Earthlings and Speciesism

This is quite possibly the most relentlessly violent and shocking film you will ever see – that’s if you are able to see it through. Many people are not – even when I first saw it, I couldn’t watch it all the way, and when I showed the documentary to our Friday Night Video crowd in Taiping many of them simply walked out after 10 minutes unable to bear it any longer.

You may wonder what it is about, but that is very simple: it is about the brutal relationships we have with other creatures on this planet, which is examined in this documentary in regard to five different areas: as pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and research subjects.

Very often we have to name something in order to recognise it: the word is of recent provenance: speciesism; it’s not a pretty word, but just as racism is preferring one’s own race above all others, and nationalism one’s own nation so here we are talking about the preference given to humans and the utter disregard of the suffering of all other creatures.

I do not think we can expect to have any peace amongst humans here on Earth as long as we are living in such a grotesquely distorted way with other beings. The fact that the world is continually at war is intimately related to the way we are relating to the world around us on a day-to-day basis.

Have a look at this documentary – even if only for a short time – and then ask yourself this question: Do I want to have any part of this myself? I do not think any moral person will be able to answer yes, and if your answer is no, then you really need to adjust your lifestyle to suit your ideas.