards and going to hell without hesitation. This is a real journey of death. We have destroyed and changed a lot, not making everything better, but getting worse! All this is caused by ourselves. We release our desires and greed to the maximum. Isn't this the beginning of all disasters?
We are not directly involved in killing, but who can say that we are not indirectly involved in killing? Is it possible to call it a terrible world only by hurting the same people? Aren't we all looking for a dignified peace? The whole meaning of other species and ethnic groups is only to satisfy human entertainment, food, clothing and medicine?
Medical experiments, military affairs and all kinds of arbitrary trampling and slaughter? We can't live without animals for a moment, but we really bite the hand that feeds us!
After reading Animal Liberation, my mind was full of bloody scenes. Those innocent, lovely and helpless lives are bleeding, struggling, biting, moaning and shouting.
Animals rarely harm humans, but humans provoke any ethnic group. Endless world! Nature, animals and humans, who's in charge? Who is destroying it? I think, mankind will eventually be brutally retaliated! I don't want to think about it, until one day, mankind wakes up and we are heartbroken, but we have brought ourselves into the abyss of eternal hell. Humans think they are smart, but we can't drink clean and non-toxic water, breathe oxygen-rich and pollution-free air and eat pure and sweet food.
The purpose of the author's writing Animal Liberation is definitely not only to expose the inhumanity of human beings, but to remind human beings that the change of lifestyle can make you feel more at ease, make your surroundings full of peace and love, and give you greater courage to help and save more weak lives.
But I am very dissatisfied with some extreme views of the author and hold a negative attitude. The author uses the word "human" to refer to self-conscious creatures: animals usually fit this definition, but many people don't. He said that killing a healthy cow is more likely to cause moral damage than killing a severely disabled baby, because cows are more likely to have premonitions and suffer pain than children. He believes that even relatively insensitive animals, such as chickens and mice, should be protected from unnecessary harm. He thinks that what matters is not whether an animal is rational, but whether it can experience pain. If animals can experience pain, we have no right to torture them for medical research or kill them for lunch. When the U.S. Department of Defense found that the use of Beagle dogs to detect poison gas caused protests, they proposed to use rats instead. Singh said in Animal Liberation that he was not comforted by it. His views make me feel a little angry. If one of his closest relatives had a severely disabled person, would he still say so? Will he agree to do so? It's easy to stand and talk! No matter how disabled and sick the people we love are, they are our emotional sustenance, and their death will make us miserable or even devastated. So his views are too utilitarian, too extreme, too extreme.