The schism between people with pets and people with animals, and the great conflict over animal rights and animal welfare, has cause great controversy and confusion when it comes to understanding animals. We do not seem to know any longer what is the moral way to see animals and what is immoral.
Most people have lost touched with animals, and only understand the lives of pets, and partly because of this, it seems moral to many people to treat all animals as pets, and to drive them out of the everyday lives of people, and thus, out of the world.
The New York Carriage horses are a testament to this new confusion. The mayor of New York City, who has never owned a dog or a cat, has been led to believe it is immoral for horses to pull light carriages on asphalt in Central Park. He is seeking to ban the horses from the city because he believes that this is the moral thing to do.
In fact, he will be destroying the good lives of the horses, and the good lives of the people who own, live and work with them. We all see the world through our own lens, but I believe history and common sense will ultimate make it clear that his path is not the moral one.
Some ideas about morality and animals in the modern world:
l. It is not moral to drive animals from the world, the moral choice is to keep them among us and in our every day lives. The animals of the world, domesticated or not, are vanishing from the world, only the pets are surviving. The remove of each animal – every carriage horse, every elephant, each pony in a farmer’s market – from the lives of people is a tragedy, and most often, death sentence in the modern world. It is not moral to kill an animal in order to save it.
2. It is not moral to use animals to dehumanize, assault, intimidate, frighten or hate and harm human beings. Love and compassion stand on their own ground, in their own terms it is not moral to claim to love an animal white abusing a person. Animals and people are partners in the joys and travails of life, they are not the same thing, they are different things, but neither can survive in the world without empathy and compassion, dignity and respect.
3. It is not moral to deprive working animals of work. Asian elephants, draft horses, donkeys, ponies, sheep, many dogs, have been working for and with humans for thousands of years, helping one another to survive, building a safer and more peaceful world. It is the moral duty of human beings to give working animals – draft horses, herding dogs, ponies in the farmer’s markets, farm animals, even those earmarked for food and human consumption – and yes, some elephants in the circus, the right to work with people. It is their only pathway to survival and purpose and humane treatment on a planet where the natural world has been destroyed.
Animals that work with people enable human and animal lives, working animals with work survive, it is immoral to condemn them to inactive and purposeless lives in the name of morality. It is the very opposite of moral.
4. It is immoral for citizens of the world to lose contact with the natural world, with the lives of farmers, with the lives of animals. The earth is bleeding, animals are struggling to survive. People who make judgements about their care and welfare and rights are behaving in a profoundly immoral way if they know nothing about them or what they truly need to live in a healthy and humane way. It is immoral to not understand where food comes from, how it is prepared, what the real life on a real farm is like. Mother Earth demands that we understand her and help her to heal.
5. It is immoral to see animals only through the prism of abuse, neglect and elitism. It is immoral to stop the poor, the working class, the elderly from adopting animals that would bring them comfort and give millions of animals purpose and meaning – and homes. It is immoral to denigrate the things animals and people have learned to do together as “stupid tricks,” or to deride carriage drivers as “random people,” or farmers as ignorant abusers of animals.
6. It is immoral to misuse the notion of abuse and apply it to the normal, real and ancient lives of animals. It is immoral to accuse people of abuse and cruelty when they are guilty of neither, the targets of arbitrary and unthinking redefinitions of animal rights.
For most of human history, we were sporadically concerned with the idea of animal welfare, that is promoting the humane and merciful treatment of animals. In our time, this notion has been supplanted by the idea that animals are entitled to the same rights as human beings. The people who once determined the future of animals knew them and lived with them – much of America was still in populated agricultural areas. Today, most Americans lived along the coasts and their idea of morality and animals is increasingly ideological, remote and detached. Like the mayor of New York City, many of the people speaking for the rights of animals know nothing about them.
This has caused great suffering and conflict to people and the animals they live with. We no longer have a rational or moral view of animals and their future in the world, and there is a new social awakening about the disappearance of animals from our lives. The New York Carriage horses have, for many, become a symbol of this confusion and the great harm it can do.
It is immoral to condemn working animals to lives of idleness and irrelevance. It is wrong to drive them to extinction and out of the lives of people. It is wrong to end the way of life that has led so many people to lives with animals and a powerful connection to them. It is wrong to separate animals from the people who have come to know and love them. It is immoral. The moral thing is for the horses to remain in New York City, and live their good and safe – not perfect lives.