From previous action groups/foundations I started I
have kept the feeling that you can do a lot about wrongs
as an individual. Especially the success of 'Red ons
Rivierlandschap' (Save our river landscape) has shown
me that, because it seemed like a battle that we could
only lose, like David against Goliath. You have to start
pulling somewhere, then you'll find like-minded individuals
and things will start moving. "Meat=Suffering" is another
example of this.
Well, what makes an animal friend an animal friend?
It can't be my rural background: I've lived in cities
all my life. I am the daughter of a nature photographer,
and was dragged outside by my dad at an early age to
be shown all the beautiful things that grow and live
there. Maybe that's where my deep solidarity with nature
comes from. "I'm greeted always /by what God has
created" (Guido Gezelle).
With an attitude like that, you understand NOTHING about
the idea of man as the crowning glory of creation, who
from his superiority can do with 'those stupid animals'
as he pleases. The 'superior' position of man by the
way should oblige him to good supervisory of the creatures
entrusted to him. But no.
On the contrary, I'm sharply aware that people are only
a species of ape 'gotten out of hand', that shields
themselves as much as possible against the intelligence
and emotions of other, subjugated, animal species, because
it's not in their interest. If this weren't the case,
we would know a lot more by now about 'languages' and
signal systems of other animals, and we would be able
to 'understand' them better by now, in whatever way.
But then we would also have to face the way we abuse
them, and that would only give us a guilty conscience!
I feel that the worst excesses of this superior thinking
are found in factory farming, where cruelty has been
elevated into a system. The animal as a consumer item,
the total denial of the intrinsic value of animals.
Indeed, it reminds me of concentration camps.
That's the reason for the final slogan of this text:
"You are not a piece of meat of … kilos, why do
you think a cow is"? Hermine Ingen Housz-Menalda.
Back to personal stories.