Somewhat paradoxically, many people feel perfectly fine watching funny videos of cats, dogs, and other animals while eating a steak for dinner even though this involves emphasizing some animals while calmly consuming dead bodies of other animals. To make the situation even worse it is worse noting that instead of joyfully playing in the backyard like all the pets in the cure videos do, the poor cow on one’s plate is likely to have been held in awful conditions as well as cruelly and painfully slaughtered. While our society seems to have reached its peace with exploiting and harshly slaughtering the animals for satisfaction of human needs and whims, in reality, cruelty against animals in inhumane because people are naturally empathetic towards animals, major religious condemn animal cruelty, and because tolerating animal cruelty actually makes us less sympathetic towards fellow human beings.
It is natural for people to emphasize with and be compassionate towards animals just like it is natural for us to attune with fellow humans. It has long been established that people are capable of suffering when they see the suffering of others. This holds true for observing animal suffering too (Harari). Whenever we see a bird or dog or any other animal who is in pain we involuntarily emphasize with them and experience a taste of pain that the creature before us is going through. At the same time, people seem to ignore and forget the suffering we cause when we slaughter numerous animals each year to produce food, leather, and fur. We seem to disregard the cruelty we embarked upon to get fur and leather for out clothing. Just because it is happening far from us and we do not have to observe this pain does not mean that we should forget and disregard this. It seems that elimination the cause of suffering would be a better way to go.
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"Cruelty To Animals Essay".
Apart from the fact that being cruel to animals comes as a real struggle to humans, it is also condemned by all the major religions. Namely, Islam’s holy book Qur-an clearly instructs that all Muslims should be compassionate towards animals at all times. Further, it requires that people are not cruel towards animals even when killing them for the purpose of attaining food. Namely, Qur-an requires Muslims not to kill more animals that they actually need to satisfy their needs and to take specific measures to ensure that the animal does not suffer when it is being slaughtered (Rahman). Similar principles are proclaimed in all other major religions including Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism.
Lastly, and most importantly, being cruel towards animals undermines our humanity. While it is sometimes argued that the fact that humans make up a stronger species grants us a natural right to exploit weaker species, the reality is that by treating weaker creatures badly we step on a slippery slope. Namely, justifying cruelty against animals just because they are weaker may eventually transform into justifying cruelty against anyone who is weaker which could mean that people would start testing drugs on homeless children just because they are physically and socially weaker and cannot protect themselves. In other words, cruelty against animals puts us under risk of losing our humanity (Harari).
Drawing conclusions, tolerating cruelty against animals is inhumane. Although it is common in our society to tolerate it by not paying attestation and not speaking up, humans should listen to their inner voices and emotions that arise whenever they see an animal that is being badly treated and act according to one’s heart. Cruelty against animals contradicts all the major religions and places us under risk of losing our humanity towards fellow people. Because of this, it is high time we start being more attentive to animal rights and stop animal cruelty.
- Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harper, 2017.
- Rahman, Sira Abdhul. “Religion and Animal Welfare—An Islamic Perspective.” Animals(Basel), vol.7, no.2, 2017.
