Zelma: Compassion

Since I was a child, I was told that I had to treat animals well. We always had a dog and I knew that I wasn’t supposed to ride my dog or pull its ears because it also had feelings. However, not all children are taught have compassion for animals. I’ve noticed that many people try to excuse the lack of compassion that kids have for animals by saying, “Oh, he’s just a kid”, but compassion is something that has to be embedded in an early age. “Nothing could more effectually tend to infuse benevolence than the teaching of little ones early to consider every part of nature as endued with feelings.” (349) I definitely think that the world would be a better place if people were taught to be compassionate for earthlings because in the end, we’re all here for a short amount of time and we all deserve the right to enjoy our lifetime to the fullest without being mistreated by other species. The way animals were treated in the west was simply terrifying. I cannot understand how a person could see the pain of these animals and enjoy watching the pain they were producing.

I found this reading assignment to be rather interesting because I had never thought about how religion affected people’s compassion for animals. Since I’m not religious myself, I assumed that compassion is something that is taught to people during childhood, learned throughout life, or even worse, never learned. I learned that most people have learned to focus on morality towards humans more than with any other living creatures. “Because these worldviews are largely anthropocentric, nature is viewed as being of secondary importance.” (369) What does this mean? To me it means that people have been somewhat selfish even in their teachings of faith for others. It’s great that people are taught to be compassionate to other human beings, but this shouldn’t be dominant. Since it is said that animals and humance are very similar, everyone, no matter what religion they are, should be compassionate for all living things equally. However, "those rare souls who bothered to notice maltreatment of animals felt uneasy not because the habit might extend to abusing human beings." (339)

I thought that what professor bump said about Judaism was very interesting. He basically told us that “Judaism values human life more than that of other living things, but at the same time stresses the special responsibility of human beings to work and look after the created other.” (371) I admire that Judaists value other living things as well and that they feel responsible for maintaining the wellbeing of all the living things on earth. I honestly think that since we are the only rational animals on Earth, we should do what we can to maintain stability and justice for all earthlings.