The basic concepts of good and evil need to be addressed
by Andrzej Szczepanek - We are incapable of distinguishing good from evil because of many cultural, religious and social misconceptions, therefore our moral, social and legal order are flawed, contributing to systemic evil threatening our own sense of individual and social identity. Therefore, the basic concepts of good and evil, human and animal rights, democracy and legal justice need to be addressed.
Let me be direct. The question of animal rights is an inseparable and inherent component of human rights and man's welfare. The violation of animals rights, inflicting suffering on non-human sentient beings, the industrialization and institutionalisation of mass animal slaughter (institutionalisation meaning the systemic and institutional approval of the wholesale animal rights abuse in the sense of animal farming or killing of homeless animals approved by the state and the society – for example, Romanian extermination laws) is a gross violation of human and minority rights as it traumatizes countless numbers of individuals capable of cherishing meaningful and profoundly affective relationship with non-human sentient beings. The extent of trauma and the sense of violence those individuals experience can amount to the trauma of the death of a loved one.
We do enormous harm to people by failing to grasp the simple and inherent relation between human and animal rights. We traumatize those people, and exclude them socially, yet we claim that we act legally and we are happy. As long as we abstract animal welfare from human welfare, we will carry on inflicting pain and misery on many people whose identity is partly derived from profound and affective relationship with other non-human sentient beings.
By narrowing down the problem of animal rights abuses merely to the question of ethics and morality is preposterous, as it overlooks such important perspectives as human rights and man's welfare. We abuse animal rights in a systemic, massive, institutionalised and industrial way, and in the same way we abuse human rights - we use the tool of institutional and systemic violence and make a legal cover-up to justify the abuses.
Animal rights have been designed in the first place by humans and for humans to protect human welfare. Thus we create a culture of institutional violence which threatens our own well-being because it tolerates and accepts abuse as a cultural norm. Likewise, abuse and violence were a cultural norm in Auschwitz.
Any moral justification for animal rights abuses is a moral equivalent to human rights abuses.
Any economic justification for animal rights abuses is economic justification for human rights abuses.
Any legal justification for animal rights abuses is legal justification for human rights abuses.
Any political justification for animal rights abuses is political justification for human rights abuses.
Any religious justification for animal rights abuses is religious justification for human rights abuses.
If we are capable of finding reasons to justify systemic, legal and institutional violation of animal rights, then we automatically and inevitably find moral, religious, legal, economic and political grounds to justify human rights abuses and question the idea of the welfare of man. In this sense the foundation of our legal, social and moral system is corrupt because there is no honest and open public and media debate to tackle the problem head-on.
Eat meat or not to eat meat, it is the question to be answered in the stench of death and silent suffering of the slaughterhouse. Animal rights activists do not want to introduce meat eating prohibition. They want to expose the true meaning of unspeakable excesses of the slaughter house and how the excesses relate to human rights, social conflict, democracy, social trauma, religion and the law. Their voice is ignored, their constitutional and legal rights disregarded - another example of human rights violations and social marginalization, even stigmatization.
Let's consider one example. Religious zealots claim that animal sacrifice, by cutting an animal's throat or chopping its head off, is of religious importance to them and, naturally, to their well-being. This is a religious and cultural justification of cruelty against animals and by implication, the violation of human rights.
True, their cultural and religious identity may be in danger - a serious and traumatizing problem to be considered carefully, but does it justify the notion of cultural and systemic violence which reached its climax in Auschwitz?
Cultural and systemic violence will always work against humanity as it precludes any social reform, progress and dialogue. Cultural and religious identity evolve in the process of social, technological, and economic progress, and it is indicative of its resilience and adaptability. Cultural and religious institutional violence-based identity and society go extinct as they get fossilized in their mal-adaption and cruelty.
The culture of institutionalized violence can survive as long as its evil is legally and socially justified and conserved due to the absence of any credible and honest social as well as political dialogue. The omnipresence of systemic, cultural and institutionalised violence makes it invisible and insidious.
All sorts of people will bring up all sorts of arguments and reasons to legitimize it because they refuse to acknowledge that human and animal suffering are one, meaning that when facing the ultimate trauma of imminent death and dying, both humans and sentient animals respond in exactly the same emotive pattern of dread and extreme existential anxiety being the source of unbearable and apocalyptic suffering. This is exactly the point where our society and violent culture fail. In a similar way, our culture of institutional violence and common animal and human rights abuses displaces the problem of human misery and trauma resulting from growing social inequalities. The two issues of animal and human rights abuses are complementary and can not be separated. Otherwise, any attempt to create a coherent and just moral, legal, social, and political order will end up in a failure, and an inability to address social problems. So, it is justifiable to say that the systemic foundations of our cultural organization are flawed because our perception of good and evil is false and distorted.
Speaking of our deceitful and misleading cultural and religious sense of good and evil, it is necessary to discuss the role of religion in the process of deception. In his confrontation with existential dread of death, dying, decay and non-existence, man made a quantum leap to protect himself from existential suffering and misery.
Jesus' martyr's death and suffering on the cross symbolizes man's desperate need to identify with Him in order to find meaning and substance in the existential suffering of death and dying. By assuming partly Christ's identity, man found meaning in his existential struggle with death and dying and the cultural process fortified enormously man's cultural organization contributing to social progress and stability. The concept of Christ's suffering and the assumption of His identity made it possible for man to find meaning in the existential void impeding cultural and social progress. It was a revelation to know that Christ's and man's suffering are a unity, that Christ and man are united in suffering. The process allowed man to hope and strenghtened his identity in the face of iminent death, dying and non-existence. It is a beautiful and life-giving concept, however, in his desperation and pain, man denied this right to other sentient beings suffering the same agonies of existential dread of death and dying. This resulted in man's false and harming notion of good and evil because man in his desperate struggle against the trauma of death and dying appropriated the concept of suffering exclusively for himself leaving out other sentient creatures.
Dying and suffering are central to Christianity. The whole Bible is about it. However, the Holy Book is exclusively about one kind of suffering-human suffering, which lessens its credibility and creates a distorted sense and perception of what good and evil are. Such cultural and religious misconceptions are persistent and they are socially and psychologically damaging. They lack coherence, and damage social relations. They are powerful as they constitute a cultural norm, therefore they slow down the progression of social awareness and justice.
We are incapable of distinguishing good from evil because of many cultural, religious and social misconceptions, therefore our moral, social and legal order are flawed contributing to systemic evil threatening our own sense of individual and social identity. Therefore, the basic concepts of good and evil, human and animal rights, democracy and legal justice need to be addressed.
- Andrzej Szczepanek -
Jesus' martyr's death and suffering on the cross symbolizes man's desperate need to identify with Him in order to find meaning and substance in the existential suffering of death and dying. By assuming partly Christ's identity, man found meaning in his existential struggle with death and dying and the cultural process fortified enormously man's cultural organization contributing to social progress and stability. The concept of Christ's suffering and the assumption of His identity made it possible for man to find meaning in the existential void impeding cultural and social progress. It was a revelation to know that Christ's and man's suffering are a unity, that Christ and man are united in suffering. The process allowed man to hope and strenghtened his identity in the face of iminent death, dying and non-existence. It is a beautiful and life-giving concept, however, in his desperation and pain, man denied this right to other sentient beings suffering the same agonies of existential dread of death and dying. This resulted in man's false and harming notion of good and evil because man in his desperate struggle against the trauma of death and dying appropriated the concept of suffering exclusively for himself leaving out other sentient creatures.
Dying and suffering are central to Christianity. The whole Bible is about it. However, the Holy Book is exclusively about one kind of suffering-human suffering, which lessens its credibility and creates a distorted sense and perception of what good and evil are. Such cultural and religious misconceptions are persistent and they are socially and psychologically damaging. They lack coherence, and damage social relations. They are powerful as they constitute a cultural norm, therefore they slow down the progression of social awareness and justice.
We are incapable of distinguishing good from evil because of many cultural, religious and social misconceptions, therefore our moral, social and legal order are flawed contributing to systemic evil threatening our own sense of individual and social identity. Therefore, the basic concepts of good and evil, human and animal rights, democracy and legal justice need to be addressed.
- Andrzej Szczepanek -