It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands...but empty cages; not traditional animal agriculture but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not more humane hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need for a complete abolition of animal exploitation rather than merely improving their conditions.
Tom Regan's quote reflects a profound philosophical stance on animal rights, arguing that true justice for animals does not lie in making their captivity or exploitation more humane, but in completely abolishing practices that involve killing or harming them. It challenges societal norms and urges a fundamental change in how we view our relationship with animals, advocating for an ethical treatment that recognizes their inherent rights.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation on animal rights activism.
The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.
What could be the basis of our having more inherent value than animals? Their lack of reason, or autonomy, or intellect? Only if we are willing to make the same judgment in the case of humans who are similarly deficient.
It is not an act of kindness to treat animals respectfully. It is an act of justice.
I would encourage them never to forget that they were not always vegans. The self-righteousness of the recently converted hurts, it does not help, other animals.
I long for the days of disorder. I want them back, the days when I was alive on the earth, rippling in the quick of my skin, heedless and real. I was dumb-muscled and angry and real. This is what I long for, the breach of peace, the days of disarray when I walked real streets and did things slap-bang and felt angry and ready all the time, a danger to others and a distant mystery to myself.
All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.
Drunkenness does not create vice; it merely brings it into view.
The human condition: lost in thought.
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.