Inter-Species Love - The Legal Kind
Want to see some amazing videos of animals expressing love and communicating with humans affectionately?
A swan giving a hug with her neck..
A dolphin asking for help to remove a fishing hook..
An elephant who laid by the grave of her human companion who had shared their entire lives together, the elephant never got up and starved to death from grief...
This shows that love and relationship is not restricted to our species, that compassion can be shared with others and this relationship is deep and can have a profound effect!
Understanding
We already know the love and understanding we share with dogs and cats and other "pets''. These 'animals', and other living and loving beings we share this planet with, are just as sentient as we are!
For those who care to, we are able to communicate and share love across species.
This woman is able to communicate with a black panther! Don't believe me? Watch the video...
Religious texts reference a time when humans shared this earth equally with animals and were able to communicate openly with them. I believe this was only pre-language as we know it; and we are able to communicate on a non-language level still, just as you're certain you can communicate with your pets (you can).
We can communicate with all other life! Sometimes it requires another language, sometimes a different perspective, dimension or paradigm; or sometimes gestures, images, or emotion; however, the outcome is always the same, a connection.
The feeling of sharing my life experiences with other sentient beings is immensely satisfying. I spent just under an hour swimming freely with wild dolphins and it was one of the most transcending experiences I have ever had!
My Radical Perspective Shift
I was walking around the markets in Thailand and as I walked through the meat section in the coastal market I came across carcass after carcass of ducks, pigs, sharks, eels, chicken feet, cow hoof, sting ray, you name it... all manner of life! The smell was horrendous. In the corner there was a section (probably just for tourists) of live animals locked in cages and small aquariums, frogs piles 3 layers high rotting alive, eels laying over top, turtles in cages no bigger than their shell, birds stuck flightless. With a sign above them:
"Pay to free the animals - brings good luck."
Now, to those of you who are disgusted, living in the western world, and thinking:
"Only in Asia would they treat animals this way!"
I'll just say. In Asia it's just a little more truthful, in the west, the tortures and atrocities take place in massive factories and farming operations, no different than the situation I described here.
I mean, for Thanksgiving we have this weird thing where we stick a chicken carcass inside the hollowed out body of a duck carcass and shove that inside the hollowed out body of a turkey carcass and cover it in dead pig slices, we call this a delicacy...
This thought carried a bit further, I believe in the concept:
"As above, so below. As within, so without."
On one level it means that how we interact with the world around us, in turn, affects the way the world interacts with us, a sort of universal mirroring. As I walked through that market, not only witnessing the disrespect towards an animal life I saw a blatant disrespect toward human life, as humans were doing horrendous things to ourselves and each other.
"Farms"
Never has this phrase rang so true to me.
Maybe, we humans are suffering because all we eat is suffering...
I found a modicum of understanding in the way human life is being treated in such a way as well, where we spend our lives pent up, our talents wasted, creativity and freedoms lost and began to wonder:
Is this a parallel to the way we treat other life forms? Have we enslaved ourselves the same way we have attempted to enslave our natural world?
Maybe we're able to justify treating other life this way because we're treating ourselves this way?
Just a bit deeper. Many (vegan) agricultural operations are just the same. Where we plant rows and rows of monocrops, the situation for the plants is no better than the animals, tortured, poisoned, segragated and crowded...
Hunted to Extiction
Over 322 beautiful species have gone extinct from humans, mainly from hunting, how many more will follow?
At any rate, I have been tinkering back and forth with being vegetarian/vegan and slowly cutting out different animal/meat sources the last few years, mostly for ethical, financial, ecological and personal health reasons; but now I believe I found an existential reason for avoiding this old practice.
Anyways, thought I'd share an 'ah ha' moment I had recently!
What are your thoughts on this, I would love to hear them?
Rieki
Word-Smithing New Societies
