FJS: It's been said that in order to exploit someone you must first silence them. This can be done by stripping one of their subjecthood and objectifying them as a resource to be used and managed. Can you talk about how science and industry objectify nonhuman animals and the rest of the animate world? And what are the implications of this?
JM: Science and industry don't have to objectify nonhuman animals or nature. Our sociocultural indoctrination has already done that for the vivisectors, factory farmers, and their ilk. As a species, we have created layer upon layer of myths, falsehoods, delusions, and dogmas to convince ourselves of our superiority and separateness. Blinded by hubris and deluded by profound narcissism, we've convinced ourselves that we are little demigods, endowed with the right to plunder, exploit, consume, pollute, torture, and kill with virtual impunity.
FJS: Define speciesism.
JM: Speciesism is the deeply flawed belief that the human species is superior to all other species. Like racism, the more powerfully embedded such a belief is in society, the more immense the suffering of those individuals deemed inferior. The widespread prevalence of speciesism in our dominant culture gives morally stunted people a license to torture and kill' nonhuman animals.
FJS: So why protect animals? I mean, I know why, but many attempt to excuse speciesist behavior with this benighted question.
JM: Right. Why not protect animals? Or another question: Why protect Homo sapiens, a species of animal that's destroying the planet?
Rhetoricals of course"..
We need to protect nonhuman animals for several reasons:
1. They are sentientthey have central nervous systems and feel pain, just as we do. We have no right to enslave, torture, or slaughter them.
2. Many species of nonhuman animals are far more intelligent, emotionally developed, and socially complex than most people realize. They deserve the opportunity to live free of human-inflicted subjugation, suffering, or death.
3. Our species has triggered the Sixth Great Extinction and it is our responsibility to mitigate it to the extent we're able.
4. Contrary to our delusions, we are not separate and distinct from nature. Despite the numerous artificial barriers we've created, there's no escaping the fact that we're part and parcel of the web of existence, or life if you will, on this planet. Each individual, each herd, each flock, and particularly each entire species that we annihilate or eradicate further disrupts the ecological balance that we've already adversely impacted in significant ways.
FJS: You're vegan, is this correct?
JM: I am a vegan.
FJS: Why veganism?
JM: My reasoning is relatively simple. I do not objectify nonhuman animals. I view them as individuals and sentient beings with rich emotional, social and intellectual lives, each bearing the basic rights to exist free from human exploitation, subjugation, torture, and murder. Eating rotting animal flesh, which is what meat actually is, is as abhorrent to me as cannibalism would be to most of the meat eating world.
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