Earthlings is one of those very few films where I really have no real reaction to it.
But I’ll quickly try a little stream-of-consciousness, since apparently discussing The Station nightclub fire is out of style.(For now!):
That happens every day. Animals that we use are slaughtered, and animals that we don’t use are slaughtered also.
We all know that, of course.
Yet it somehow shocks individuals when they see it. Yeah, most animals scream bloody murder if you fail to chop its head off properly, or miss and hit its eyeball instead, or “miss” several times in a row.
Somehow. There’s nothing but organs, tissue, and blood coming out of
that piñata.
As one expects, some individuals take a little too much joy in their job. Some do it regardless even if it wasn’t their job. No matter the time and the… expiration method, those animals are born only to die…
… Much like we are.
To me, it’s more of a tale of the proverbial other side of the closed door… and how most individuals
shouldn’t know what happens on the other side. But that doesn’t stop them from opening it and taking a peek anyway.
As the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat.
And the horse.
And the sheep.
And the dog.
And the elephant.
Pick any animal, it goes on and on.
Here’s the thing, like a lot of socio-ethical movements, going vegan will not actually help. If one wishes to do it, go vegan because it’s what you believe to be morally and ethically best or because it maximizes your perceived personal well-being, not because you believe it’ll save animals from torture or abuse. A tip from the other side of the door: it very likely won’t.
So for all those screams, all those squeals of pain, the bloodbaths and waste of fellow sentience… it will be there. The cruelty could hypothetically be stopped, but not the necessity, and while the line between them can become blurry with the variable of… questionable ethics, until technology for our species advances to the point where we no longer have to rely on others with natural sentience, can we completely stop it.
And
even then, we still have question of clones, stem cells, genetically-modified or even actual artificial foods. Another perceived can of worms for us humans to solve.
But we’ll manage, eventually. We might destroy ourselves,
but it’s in our nature. We did a lot of creation too anyway.
And from what the universe has shown us, we’re only emulating what it’s been doing for
billions of years. How unoriginal we are!
But what can we do? We’re only
human, after all.
