Humane: What We Do to Animals We Do to Ourselves
by Dr. Linda Bender
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, humane and human were just two different spellings of the same word. To be humane in the Humane Society-sense meant the same thing as being human. It’s probably no accident that we began to need a separate word to describe the compassionate treatment of animals around the time we invented the sweatshop.
We started confining people to factories and treating them like commodities before we got the idea of doing it to chickens. We denied the dignity of the human laborer before we denied the dignity of the plough horse. We began thinking of “pets” as consumer goods only after we had come to conceive of ourselves and our fellow humans as mere consumers. Nowadays, we have to add an “e” to connote what the word “human” is supposed to mean: someone who demonstrates that he or she has a soul by treating other souls with respect and consideration.
The word “humane” conveys a sense of honorable conduct: the obligation of the strong to care for the weak or, as Buddhists teach, the duty of higher beings toward lower beings. I’m all for honorable conduct if it gets the job done, but I believe that, in the final analysis, it doesn’t. To be humane sounds like more of a nicety than a necessity. The chainsaws and bulldozers of necessity make short work of a nicety like saving the spotted owl. In so far as the fate of animals depends on our adding an “e” to human, they will continue to be victimized.
Mahatma Gandhi said that “the greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” This is what makes respect for animals not just a nicety but a necessity. A society in which animals are oppressed and exploited, their dignity denied and their lives deprived of meaning, is as miserable for its human citizens as it is for the animals.
Why? Because what we do to animals, we do to ourselves. When we eat the flesh of an animal who has been pumped full of antibiotics and hormones and subjected to constant stress, all of those toxins become part of our own bodies. When we destroy animal habitat, we destroy our own habitat as well. When our treatment of other living beings is dominated by economic expediency, humans, too, are cruelly treated. When we can no longer see the hurt in a neglected animal’s eyes, we have become hard-hearted toward our own pain.
On a spiritual level, the belief in animal inferiority has infected humans themselves with an inferiority complex. We can’t look down on animals without also looking down on those aspects of our nature that we have in common with them. The spiritual pecking order that places us above the animals places us below the angels, so we tend to conceive of spiritual betterment as becoming more angel-like. Hierarchical spirituality values objectivity over feeling, abstraction over sensation, achievement over pleasure, the universal over the personal, the mind over the body. It encourages top growth at the expense of root growth. Unable to reach deep into the earth, where our nourishment lies, we become parched and desiccated. We also become incurably lonely- alienated not just from the Earth and from our fellow creatures, but from the parts of our own being that lie south of the neck.
Because hierarchical spirituality places God, the Source, at the very top of the pecking order, for many believers “God” seems unreachably remote. Whether we conceive of God as literally living in Heaven or not, he (or she) might as well be there for all the hope we have of direct contact. The belief that our Source is somewhere “up there” leads to the belief that we have to get “up there” to connect. Many people conceive of this happening in the afterlife. The Earth is just a place of temporary exile where one proves one’s worthiness to go to the place where the Source of all exists. If we regard the Earth as just a transient residence, it’s hardly any wonder that we turn it into a slum.
The hierarchical view that holds humans inferior to angels and animals inferior to humans is based on a faulty premise. All of God’s (or whatever name you choose) creations are perfect, and it is impossible for one perfect thing to be inferior to another perfect thing. All the creatures of the Earth have lives of meaning and purpose, aside from the values we place on them. Now more than ever, the nonhuman beings that share the Earth with us have been entrusted to our care. How we value all life forms and how we treat them are true measures of our humanity.
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About the Author
Dr. Linda Bender has worked for over 14 years as a doctor of veterinarian medicine, often from the frontlines and in the trenches, around the world to rescue wildlife while advocating for endangered species and their habitats. She also started one of the first Pet Therapy programs in Cincinnati as part of their state mental health program. She has now dedicated her life to educating and advocating on behalf of animals around the globe. She has become a leading voice for those who are voiceless. She is founder of the non-profit charity From the Heart and author of the soon to be released book Animal Wisdom: Learning from the Spiritual Lives of Animals. Her work has been endorsed by Dr. Jane Goodall, Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake and many more. www.lindabender.org
