Last night I awoke at about four and was unable to sleep again. Today I’m a bit of a grumpy bastard. I just watched a video of a koala that was badly burnt in the bushfires that are still raging in Australia. It had burns all over it’s body and was screaming in pain, blood on the towel, no fur left. I feel like crying. I’m not normally someone who cries and I don’t say that in a proud way as it would probably be good for me if I did. They had to put the little fella down today because his burns were too bad. This is heartbreaking. Think with all the fires this year that raged through the Amazon, Africa, Siberia and currently Australia how many millions of animals have died. In a way this one little koala is more upsetting because we can relate to it. We can see his pain, we can hear his cries. The rest are nothing more than a number, and numbers don’t really mean anything.
Is it an issue of compassion or empathy. As a species do we lack this ability to connect with animals, and that includes humans by the way. There are numerous arguments that we have become desensitised to suffering and death but I’m not sure how true that is. Computer games and films do display graphic scenes but they’re not real and there is no great clamour to watch actual execution or snuff videos. There is no way to know how people dealt with death in the past but it was more common then, for humans at least. That made it a very real part of peoples lives, and this is something we don’t have anymore, not in the west anyway. I still continue to eat meat but less and it’s starting to feel more and more like a weird thing to do. I love my dog, I raised her from a two month old puppy and feel a connection to her in a way that I don’t have with any other creature, not more or less but it’s unique. When I see the koala suffering, I think of her and it’s that relating which is what connects us. Have you ever tried looking properly into someones eyes, they’re the gateway to their consciousness, nobody can tell me other animals don’t have that. We can put ourselves compassionately in the shoes of another human but with an animal whose consciousness we can’t comprehend we need to find other ways to relate.
When I carve a roast chicken sometimes I think it looks like my dog. I ignore the thoughts but it freaks me out none the less. I don’t want to eat chicken anymore. Many people the world over have pets and as I’ve never expressed this reaction to chicken before I’m unsure if others have it too. How do they disconnect and detach themselves from the fact they’re carving an animal when they have another one sitting curled up sleeping in the corner that they love so much. Is it hypocritical, more behaving unconsciously I imagine. Perhaps people just don’t think like that, they just carve the chicken and see it for the chicken, not what it represents. It does represent something though, it represents existence. Until we start to understand this all it does is put in jeopardy all existence, ourselves included.
Observations and Misunderstandings 