Man has no legitimate right to rule over animals, any more than a politician/king/queen has a legitimate right to rule over men. That is a bold, but true statement.
If politicians and parasitical members of Congress and Parliament have no special rights granting them with authority to forcibly rule over men, how then, can men claim to have the right to forcibly rule over animals? Meditate on that question. What actually gives you the right to impose your will on animals? Have they caused you harm, suffering or loss, or tried to violate your natural rights in any way?
Human-Animal authority -- the belief that it is man's natural right to rule and dominate animals -- is just as delusional, just as illogical, and just as evil as the belief in human authority (the belief that certain men have the right to rule and dominate other men).
This fiercely contested topic strikes at the root of anarchism and libertarianism, and can be disposed of decisively.
Are animals not independent, sovereign beings with their own thoughts, emotions, desires, and actions? Is your dog, cat, or pig not a unique individual with the capacity for self-expression and self-determination? If man were to perish from the earth in some cataclysmic event, who, then, would claim ownership of the animals?
Animals, like us, are born as free, sovereign, independent beings and should live in a state of freedom in accordance with Natural Law. Man has hallucinated human-animal authority into existence because he perceives himself as superior to all other beings, just as he has hallucinated human authority into existence because he perceives some men as superior to others (prime ministers, presidents, kings, queens, emperors).
All perceived forms of superiority, though, including man's perceived superiority over animals, is hallucinatory. It doesn't actually exist. It is hallucinatory, precisely because all sentient beings OWN THEMSELVES. The animals' non-understanding of self-ownership does not grant us with the right to deny their sovereignty, any more than it would if a human being was incapable of understanding self-ownership due to disability or illness.
Our intellectual faculties of reason, logic, and problem-solving do not make us superior, and certainly, do not grant us with more rights than those who do not possess such traits. A wheelchair-bound, disabled human is born with the same natural rights as any other human, just as an animal with claws, fur, or gills is born with the same natural rights as every other sentient being.
We ALL own ourselves, and that includes our non-human brothers and sisters. Whether or not they are capable of intellectualizing that point is entirely irrelevant.
The only logical conclusion, then, if we wish to live in a true state of freedom, is to adopt a vegan lifestyle. Veganism dispells the myth of human-animal authority the same way anarchism crushes the superstition of human authority. Veganism is to animal enslavement what anarchism is to human enslavement. By simply choosing to eat plants instead of animal products, you are living in alignment with the universal principles of self-ownership and sovereignty. You are exercising right action over wrong action. You are choosing freedom, peace, and compassion over enslavement, torture, and murder.
This is part four of an ongoing series. I have detailed the horrors of animal agriculture and human-animal authority in previous chapters. If you would like to check them out and further your understanding of veganism, please see the links below:
Well said.
Thanks, man. Awesome to see that you have done so well for yourself on Steemit.
Thanks. Too well with support from the lead developer CTO dantheman months ago, that I got hated on for success and flagged, then I protested the flagging based on inconsistent application of these rules they made up, and kept getting flagged more, lost support, and then left posting for a while despite the price of STEEM going up because I was disillusioned with the whole platform not operating on rational, consistent principles and nothing to be done about it. Then I decide to try again and still all the flags. There are all these secret rules in place it seems, where you can make $1-2k posts and its fine but if you're me and make less it isn't.
I'm still very unfamiliar with how the platform works. I just 'promoted' this post with 0.888 SBD but can't see it on the promoted page any where.
Yeah don't bother. Look at the payout triangle, it shows how much has been sent to promote it. First 10 are over $120 to promote... lol. Ridiculous.
meep
I have sympathy for your views.
But the world is not run based on how it should be. Even between humans. It is instead run based on how things are.
Humans do not do things because they are "right." They do things for rewards or to escape punishment. "Rights" are not real things. They are ideas, and they only really represent an agreement between humans. My "right" to free speech in the US isn't a real thing -- it is only an agreement between myself and other citizens that we both agree to not squash each others freedom to speak our minds. But this "right" only exists as long as both parties adhere to it. Once one party reneges on the agreement, the "right" vanishes. This is true of all of our "rights" -- they are imaginary constructs, and only represent reciprocal agreements between entities.
So this becomes important when dealing with animals, because animals and us inhabit different planes of intellect. I agree that animals are fundamentally like us in that they have desires, wishes, hopes, fears, etc. But they are not capable of anywhere near our level of intellect. Thus trying to forge a concept of reciprocal "rights" between us is like trying to reason with a 2 year old (have you ever tried to do that? Not at all productive....)
So the relationship between us and animals is not one of equals but of guardians and dependents -- not because of force or because humans are evil, but because of the reality of our relative intellects, and no amount of wishful thinking will change this.
Animals, except those we forge close bonds with like pets, do not care about us. There is no universal agreement between us and the animal world. Those big enough to eat us would do so given the opportunity, and those small enough to parasitize us do so to the best of their ability. The real world is one where the strong survive and the weak die. This cannot be changed. The best we can hope for is to abolish cruelty.
Rights do not cease to exist just because someone violates those rights and/or doesn't understand them. Man doesn't create rights any more than a mathematician creates 2+2=4. Rights exist independent of our understanding or cooperation.
I understand the deep desire to believe in rights. And the concept of "rights" is a seductive one because it suggests to us that there is some entity, some structure, larger than ourselves that keeps things in order. But can you tell me on what basis you argue that "Rights exist independent of our understanding or cooperation" other than your wish for it to be that way?
The universe is not a cosmic accident and I am not just a biological machine running on autopilot. Man is not god. Man does not get to decide what is 'right' and what is 'wrong.' Years ago the US government had the 'right' to imprison and even murder those who 'illegally' sold alcohol. Did the government have that right, or was it universally wrong?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
I do not 'believe' that I own myself. I am born with sovereignty over my thoughts, emotions, and actions and anyone claiming otherwise is in the wrong. It isn't my belief that I am a sovereign; it is a self-evident truth.
So in your post you are already acknowledging that there are many different versions of rights, no? You mention that the government had the "right" to enact prohibition, but you very clearly believe that this was not "right." So it starts to get confusing, because there is obviously a distinction between "moral" and "legal", which is what I think you are getting at, yes?
There is a similar confusion between the "rights" of the Bill of Rights and the Unalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The way I read the Declaration of Independence is not that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are "moral" or "legal" but rather that they just "are." That's why they used the words "self evident", because they were merely stating the way things are, and they used those words because they were specifically trying to divorce themselves from the previous way of looking at the world, which was all built on religion. The old way of thinking was that God gave us life and therefore it was conditional, or that God gave us divinely blessed kings and thus that our liberty was conditional.
So, the Declaration of Independence set out to frame the question differently. They expressly refused to frame the reality of what they saw in any framework. They said -- "look -- this is just the way it is and we don't need any specific reason why it needs to be this way, because trying to come up with a reason doesn't change that it is, and only mucks up our future decisions about what to do with what it is. So let's stop trying to reason out why it is this way. It just is. It is self evident. We all have life, and we are all free to do whatever we want regardless of whether there are kings or whether we are slaves, and even if there are kings or even if we are slaves we still continue to make decisions to pursue our own happiness. And -- we are all equal in this regard. So -- we can try to set up a hierarchy, or we can all agree that at least on these basic conditions of the existence of life, our ability to choose our own course no matter what external restraints we find opposed against us, and our desire to all pursue our own happiness -- we are all equal."
This was their way of disposing of the previous belief that somehow God ordained the way things are and ordained who was supposed to be in charge.
So, here's the question for you -- if you are in the jungle, do you think you would be able to come to a reasonable compromise with a hungry tiger? Do you think the hungry tiger cares about your right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
The base on the argument is that an animal is self aware and experiences its life. If this is true, then the rest of your argument is solid. But then how do determine which animals are self aware or not. Why are plants assumed to not be self aware? They reach toward the sun. They bear offspring. Some say they respond to music and other stimulation. Shouldn't their sovereignty be respected as well? Then what of the predators? If we are aware of the atrocities carried out by lions against antelopes, shouldn't we intervene? And then the murder of grass by the antelope? Then only beings that sustain through minerals, decomposing material and sunlight should be allowed to exist in order to ensure no harm is done. Of course by only by limiting the aggression of the predatory creatures by protecting their unethical food sources. So to survive we need to develop mineral based diets and consume only plants that have already deceased without our interference.