www.48bconsulting.com https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Liberation-Definitive-Classic-Movement/dp/0061711306 First published in 1975, Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation is, according to the Chicago Tribune, “a most important book that will change the way many of us look at animals – and, ultimately, at ourselves.” Riding the waves of other liberation movements – notably, the Civil Right movement and Women’s lib – Animal Liberation changes the question from, Can animals reason, to, Can animals suffer? In effect, Singer’s thesis dislodges the way we assign value to sentient beings from the framework of reason and rationality and, instead, recognizes the universal truth experienced by all species that being in this world with this life inevitably involves suffering. My cat may not be able to decipher complex language. My dog, Arrow, may not be equipped to pen masterpieces of literature. But they suffer like I do. And in that common footing, so argues Singer, a new conversation must be had. Once upon a time, animals were seen as mere automatons: creatures of a mechanical nature who, when injured, emitted sounds akin to mechanical malfunction, not cries of pain, despair, horror, or sadness. As such, the barbaric practice of vivisection was sanctioned. Students keen on understanding the inner-workings of some animal would gather round in a large lecture hall, peering down at the learned professor who, scalpel in hand, would slice, say, a bound dog or cat up the middle and peel away its skin to reveal the inner anatomy. The animal would screech in pain, but no matter, so was the assumption. It was a malfunction, the cry of unimaginable pain akin to the sound a broken carriage, a squeaky wheel, a rusty pulley might make. Other experiments – too many to list here – have also been performed on animals in the spirit of scientific inquiry, though the nature and purpose of that inquiry is certainly dubious: Chimpanzee mothers, upon giving birth, were denied physical contact with their offspring in order to observe and record psychological trauma, fevers were artificially induced in kittens, pigs were intentionally shot with rifles so that would-be medics could practice treating gun wounds, the feet of a hundred or so mice were electroshocked to measure who knows what, and so on and so forth – the cruel kids with magnifying glasses burning ants on the sidewalk grown up and given even more power to cause pain, not, as Singer notes, for therapeutic needs but for “commercial returns.” You heard that correctly, dear listeners. Much of the experiments done on animals is not meant to ameliorate the suffering of human beings. It is, rather, to siphon more money into the bank accounts of Big Pharma and the like. What I am proposing, however, is that the scope of empathy and kindness can and should be widened and that there are even Biblical reasons to justify this necessary shift. Consider all the animals who were enlisted in the larger Biblical narrative: the animals in Eden, those invited to board the Ark, Balaam’s donkey who saw the angel, and Mary’s and Jesus’ The animal world is not accidental. It has purpose, true and real. What Singer seems to neglect in his calculus, though, is humankind’s fallen nature. We do not do what we should. We willfully do the opposite. This is what it means to sin. As such, while Christian teaching tells us we “should” respect animals, the reality is that we have not much of the time. Our abuse of animals is more a reflection on our nature than it is on any dictate from on high with regards to an animal’s placement in the great hierarchy. We and the animals that surround us may be outside of Eden, but this does not mean that the efforts we take to right cosmic wrongs cannot or should not include the furry, the four-legged, the companions who look past the cruel sins of man and wag their tails nevertheless.
