EO: Bearing Witness in the Hell of Speciesism

by Randy Shields / December 11th, 2022

Once upon a time Dostoevsky wrote a passage in The Idiot (1868) about an abused donkey passed from owner to owner which inspired Robert Bresson’s classic 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar.

Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski, 56 at the time, watched the Bresson film and it became the first, last and only movie that ever made him cry.

Now, at age 84, Skolimowski and his co-writer and wife Ewa Piaskowska give the world EO, a partial homage to Au Hasard Balthazar and the most broad-based attack on speciesism in a feature film. EO is making plenty of audiences cry.

The title character EO is a small gray big-eyed Sardinian donkey (played by six different donkeys) who begins the film in a Polish circus and ends up in Italy. Animal protection legislation puts the circus out of business and splits up EO and his beloved human co-performer Magda which starts a worse series of events as no humans will take responsibility for EO unless they can exploit him/her. (Right with the times we don’t know if EO is a he or a she, although with six donkeys that definitely qualifies as a “they.” I’m going to refer to EO as a female in this article.) This sweet beast of burden is always looking for a friend – a horse, a human, a junkyard dog – and is frequently used to facilitate the enslavement of other animals.

There are echoes of Koyaanisqatsi and White God (a girl and her dog) in EO (a girl and her donkey) and the sensibility is very much like Okja (a girl and her pig) and Gunda. Stylistically, though, EO is the anti-Gunda: Gunda’s black and white minimalistic, music-less, human-less barnyard is replaced by a pulsating soundtrack, a slew of villains seen and unseen, great distances across Europe, tunnels, forests, windmills and mountains. Striking images of EO on a hillside at sunset, lost in a forest at night and standing on a small arched bridge in front of an enormous dam/waterfall and looking into the maelstrom will linger long after viewing.

When showing animal abuse on screen a director’s challenge is to keep people watching without overwhelming them. It’s a truism that many people are “too sensitive” to watch films of animal abuse but not sensitive enough to stop paying for the brutality, terror and injustice that goes into every piece of meat or a fur coat. Skolimowski skillfully navigates this by not showing most of the violence but simply showing the fear of the animals or letting us hear the violence. This will be a small comfort to many but I didn’t see anyone walk out of the movie.

After the circus folds EO is shipped to an equestrian center where a majestic white horse, tethered in an indoor riding ring, runs in circles with less freedom than a hamster on a wheel. EO accidentally knocks over a display case of equestrian trophies and is then shipped to a petting zoo where she’s ridden by special needs children. EO is visited one night by Magda who brings her a carrot muffin for her birthday. As Magda dances in the moonlight, thinking about the old days of the circus, we’re sure of EO’s love for her but Magda seems lacking as she obeys the commands of her jealous (of EO) boyfriend to leave and never sees EO again. The patriarchy is always seamlessly woven into speciesism. (See Green Paradise Lost by Elizabeth Dodson Gray or The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams.)

Seeking Magda and escaping the petting zoo, EO walks through a Jewish cemetery, reminding us that there are all kinds of holocausts although only someone like Isaac Bashevis Singer can get away with comparing them: “In their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might makes right.” (Enemies, a Love Story.) And: “For animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.” (The Letter Writer.) For different but similar slaveries, see Marjorie Spiegel’s The Dreaded Comparison.

EO then enters a forest at night but she’s out of place. Beautiful immersive cinematography by Michal Dymek follows fast and furious: a close up of a web-spinning spider, a swimming frog, an owl treating EO as an intruder. There are foxes and, hair-raisingly, howling wolves. Will the wolves attack EO? No, actually, because Satan’s minions are here too: green lasers from rifles start flashing throughout the forest like a rave and hunters begin blowing away the wolves.

EO then comes upon a soccer match and is made an unwilling mascot by the winning team and later beaten with 2 by 4’s by the losing team. In a broken bloody heap, EO seems to be dreaming of a robot dog moving through the grass, techno progress contrasted with a deficit of ethical progress. The human gods will try their damndest to recreate something that moves and performs like a real animal (almost exclusively to repress other humans) but they won’t treat real animals with even rudimentary respect.

(The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is currently torturing monkeys in his neuralink experiments. Fuck anyone who would attempt to “help” by torturing. George Bernard Shaw summed up Elon Musk a long time ago: “Any race of people who would use something as barbarous as animal experiments to ‘save’ themselves would be a race of people not worth saving.” EO stumbles into just about every setting of animal abuse except a vivisection lab.)

EO’s next stop is pulling a cart on a fox fur farm while a worker throws dead foxes into it. Skolimowsky doesn’t show the anal electrocution of the foxes but he does show their terror as each of them watch others being killed. The worker commands an unwilling EO to move and bends over behind her and gets kicked in the throat, definitely knocking him out and possibly killing him. The instant karma delivered to this speciesist brute is one of the rare feel good moments in the movie. Fuck the working class torturers too.

After an incredibly sure-footed and gripping 75 minutes or so the film loses its intensity with the introduction of many more humans, much more human dialogue, much less EO, a scene of random human violence at a truck stop and a countess (Isabelle Huppert) getting frisky with her priest stepson which seems like another movie altogether. Maybe with another viewing I’ll understand these puzzles. The strength of most of the film is that any dummy can get it.

I was expecting the film to do justice to EO’s character and struggles by building to a monumental emotional intimate denouement focused on EO’s last moments but, unlike Au Hasard Balthazar or Gunda, the movie pulls back emotionally, visually, artistically, politically.

A blurb after the film ends says no animals were harmed in the making of it. I’m against using animals in films but if directors are going to take advantage of its “legality” – and deliver pro-animal messages – they are able to simulate violence, suffering and death a la Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Amores perros.

(Some viewers will dispute that the film pulls back but your reviewer believes in seeing the captive bolt pistol, the futile attempts to escape the kill box, the expression in the eyes as the light and life goes out, the throat-slitting, the dismemberment and turning of innocent beings into blasphemous nothingness – and spiritual terms are correct because EO and Balthazar and all the other non-humans are being crucified every day. “Completely humble, completely holy,” said the great Bresson about his donkey Balthazar. That’s how a film would do justice to the life and character of EO – after all, the audience has come all this way, let them walk now — or explode their prejudices and reveal their complicity as they’re mortified in their seats. They should be bawling their eyes out. It’s a war – act like it.)

EO is the perfect guide through Skolimowski’s inferno but the film is not perfect. It is, however, the most comprehensive non-documentary attack on animal exploitation ever filmed. Despite its flaws, EO should be seen, applauded and promoted.

After a December 4 screening at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles, Skolimowski and Piaskowska discussed the film, saying it was “made out of love for animals and nature” and likening it to a “protest song.” The film does seem like the cry of an 84-year-old man sick to death of the cruelty in the world although he isn’t (yet?) vegan, or even a vegetarian, saying, “We reduced our meat consumption by two thirds and half of my crew stopped eating meat entirely.” And: “Do we really need to have bacon every morning?” No, my man, no more than we need to eat donkey every morning.

Despite my uneducated impertinent quibbles, EO has won many awards: Cannes Jury Prize, Cannes Soundtrack Award, New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best International Film and European Film Awards Best Original Score. Rotten Tomatoes critics rate EO as 96% fresh and the film is Poland’s Best International Feature submission for the 2023 OscarsFacebook

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Randy Shields can be reached at music2hi4thehumanear@gmail.com. Read other articles by Randy, or visit Randy's website.

Scapegoats and Holy Cows: Climate

Activism andLivestock

BY STEPHEN CORR 

COUNTERPUNCH 

DECEMBER 10, 2021Facebook

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Until recently, Greta Thunberg kept a filmed appeal to stop eating meat and dairy as the first item of her twitter account: she’s been a vegan for half her life, so that’s not surprising. Her message begins with pandemics^[1] but swiftly segues to climate change, as might be expected. The film was made by Mercy for Animals, which she thanks.^[2]

The film remained top of her twitter account for months. She has several million followers, so the value of the advertising she gave this little-known not-for-profit must run into millions of dollars. As opposition to livestock has become a major plank in climate activism, it’s worth looking at how the world’s biggest climate influencer chooses to influence it.

Greta Thunberg’s 2021 Mercy for Animals film: “If we don’t change, we are f***ed.”

Mercy for Animals is an American NGO with the stated purpose of ending factory farming because it’s cruel to animals, a fact with which few would disagree. There are other reasons to shun food from factories as opposed to the open air of course, not least because some of the meat it produces is subsequently heavily processed with unhealthy ingredients and then shipped long distances. The reason it remains so profitable is obviously because its meals are cheap and those who can’t afford expensive free range or organic have little other option.

There is no doubt that factory farming is an industrial process which pollutes. There’s also no doubt that an average Western, especially urban, diet contains a lot of unhealthy things, including too much meat. But whether or not folk who eat sensible amounts of local, organic meat and dairy, and try to stay fit and healthy, would have any significant impact on the planet’s climate by changing their diet is another matter, which I’ll come back to.

Mercy for Animal’s beliefs go much further than opposing animal cruelty. It believes in speciesism or rather anti-speciesism, the idea that humans have no right to impose their will on other animals or “exploit” them. It’s a view shared by a growing number of people, especially vegans in the Global North. Thunberg goes as far as believing that only vegans can legitimately, “stand up for human rights,” and wants non-vegans to feel guilty.^[3] Even more radical is Google founder, Larry Page, who reportedly thinks robots should be treated as a living species, just silicon- rather than carbon-based!^[4]

Whatever novel ideas anti-speciesists think up, no species would evolve without favouring its own. Our ancestors would never have developed their oversized brains if they hadn’t eaten scavenged or hunted meat, and we have always lived in symbiosis with other animals, sometimes to the benefit of both. It seems likely that the wolf ancestors of dogs freely elected to live close to humans, taking advantage of our hearths and ability to store game. In this, the earliest proven instance of domestication, perhaps each species exploited the other.

Having visited many subsistence hunters and herders over the last half century, I know that the physical – and spiritual – relationship they have with the creatures they hunt, herd or use for transport, is very different to that of most people (including me!). Most of us now have little experience of the intimacy which comes when people depend at first-hand on animals for survival.

Hunters, for example, often think they have a close connection with their game, and it’s based on respect and exchange. A good Yanomami huntsman in Amazonia doesn’t eat his own catch but gives it away to others. Boys are taught that if they are generous like this, the animals will approach them to offer themselves willingly as prey. Such a belief encourages strong social cohesion and reciprocity, which couldn’t be more different to Western ideals of accumulation. The importance of individual cows to African herders, or of horses to the Asian steppe dwellers who, we think, started riding them in earnest, can be touchingly personal, and the same can be found all over the world.

Everyone knows that many small children, if they feel safe, have an innate love of getting up close and personal to animals; and projects enabling deprived city kids to interact with livestock on farms can improve mental wellbeing and make children happier.^[5]

This closeness to other species is a positive experience for many, clearly including Thunberg: her film features her in an English animal sanctuary and cuddling one of her pet dogs. Those who believe speciesism is of great consequence, on the other hand, seem to seek a separation between us and other animals, whilst paradoxically advancing the idea that there is none. Animals are to be observed from a distance, perhaps kept as pets, but never “exploited” for people’s benefit.^[6]

Mercy for Animals doesn’t stop at opposing factory farming. It’s against the consumption of animal products altogether, including milk and eggs, and thinks that all creatures, including insects, must be treated humanely. Using animals for any “work” that benefits people is frowned on. For example, it thinks sheepdogs are “doubly problematic” because both dogs and sheep are exploited. It accepts, however, that they have been bred to perform certain tasks and may “experience stress and boredom if not given… work.” It’s also (albeit seemingly reluctantly) OK with keeping pets as they are “cherished companions with whom we love to share our lives,” and without them we would be “impoverished”. Exactly the same could be said for many working dogs of course.^[7]

Anyway, this not-for-profit believes that humans are moving away from using animals for anything, not only meat, but milk, wool, transport, emergency rescue, and everything else. It claims, “several historical cultures have recognized the inherent right of animals to live… without human intervention or exploitation,” and thinks we are slowly evolving to a “higher consciousness” which will adopt its beliefs. It says this is informed by Hindu and Buddhist ideals and that it’s working to “elevate humanity to its fullest potential.”^[8]

We all exalt our own morality of course, but professing a higher consciousness than those who think differently casts a supremacist shadow. The alleged connection with Indian religions is a common argument but remains debatable: the sacredness of cows, for example, is allied to their providing the dairy products widespread in Hindu foods and rituals. The god Krishna himself, a manifestation of the supreme being Vishnu, was a cattle herder. The Rig Veda, the oldest Indian religious text, is clear about their role: “In our stalls, contented, may they stay! May they bring forth calves for us… giving milk.” Nearly a third of the world’s cattle are thought to live in India. Would they survive the unlikely event of Hindus converting to veganism?

Krishna tending his cattle.

Most Hindus are not wholly vegetarian. Although a key tenet of Hindu fundamentalism over recent generations is not eating beef, the Rig Veda mentions cows being ritually killed in an earlier age. The renowned Swami Vivekananda, who first took Hinduism and yoga to the USA at the end of the 19^th century and is hailed as one of the most important holy men of his era, wrote that formerly, “A man [could not] be a good Hindu who does not eat beef,” and reportedly ate it himself. Anyway, the degree to which cows were viewed as “sacred” in early Hinduism is not as obvious as many believe. The Indus Civilisation of four or five thousand years ago, to which many look for their physical and spiritual origins, was meat-eating,^[9] although many fundamentalist Hindus now deny it.^[10]

Vegetarians are fond of claiming well-known historical figures for themselves. In India, perhaps the most famous is Ashoka, who ruled much of the subcontinent in the third century before Christ and was the key proponent of Buddhism. He certainly advocated compassion for animals and was against sacrificial slaughter and killing some species, but it’s questionable whether he or those he ruled were actually vegetarian.^[11]

Whatever Ashoka’s diet included, many Buddhists today are meat-eaters like the Dalai Lama^[12] and most Tibetans – rather avid ones in my experience – and tea made with butter is a staple of Himalayan monastic life. Mercy for Animals however remains steadfast to its principles, asserting, “Even (sic!) Jewish and Muslim cultures are experiencing a rise in animal welfare consciousness.”

Mercy for Animals might look at how racists have supported animal rights over the last hundred years, sometimes cynically and sometimes not: “Concern for animals can coexist with a strong strain of misanthropy, and can be used to demonise minority groups as barbaric, uncivilised and outdated… in contrast to supposedly civilised, humane Aryans… The far right’s ventures into animal welfare is sometimes coupled with ‘green’ politics and a form of nature mysticism.”^[13]

Mercy for Animals was founded by Milo Runkle, a self-styled “yogi” who lives in Los Angeles. He was raised on an Ohio farm and discovered his calling as a teenager on realising the cruelty of animal slaughter. He’s now an evangelical vegan who believes an “animal-free” meal is, “an act of kindness.” He’s also a keen participant in the billion-dollar, Silicon Valley industry trying to make and sell “meat and dairy” made from plants, animal cells and chemicals. He’s a co-founder of the Good Food Institute and sits on the board of Lovely Foods. Like others in the movement, he rejects the term “fake” and insists that the products made in factories – which are supported by billionaires like Richard Branson and Bill Gates – are real meat and dairy, just made without animals. The multi-million dollar Good Food Institute is also supported by Sam Harris, a U.S. philosopher who came to prominence with his criticism of Islam, which he believes is a religion of, “bad ideas, held for bad reasons, leading to bad behaviour,” and constitutes, “a unique danger to all of us.”^[14]

Survey: Kids think farm animals deserve same treatment as pets

By HealthDay News

Children think farm animals should be treated more like people and pets, and they're less likely than adults to think it's morally acceptable to eat animals, according to a study conducted in Britain. 

Photo by Jai79/Pixabay

Life would be much better for farm animals if children were in charge, a new British study suggests.

Unlike adults, children believe farm animals should be treated the same as people and pets, and children are less likely to view eating animals as morally acceptable.
The study included 479 people in England from three age groups -- 9-11, 18-21 and 29-59 -- who were asked their views on the treatment of pigs on farms, pet dogs and people.

The results suggest that "speciesism" -- giving different value to different animals -- is learned during adolescence, according to the authors of the study.

"Something seems to happen in adolescence, where that early love for animals becomes more complicated and we develop more speciesism," said study co-author Luke McGuire, of the University of Exeter.

The researchers also found that as people age, they are more likely to classify farm animals as "food" rather than "pets," while children are equally likely to include pigs in either of these categories.

"It's important to note that even adults in our study thought eating meat was less morally acceptable than eating animal products like milk," McGuire pointed out in a university news release. "So aversion to animals -- including farm animals -- being harmed does not disappear entirely."

People's relationship with animals is "full of ethical double standards," according to McGuire. "Some animals are beloved household companions, while others are kept in factory farms for economic benefit. Judgments seem to largely depend on the species of the animal in question: dogs are our friends, pigs are food."

While changes in attitudes are a natural part of growing up, the "moral intelligence of children" is also valuable, McGuire said.

"If we want people to move towards more plant-based diets for environmental reasons, we have to disrupt the current system somewhere," he suggested.

RELATED Monoclonal antibody for arthritis in cats receives FDA approval

"For example, if children ate more plant-based food in schools, that might be more in line with their moral values, and might reduce the 'normalization' towards adult values that we identify in this study," McGuire said.

The results were published this week in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

More information

The benefits of ethical farming are outlined by the Ethical Farming Fund.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

The Universal Kinship by Moore, J. Howard (John Howard), b. 1862
https://archive.org/details/theuniversalkinship-jhowardmoore/page/n9/mode/2up

Topics animal rights, speciesism, sentiocentrism, utilitarianism, ethics, philosophy, evolution, Darwin, speciesism, utilitarianism, ethicsCollection opensourceLanguage English


In this work, J. Howard Moore advocates for the recognition of a kinship between humans and nonhuman animals, and a universal application of the Golden Rule as an ethical framework towards the treatment of all sentient beings. The evidence for this kinship is detailed in three sections: the physical, the psychical and the ethical.


Based on this edition of the book, published in 1906 by Charles H. Kerr & Co¸ Chicago (public domain).


Cover art: The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark by Jan Brueghel the


ONE OF THE EARLY WORKS ON ANIMAL LIBERATION, LIKE MANY OF TODAY'S ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS MOORE WAS AN ACTIVIST VEGETARIAN, TODAY HE WOULD BE VEGAN, LIKE PETA.



Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered Before the Chicago Vegetarian Society
by Moore, J. Howard (John Howard), b. 1862
https://archive.org/details/whyiamavegetarian/page/n3/mode/2up
Publication date 1895
Topics vegetarianism, ethics, utilitarianism, animal rights
Publisher Chicago: Frances L. Dusenberry
Collection opensource
Language English


Brochure of an address given by J. Howard Moore to the Chicago Vegetarian Society on the benefits of and reasons for being a vegetarian. 



The Unconscious Holocaust
by Moore, J. Howard (John Howard), b. 1862

https://archive.org/details/theunconsciousholocaust-jhowardmoore/page/n1/mode/2up

Publication date 1897-02-01
Topics ethics, animal rights, vegetarianism
Publisher Western Health Reform Institute
Collection opensource
Language English
Source: Good Health, Vol. 32, Iss. 02


MOORE WAS A SOCIALIST AND ATHEIST
https://archive.org/details/thesourceofreligion/mode/2up









Ethics and education
by Moore, J. Howard (John Howard), b. 1862
https://archive.org/details/cu31924031243318/page/n5/mode/2up
Publication date 1912
Topics Ethics
Publisher London, G. Bell & Sons

Better world philosophy; a sociological synthesis
by Moore, J. Howard (John Howard), b. 1862
https://archive.org/details/cu31924030226165/page/n9/mode/2up


NO BOOK COVER, BROADSHEET LIKE
 ANTI IMPERIALIST PAMPHLET ON THE PHILIPPINES

America's apostasy
by Moore, J. Howard (John Howard), b. 1862
https://archive.org/details/americasapostasy00moor/mode/2up
Publication date 1899
Topics Imperialism, United States -- Colonial question, Philippines -- History Insurrection, 1898-1901, Philippines -- Politics and government 1898-1935
Publisher Chicago? : Chicago Chronicle
Collection uconn_libraries; blc; americana
Digitizing sponsor University of Connecticut Libraries
Contributor University of Connecticut Libraries

Language English

Paul Watson Green Conservative

Yep that's right I did not misspell Conservationist. Because he ain't. He is a self professed conservative who views humans as expendable.

Hmm we have heard of this somewhere before haven't we? Something about some Volk being more equal than others.....Scratch an animal rights activist and you find a fascist. Like Bardot. Darling of Stormfront and the White Wacists.

Bardot wrote "My homeland, my earth, is again invaded, with the blessing of successive governments, by an overpopulation of foreigners, notably Muslim." She called Le Pen "a very fine man" in her best-selling autobiography.


In Watson's Green fascism it's the planet that is 'Lebensraum' and the Volk for Watson are all the creatures on the earth, with the exception of those who suffer from species chavuinism, and guess who they are.....don't believe me well lets hear from the good Captain.....


Rejecting the Cultural Justification for Slaughter
Let me see, for defending whales, we are anti-Japanese, anti-Norwegian, anti-Icelandic, and anti-Native American. For defending seals, we are anti-Canadian, anti-Norwegian, anti-Russian, and anti-Namibian. For defending trees, we are anti-Hispanic and anti Native American, oh yes, and anti-working class. It appears that loggers who make four times the average income of an environmental activist are working-class and the lower-paid activists are viewed as wealthy. You see, when you work without pay because you feel that the entire future of the planet is at stake, this is viewed as a luxury. In other words, environmental activists have the luxury of sleeping in trees and not owning a home, a car, or recreational vehicles.

Clarification on Where Director Paul Watson Stands on Various Issues

I long ago decided that for this planet to be saved, we have to step outside the paradigm of anthropocentrism and adapt a ecocentric perspective.

A ecocentric perspective does not allow for consideration of special interest groups of human beings whose actions threaten the biosphere. The interests of the biosphere take precedence over the interests of hominid special interest groups.

Racism and Sexism for example are social issues but they are not issues relevant to the survival of the biosphere. They don't sit around the SPLC and the NACCP and discuss species protection and clear cut forestry issues. People don't go to feminist and gay rights meetings to discuss air pollution and wolf re-introduction programs. These issues have their place within the social environment of one species but they are not relevant to the rest of the citizens of the biosphere. Thus I believe that the role of an environmental organization is to discuss and act on environmental issues independent of human social issues.

I also don't believe that racism is relative to the ecocentric world. There is only one race that I recognize and that is the human race and racism is a form of behavior caused by abstract and nonsensical prejudices among members of the same species. No intelligent person can be a racist because it makes no ecological or biological sense. I have found it interesting that when I maintain that all humans are equal and all members of one species that some find this statement racist because I refuse to see any distinctions between people based on skin color or features.

I think that speciesism is a far more serious issue. Human discrimination against practically every other species on this planet has resulted, is resulting and will continue to result in mass extinctions, extirpations and diminishment. Whereas racism is acknowledged, speciesism is not even given a moment's thought by most people. It is willfully and arrogantly ignored.

I am first and foremost a conservationist and this means that I am a conservative. But being a conservationist conservative has no relationship to the present perversion of political conservatism - like this particular right wing Christian fundamentalist Republican rhetoric that is presently posing as conservative.

He condemn's himself in his own words, while he denies those who oppose him the same rights to free speech as he demands.

And those who think that this is the first time he has been criticized by the Anarchist Left well read on;

ECO-WARRIOR OR ECO-TERRORIST?

Pie Paul Watson?

At a joint Sea Shepherd and Jack Metcalf news conference yesterday, far right-wing racist Jack Metcalf complained that the civil rights of Sea Shepherd had been violated by the Makahs. This is the same Jack Metcalf that has spent a lifetime seeking to deny civil and human rights to people of color. The same Metcalf who, while in the Washington State Assembly, stated that "Black people are genetically incapable of governing themselves." The same Metcalf that the ACLU gave a 0 rating on his voting record on civil rights in Congress. To Metcalf, and others like him, rights only belong to rich white men.

A CERTAIN CALL FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE FOR THE MAKAH

And even better even the Vegans can see Watson for the racist fascist he really is.

Jun12

the knee-jerking that must end

Posted in race |

As to Paul Watson’s article, I’m unsure why the EF!J even printed it. Was it because Mr. Watson has achieved legendary status among Earth First!ers? Surely it wasn’t to prove that radical environmentalists aren’t racist. It would have been different if Watson used the space provided to renounce his past decisions, but instead he spends hundreds of words explaining how unapologetic he is for supporting the messed-up policies of groups like SUSPS. While Watson starts off by saying that he is unaware of any anti-immigration sentiment in the organizations he supports, he then goes immediately into explaining the negative costs of immigration. Yes, we need to question what roles humyn populations play throughout the world, but what questions are asked, who is asking them, and who feels entitled to answer? White Supremacy tells us to focus on overpopulation and to stop it through forced sterilization, refusal of health care, genocide, destruction of ecosystems, and other forms of violence. As someone who sees no need for (and has no respect for) centralized governments, I don’t understand anti-immigration sentiment. Borders are nothing but imaginary political boundaries. When we begin to look at why people take daily risks to cross those militarized boundaries (and why those in power prefer to keep them militarized) we can begin to understand why our population grows that 1.3 percent each year.

Watson comes from a tradition that sees Humans as expendable. Long live the Earth. The Nazi's to popularized this peasant belief in the sacredness of the land over the people, as the Land and Blood movement that later resurfaced as the right wing rump of Green Politics in the 1990's in Germany.

In fact the Green movement is not originally left wing, it arises out of isolationism ala the America first ideology of Buchanan and Nadar.

In England it appeals to the social reformers who would legislate against prostitution, fallen women, alcohol, etc. rather than addressing the real cause of the social problems, capitalism.

Darker shade of Green

Far-right attempts to influence the British Green movement take three forms. Firstly, an authoritarian strain in the environmental movement has proclaimed the need for a centralised and strongly 'eco'-policed state, since the publication of Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay 'The Tragedy of the Commons'. Immigration, seen as threatening the ecological carrying capacity of a country, should cease. Population must be cut, by coercion if necessary. Social issues such as homelessness and poverty are seen as a distraction from the essential job of tackling the environmental crisis. In Britain, this strain dominant in the environmental movement of the early 1970s has waned considerably. It is represented by the Campaign for Real Ecology and eco groups disillusioned with the Green Party, with an ideology rooted in the pessimistic conservatism of Malthus. Far from overtly racist, despite some frankly repellent views - neither can this conservative environmentalism be seen as a fascist movement - it is clearly positioned on the statist right.
Eco-fascism also has a lengthy lineage in Britain. The Soil Association, Britain's organic lobbyists, counted amongst their earliest members Jorian Jenks, former agriculture advisor to the British Union of Fascists. AK Chesterton, first Chairman of the National Front, was closely linked to far-right environmentalism of the 1930s. His uncle GK, Catholic apologist and purveyor of the Father Brown stories, invented the ideology of Distributism with Hillaire Belloc. Distributism, proclaiming the principle of 'three acres and a cow', seen as a 'third way' between capitalism and communism, drifted into the anti-semitic sphere before becoming the inspiration behind the modern remnants of the Front. Issues of Distributist newsletters in the 1950s advertised support for car free cities, decentralisation, the racist League of British Loyalists and Rudolf Hess.

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seals, Watson, anti-seal, hunting, Bardot, whales, Sea, Sheperd, EF!, vegan, vegetarian,

First Tool Usage in Wild Gorillas Discovered

Our relatives are evolving. Like to hear how Creation Science, Intelligent Design, and all the other theistic deniers of evolution explain that.

One small step for Leah is a giant leap for wild gorillas
Now, for the first time, scientists have observed and photographed wild gorillas using tools, including the moment Leah - the nickname used by scientists - used a stick to test the depth of a pool before wading into it. Until she wielded her wading stick in a swamp, all other species of great apes, including chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans, have been observed using tools in the wild, but never gorillas. "This is a truly astounding discovery," said Dr Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig."Tool usage in wild apes provides us with valuable insights into the evolution of our own species and the abilities of other species. Seeing it for the first time in gorillas is important on many different levels," Thomas Breuer, lead researcher of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a statement. On two separate occasions in the northern rain forests of the Republic of Congo, researchers observed and photographed individual western gorillas using sticks as tools, according to the study.

No need to postulate the existence of Intelligent Design or some disembodied God in the evolution of the species. The cognition of our nearest relatives, is being influenced over the centuries as they 'discover' and 'adapt' tool making.

The outrage is that they are still being poached and killed for their land, as meat, for their pelts, and in war zones like Rawanda. They are still treated as 'dumb' animals as native peoples were treated as 'savages'. 'brutes' by European colonialism.

Like the impact of Imperialism on indigienous peoples, the Gorrilas are subject to the effects of Speciesism in their mountain regions.

And speciesism is a result of the monotheistic dictum that Man is Created in the image of God (singular, male) and has dominion/domination of all the fish, fowl and beasts of the planet.

Let's note here as well that it is a FEMALE gorilla that has made this discovery. Tool making is not neccasarily a MALE occupation or discovery, This is also astounding in its obviousness and in the obvious obliviousness that male scientists have to this fact. Like our ancient ancestors being discovered around the world, most fossils are of women, not men. From 'Lucy' to Our Lady of Flores

Which should tell you something about evolution, that it develops along matrilinear lines, in other words it is matriarchical rather than patriarchical. And last time I checked ALL monotheistic religions in the modern world are Patriarchical, and deny that they had any social predecessors, especially a matriarchical/matrelinar one

Let us remember too that tool making is the most significant factors in human evolution of cognition. It reflects the role that labour had in moving from ape to hominid to homo sapiens..

The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man
Frederick Engels 1876
Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, during an epoch, not yet definitely determinable, of that period of the earth's history known to geologists as the Tertiary period, most likely towards the end of it, a particularly highly-developed race of anthropoid apes lived somewhere in the tropical zone -- probably on a great continent that has now sunk to the bottom of the Indian Ocean. [1] Darwin has given us an approximate description of these ancestors of ours. They were completely covered with hair, they had beards and pointed ears, and they lived in bands in the trees.

First, owing to their way of living which meant that the hands had different functions than the feet when climbing, these apes began to lose the habit of using their hands to walk and adopted a more and more erect posture. This was the decisive step in the transition from ape to man.

All extant anthropoid apes can stand erect and move about on their feet alone, but only in case of urgent need and in a very clumsy way. Their natural gait is in a half-erect posture and includes the use of the hands. The majority rest the knuckles of the fist on the ground and, with legs drawn up, swing the body through their long arms, much as a cripple moves on crutches. In general, all the transition stages from walking on all fours to walking on two legs are still to be observed among the apes today. The latter gait, however, has never become more than a makeshift for any of them.

It stands to reason that if erect gait among our hairy ancestors became first the rule and then, in time, a necessity, other diverse functions must, in the meantime, have devolved upon the hands. Already among the apes there is some difference in the way the hands and the feet are employed. In climbing, as mentioned above, the hands and feet have different uses. The hands are used mainly for gathering and holding food in the same way as the fore paws of the lower mammals are used. Many apes use their hands to build themselves nests in the trees or even to construct roofs between the branches to protect themselves against the weather, as the chimpanzee, for example, does. With their hands they grasp sticks to defend themselves against enemies, or bombard their enemies with fruits and stones. In captivity they use their hands for a number of simple operations copied from human beings. It is in this that one sees the great gulf between the undeveloped hand of even the most man-like apes and the human hand that has been highly perfected by hundreds of thousands of years of labour. The number and general arrangement of the bones and muscles are the same in both hands, but the hand of the lowest savage can perform hundreds of operations that no simian hand can imitate-no simian hand has ever fashioned even the crudest stone knife.

The first operations for which our ancestors gradually learned to adapt their hands during the many thousands of years of transition from ape to man could have been only very simple ones. The lowest savages, even those in whom regression to a more animal-like condition with a simultaneous physical degeneration can be assumed, are nevertheless far superior to these transitional beings. Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.

Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.

Animal Activists are “Poor in Spirit”

by Jon Hochschartner

 September 10, 2024
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Photo by Suzanne Tucker

In the first beatitude, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” The analogous blessing from the Sermon on the Plain, in the Gospel of Luke, is more straightforward. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” The text from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew is a little ambiguous.

Commentators frequently interpret ‘poor in spirit’ to mean those who have a humble attitude toward God. It implies an openness to the divine will and presence. Only by working to empty ourselves of selfish desires do we leave room for God to fill the space. Similarly, this emptying allows us to recognize the divine presence in others.When we’re poor in spirit, we can sense God telling us it’s wrong to kill animals and cause them to suffer. When we’re poor in spirit, we can see the divine presence in all, including other creatures, no matter how different they look on the outside. Finally, when we’re poor in spirit, God gives us the energy to pursue animal liberation.

Syl Ko is a writer known for highlighting the ways in which race, species and gender are interconnected. Along with her sibling, she wrote the book Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. Ko studied philosophy at San Francisco State University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Like many of the activists and scholars I highlight here, Ko didn’t employ spiritual language to describe her adoption of an animal-rights perspective, but it certainly could be described that way, with a sufficiently perennialist and panentheistic theology. Ko’s anti-speciesist insight was possible because of her openness to the divine will.

Ko was perhaps six or seven when she realized chicken bones were bones formerly inside animals’ bodies. “I remember the whole night I was just really hard on myself that I never made the connection,” Ko said in an interview with McGill Daily. “Then I started to hide the meat from our meals in my shoes, and I would go flush it down the toilet.“

Steven Best is co-founder of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies and the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. His work frequently provides justification for the Animal Liberation Front and seeks to link the nonhuman movement with the broader left. He is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Best explicitly described his conversion to animal-rights consciousness in religious terms. “I experienced something sacred within the bowels of the profane,” he wrote on his blog. “I was in Chicago, driving about 2 am, half-drunk and goddamn hungry. I pulled into a White Castle fast food restaurant and ordered a double cheeseburger.”

Best was usually content with a single cheeseburger. There was something about the two cheese slices and two meat patties that seemed so excessive, gross, and steeped in violence that he felt nauseated. For the first time in his life, Best made the connection between the food in his hands and the body of a living animal.

“I spit the vile flesh out of my mouth in utter revulsion,” he said. “I stumbled around in a dietary no-man’s-land for two months, not knowing what to eat, not wanting this consciousness but unable to shake it.” Thankfully, Best met some vegetarians who reassured him and steered the future animal-rights scholar in the right direction.

Ingrid Newkirk is the cofounder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. She is the most influential nonhuman activist of her generation. Besides running PETA, she is the author of a number of books, including Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.

As many in the nonhuman movement are, Newkirk is an atheist. However, when we enlarge our concept of the God to include all goodness, we can argue the value she saw in our fellow creatures was the divine presence. Newkirk began to accept the implications of this value and it led to a profound shift in her thinking.

“As an animal cruelty officer, I went to a farm in Maryland, and they had abandoned all the animals,” Newkirk told WWTW. “All the animals were dead except one pig. I gave him water and put him in the truck to go to the vet. And on the way home, I thought, I wonder what I will have to eat for dinner tonight.”

Newkirk realized she had frozen pork chops at home. Suddenly, she connected the dots, thinking about the pig who she was bringing to the veterinarian. The contradiction of prosecuting people for animal cruelty while she continued to eat meat was too much for Newkirk to bear. She became a vegetarian.

Faraz Harsini is a scientist at the Good Food Institute, where he researches cultivated meat. Additionally, he is the founder of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection, which seeks to bring nonhuman advocacy to different academic settings. Farsini has collaborated with groups like PETA, Humane Society of the United States and others.

Like a great number of those I discuss here, he became vegetarian first and then vegan. Farsini made the initial change after someone accused him of hypocrisy. Instead of staying defensive or cynical, Harsini recognized and responded to the call of God, or, to put it in secular terms, the call of conscience.

For Harsini, the initial change resulted from a disagreement, in which he opposed buying a fish as part of Persian New Year celebrations. “It’s a tradition to keep live goldfish in water tanks, symbolizing life and freedom,” he said in an interview with Farm Animal Rights Movement. “Ironically, many fish suffer and die during this process.”

Harsini’s friend told him it made no sense to be advocating for this fish while he was eating other fish. The comment initially upset Harsini, but it got the scientist thinking and eventually led him to an anti-speciesist perspective. For many, who aren’t so poor in spirit, this wouldn’t have been possible.

Leah Garcés is the president of Mercy for Animals. Previously, she oversaw campaigns in 14 countries at the World Society for the Protection of Animals and launched Compassion in World Farming in the United States. She’s written a couple books, including Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.

She became vegetarian, as people frequently do, when she became aware of the inconsistency in her feelings toward animals and her diet. When we love our fellow creatures, as Garcés does, we love God, who is present in all. This is one of my favorite aspects of a panentheism. Fighting nonhuman exploitation becomes a religious duty.

“I grew up in the swamps of Florida, watching wild ducks raise their young in my mom’s flower beds,” Garcés recounted to Planetary Press. “I grew up with the conviction that these ducks, and all animals, have rich inner lives and could experience joy, love, and families, just like us.”

Garcés was deeply upset when she saw a documentary about factory farming as a teenager. Despite her affection for animals, Garcés realized she was complicit in their abuse. Rather than suppressing these negative feelings, Garcés chose to dedicate her life to protecting God’s creatures.

Ronnie Lee is the founder of the Animal Liberation Front, who, in recent years, has changed his focus to vegan education and electoral work. The Green Party of England and Wales has been Lee’s vehicle in politics. He hosts an online news show, called Slash the Banner, with his wife, Louise Ryan.

Having spent many hours interviewing Lee, I know he’d never describe his transition to vegetarianism as spirituality inspired. However, it can be interpreted that way with a broad definition of God. The divine isn’t an old man in the sky. That’s a metaphor which can serve a practical purpose, but is also limiting.

Lee’s sister was dating a vegetarian, who opposed killing animals. This simple rationale was a profound challenge to Lee. As he said in one of our conversations: “I spent about three nights staying awake thinking about this, and it playing on my mind, and me trying to find some excuse to carry on eating meat.” Ultimately, he listened to God.

Corey Lee Wrenn is the author of a number of books about animal rights. These include Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony. She is also the founder of Vegan Feminist Network and a co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists.

As a teenager, Wrenn was poor in spirit, so when she was confronted with the violence of our food system, she became a vegetarian. “I was watching a cooking program with my mom,” Wrenn said on the Sentientism podcast. “The guy went to a butcher shop in the program. There were pigs heads hanging from chains. That was the moment.”

The imagery made a connection for her in a visceral way. The meat she ate came from a once living animal. Surely Wrenn knew this before, but the cooking program made it more difficult to avoid. Wrenn announced she wouldn’t consume flesh again. Her mother was skeptical, but Wrenn stuck to the pledge.

Paul Shapiro is the the author of Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. He is CEO of Better Meat Co. and host of the Business for Good podcast. Previously, he founded Compassion Over Killing, now Animal Outlook, and served as a vice president at HSUS.

At an early age, Shapiro recognized what we might term a divine spark in our fellow creatures. “I basically figured that we don’t have to eat animals,” Shapiro said on the Cultivated Meat and Future Food podcast. “And so if I had my choice between committing violence against them or not, I would really rather just live and let live.”

Priya Sawhney is a co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere. As part of her activism, she has disrupted events featuring Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sawhney has been arrested a number of times and faced a variety of felony charges. She seems indomitable.

In an interview on the YouTube channel RenaissanceMarieAustin, Sawhney explained she had long been sympathetic to the suffering of animals. It upset her to see others treat God’s creatures with such callousness and disrespect. The reality of industrial agriculture came as a great shock.

“I grew up India where I saw a lot of stray dogs,” Sawhney said. “I really didn’t like it when I saw people bullying them, throwing rocks at them, you know, just treating them like they’re not living beings. To me, that was the worst thing that was happening. Then I started learning, ‘Oh wow, there’s factory farming.’”

Andrew Linzey is an Anglican priest and theologian. He is the author of many books making a Christian case for nonhuman rights. These include Animal Theology. Linzey is the founder and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and the editor of the Journal for Animal Ethics.

While I have to translate the motivations of most of the activists and scholars I write about here into spiritual language, he is very clear about the religious motivations of his concern for nonhumans. From Linzey’s description, it sounded as if his Christian identity came first.

“When I was in my teens I had a series of intensely religious experiences,” he told Satya magazine. “They deepened my sense of God as the creator of all things. And they also deepened my sensitivity towards creation itself so that concern for God’s creatures and animal rights followed from that.”

Carol J. Adams has written a long list of titles, most famously The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. It has been translated into German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese, Polish, Spanish, and French. In the 1970s, she helped launched a hotline for battered women in upstate New York.

Adams traced her vegetarianism to the killing of a horse, one she adored, after her first year at Yale Divinity School. Because Adams was poor in spirit, she was able to sense God telling us it’s wrong to eat animals. Most people dismiss these troubling intuitions. It’s to Adams’ credit she didn’t.

“I returned home,” she recounted to Nervy Girl. “As I was unpacking I heard a furious knocking at the door. Our neighbor greeted me as I opened the door. He exclaimed, ‘Someone has just shot your pony!’ I ran, with my neighbor, up to the back pasture behind our barn, and found the dead body of the pony I had loved.”

That evening, Adams was eating a hamburger, when she stopped mid-bite. The incongruity was too much. She was mourning one animal, while eating another. Adams couldn’t summon a defense of her ethical favoritism and so she became a vegetarian. Like Saint Paul in Damascus, the scales were falling from her eyes.

Christopher ‘Soul’ Eubanks is the founder of APEX Advocacy, which seeks to increase the numbers of people of color who participate in animal activism. He has volunteered with a variety of groups, including the Humane League, Anonymous the Voiceless, PETA, the Animal Save Movement, Mercy for Animals and others.

Eubank’s embrace of an anti-speciesist consciousness seemed to be the result of following the divine will wherever it led him, reflecting a humble attitude toward God. We should all aspire to this. Of course, that doesn’t mean we abandon reason and judgement, which help guide our inchoate sentiment.

“When I saw animals suffering, I thought about all the injustices that I saw happening to Black and brown people,” Eubanks told the Humane League. “I didn’t feel it was morally consistent for me to advocate against one form of oppression while contributing to another form of oppression.”

Sue Coe is a political artist and illustrator whose work frequently includes animal-liberation themes. Her pieces have been collected in a series of books, such as Cruel: Bearing Witness to Animal Exploitation. She received the Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking Award from the Southern Graphics Council International.

Growing up in England in the aftermath of World War II, near bombed-out ruins and a slaughterhouse, Coe came to see the divine — whatever she might have called the concept — in all, including our fellow creatures. That insight has informed her work throughout what is now a long, accomplished career.

“Art always has to go beyond human health, human drama, and human issues,” Coe said in an interview with Artforum. “As a child, I was forced to see the correlation between war, violence, and fascism, and animal cruelty and abuse. Once I figured that connection out, so early on, I realized that the Other is always at risk.”

Wayne Hsiung is the co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere. Since then, he’s launched a nonprofit called The Simple Heart Initiative, which seeks to expand the movement for open rescue. Hsiung also maintains a popular animal-rights blog and podcast, which share The Simple Heart name.

The activist told the YouTube channel VeganLinked he became vegan after his childhood dog died. This was prompted by feelings of guilt about the ways he and his family had not heeded the call of conscience or what might be called the will of God in their treatment of the animal.

“She lived in the laundry room for the first couple years of her life,” Hsiung said. “We didn’t have any experience raising animals, so my parents thought it was appropriate to hit a dog. That’s the way we disciplined her. It was not cool. We stopped eventually when we figured out this is a member of our family. This is not some sort of toy.”

More than that, though, Hsiung felt guilty about not visiting the dog when she was sick. He was studying for graduate school and ultimately didn’t see the animal before she passed. Hsiung resolved to do something important in her honor, and for him that was finally going vegan, after being vegetarian for some time.

Karen Davis was the founder of United Poultry Concerns, a group which seeks to address the treatment of domestic fowl. As part of her work, she ran a chicken sanctuary in Virginia. Davis was also the author of several books, including The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tail: A Case for Comparing Atrocities.

“I grew up in a meat-eating household in Pennsylvania,” she told the Eugene Veg Education Network. “Although I have always loved animals and hated animal cruelty, I ate animal products so unthinkingly that, while arguing at the dinner table with my father about hunting, it would be over a plate of dead animals.”

Ultimately, her inspiration for giving up meat came from a religious source. Davis read a famous essay by Leo Tolstoy called The First Step, in which the Christian pacifist recounted his visits to Moscow slaughterhouses and argued for vegetarianism. The article was originally a preface to someone else’s book.

Josh Harper was a member of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, a global pressure campaign which sought to close a notorious vivisection firm. Like some of those I mention here, he served time in prison for his activism. Among other things, Harper is now a volunteer archivist of movement history.

In various outlets, he’s mentioned the influence of hardcore music in his adoption of veganism. For many campaigners of his generation, this politicized scene was deeply formative. Fundamentally, however, his decision came down to a desire not to harm other creatures, who we could say bear the imprint of God.

“I went vegan because I can’t stand the idea that someone would needlessly suffer and be confined so that I can eat or dress myself,” Harper told Vegan Skate Blog. “Its very simply the right thing to do.” I believe most people know, deep down, it’s the right thing to do, but they’re not poor enough in spirit to follow the intuition.

lauren Ornelas is founder of the Food Empowerment Project, a food justice non-profit that promotes veganism. As a teenager, she started the first high school nonhuman liberation group in Texas. In a similar, trailblazing fashion, Ornelas was the first woman of color inducted into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame.

Ornelas’ dietary journey wasn’t linear. However, in recognizing the moral worth of other creatures, she recognized their shared divine origin. “I went vegetarian as I didn’t want to contribute to the suffering of non-human animals or be responsible for separating them,” Ornelas explained to Authority Magazine.

Alex Hershaft is a Holocaust survivor and the co-founder of Farm Animal Rights Movement. He organized national non-human liberation conferences, World Day for Farmed Animals and other initiatives. Hershaft served on the boards of a number of organizations, including Jewish Veg and the American Humanist Association.

Perhaps he would use different language to describe the experience, but I believe, from a religious perspective, Hershaft came to see God was present in other beings, like God was present in humans. This realization, which came after a visit to a slaughterhouse in the 1970s, completely reordered his life.

“I suddenly came across piles of hearts, lungs, heads, hooves, and discarded body parts,” he said in a FARM interview. “Very quickly, I made the association with the piles of body parts I saw in Auschwitz, the use of cattle cars to transport people to the gas chambers, [and] the crowding in wood containers of the victims.”

Angela Davis is primarily recognized as a socialist, feminist and anti-racist, but she’s also made clear her leftist sympathies cross the species barrier. Davis, of course, is a world-famous intellectual, best known for her autobiography or maybe the later title Women, Race and Class. She was a longtime member of Communist Party USA.

“Most people don’t think about the fact that they’re eating animals,” Davis said in an interview with Grace Lee Boggs, explaining her veganism. “When they’re eating a steak or eating chicken, most people don’t think about the tremendous suffering that those animals endure simply to become food products to be consumed by human beings.”

The vocabulary of Marxism is very dissimilar to the vocabulary of religion. Still, using an expansive understanding of the divine, I think we can say, in following her ideals through the unfamiliar territory of anti-speciesism, Davis is following the path God has laid before her. She’s remarkably poor in spirit.

Tom Regan was a philosopher specializing in nonhuman ethics. His most influential book was The Case for Animal Rights, which was inspired by Immanuel Kant. Regan was also a cofounder of the Culture and Animals Foundation, a nonprofit that continues to support artistic and intellectual work which benefits other creatures.

He had accepted the merits of vegetarianism on an abstract level, but it wasn’t until the death of a beloved dog, Gleco, that Regan and his wife changed their personal habits. The couple seemed to generalize the inherent value or divine spark they recognized in their companion to creatures humanity typically exploits.

“I often say that reason can lead the will to water but only emotion can make it drink,” he explained in a statement quoted by the Vegetarian Resource Group. “We saw the animals we ate in the same way that we saw Gleco. Well, when the mind and heart are on the same page, that sealed the deal for us.”

Jane Velez-Mitchell is a former network television anchor who left the mainstream media and founded UnchainedTV, a non-profit which produces videos dedicated to animal liberatation and veganism. Among other honors, she has received a Compassionate Leadership Award from Mercy for Animals.

Velez-Mitchell was a vegetarian when she interviewed Howard Lyman, a fourth generation cattle rancher turned animal advocate, who compared milk to liquid meat. Velez-Mitchell was newly sober and wanted to put her deepest principles — or, to use the spiritual language, the will of God — into practice. So she became vegan.

“I wrote a book about what I call my three miracles: getting sober, coming out as gay, and going vegan,” Velez-Mitchell told VegNews. “When you get sober, you get clarity. I realized I couldn’t lie to myself about my sexual orientation. And then I started realizing that my behavior wasn’t in alignment with my values. I began thinking about factory farming.”

Marc Bekoff is a biologist, ethologist and behavioral ecologist. He is the author of a long list of titles, including The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow and Empathy — and Why They Matter. Bekoff is a cofounder of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“My vegan journey probably started when I was about two or three years old,” he said to Vegan FTA, recounting stories his mother told him. “She said that I could feel the joy, pain, anxiety, or stress of an animal when I was very young.” Empathy is a spiritual endeavor, as it involves one being recognizing the shared divinity in another.

Nicoal Sheen is a former spokeswoman for the North American Animal Liberation Front Press Office. She is now a certified yoga instructor and the author of a number of texts, including a zine of vegan recipes, called Do No Harm, Eat No Crap. Sheen became vegetarian in high school after watching the PETA short Meet Your Meat.

“I had always considered myself an ‘animal lover,’ yet I was oblivious to how I actively contributed to the pain and suffering of other animals,” she said in an interview with Meatless Movement. The future spokeswoman was able to process this new information in a productive way because she was poor in spirit.

Christopher Sebastian is a journalist and lecturer on nonhuman rights. He writes about food, politics, media, pop culture, and animals. Sebastian teaches in the School of Journalism, Media, and Visual Arts at Anglo-American University in Prague. He became vegan after reading the book Skinny Bitch.

Sebastian was riveted as the bestseller pivoted away from a discussion of diet into a conversation about the exploitation of God’s creatures. “That was so much more emotionally arresting, and, of course, unexpected for me, that it was just an immediate shift as soon as I put the book down,” he said to Vegan FTA.

Jo-Anne McCarthur is a photojournalist and animal-liberation activist. She was the subject of a documentary, called The Ghosts in Our Machine. Her photographs documenting the treatment of nonhumans have been collected in a number of books, including We Animals. McCarthur runs a media agency that shares the same name.

She became vegan while interning at Farm Sanctuary. “I found myself in a pasture brushing my new friend Arbuckle,” McCarthur wrote in a Medium post, reminiscing about an elderly steer. “The only non-vegan thing I had with me at the sanctuary was a pair of boots. Leather boots. And I was wearing them that day.”

The photographer realized she didn’t want to wear clothes made of creatures like Arbuckle. McCarthur decided to abstain from animal products going forward. She recounted feeling at peace, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally and ethically. One might add spiritually, which is roughly synonymous with those terms.

Bruce Friedrich is co-founder of the Good Food Institute, which is leading the effort to accelerate the development of cultivated meat. Previously, he worked for PETA and Farm Sanctuary. Outside of the animal movement, Friedrich spent a few months in prison for damaging a fighter jet as part of an anti-war action.

He was another whose anti-speciesism was inspired by a religious source. Friedrich was first vegan for human-rights and environmental reasons, then he read one of Linzey’s books, specifically Christianity and the Rights of Animals. Friedrich was running a Catholic Worker hospitality house at the time.

“It changed my life,” he wrote in National Catholic Reporter, recalling the title’s impact. “As a result of my prayer over Linzey’s work and conversations with my spiritual director at St. Aloysius Catholic church, my focus turned to animal protection…  By any measure, what happens to farmed animals today is anti-Christian.”

Nirva Patel is the executive director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School. She was a producer of the documentary Game Changers, about vegan athletes, and serves on the board of Farm Sanctuary. Patel was also influenced by her faith. In her case, that’s Jainism.

“Growing up in a Jain community, I always had that sense for suffering and for animals,” she told Young Jains of America. “I did consume dairy, ghee, milk, and cheese… It’s a common oversight to recognize the violence limited to the meat industry, but there is an egregious amount of cruelty just in the dairy industry.”

Peter Singer is the most influential anti-speciesist philosopher alive. He’s the author of a number books on a range of subjects, but the most important, for our purposes, is Animal Liberation. It’s a title that is often credited with rejuvenating the nonhuman-rights movement and inspiring multiple generations of activists.

Singer began to take vegetarianism seriously after a discussion with Richard Keshen, a fellow graduate student at Oxford, who abstained from meat for moral reasons. “Within a week or two, I said to my wife, who was here with me, ‘I think we have to change our diet,’” Singer recounted in an interview with Sung Hee Kim.

Of course, many people are convinced of the merits of vegetarianism, but that doesn’t lead them to actually change their habits. Singer did, because he was poor in spirit. The rest, as they say, is history. Despite the limitations of his utilitarian view, the philosopher helped millions consider animals in a more favorable light.

Genesis Butler is an animal-rights activist and one of the youngest people to ever give a TEDx talk. She has worked with Farm Sanctuary, HSUS, Mercy for Animals and other organizations to spread her compassionate message. She’s currently an ambassador for Earth Day’s Foodprints for the Future.

Butler became vegan at an early age. “I started to ask a lot of questions, like where my food was coming from, and my mom finally told me how we had to eat animals and kill them for my food,” she said on the All About Change podcast. “That really devastated me, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to eat this again,’ so then I went vegan.”

Young kids, who aren’t burdened by decades of speciesist socialization, often have an easier time seeing the divine presence in animals. I imagine this wasn’t exactly what Jesus had in mind when he said we must become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Still, I don’t think it could be too far off.

Kim Stallwood has held a variety of positions in the professional animal movement. For instance, he’s a former national director of PETA and executive editor of Animals’ Agenda. Stallwood wrote a memoir, called Growl: Life Lessons, Hard Truths, and Bold Strategies from an Animal Advocate.

He gave up meat after getting in an argument with a vegetarian friend about his summer job at a slaughterhouse. “Eventually, I realised that what I had been responsible for was wrong,” Stallwood recalled to Vegan FTA. Inspired by a friend, he listened to his quiet, innermost voice — what we might call the voice of God.

Melanie Joy is a social psychologist and author. She’s written a number of books, including Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism. Joy is also the founder of the nonprofit group Beyond Carnism. She is a recipient of the Ahimsa Award, the Peter Singer Prize and the Empty Cages Prize.

Joy initially became vegetarian for health-related reasons. She ate a burger contaminated with campylobacter that made her so sick she couldn’t imagine consuming flesh again. Then she started learning about the suffering of our fellow creatures on farms and the other costs of animal agriculture.

“But what shocked me in some ways even more than what I was learning was that nobody I talked to was willing to hear what I had to say,” Joy told Vox. “I mean, the response was almost always something like, ‘Don’t tell me that, you’ll ruin my meal.’” This reaction fascinated her and became a focus of her research.

There’s a psychological explanation for it, but, as I’ve tried to show here, I believe there is a spiritual answer as well. Those who avoid such distressing information are not yet poor enough in spirit, the quality Jesus praised in the first Beatitude. We should all cultivate an openness to God’s will and the divine spark in animals.

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Jon Hochschartner is the author of a number of books about animal-rights history, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter, Ingrid Newkirk, and Puppy Killer, Leave Town. He blogs at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substack.com.