I didn't know where else to post this. It's just me trying to unload bad feelings and thoughts, I suppose. It doesn't really matter whether anyone bothers with it or not. It's kind of like throwing up, I guess. I read through it before posting and it doesn't make much sense. But, whatever... I was on my way to a wedding reception this afternoon and a farm cat ran right ought in front of me. There was no time to react at all. I ran over the poor thing with both front and rear wheels. I hate when something like that happens! I felt terrible inside. I know there are people out there that can somehow mistreat and hurt animals think it's fun. They apparently get a big kick out of it. I just don't understand how people can be that way. It makes me feel horrible inside. I guess it's just brain chemistry that makes for hardness vs. softness of heart. And I was a big, bad Marine! Yeah - right! Maybe in the final analysis none of this even matters. But it seems to matter. And it hurts like it matters inside me. Yeah, I know. Someone will ask if I eat meat. And I have to answer yes, sometimes I do. And I don't feel bad abut it at the time, either. And yes, it's completely inconsistent of me to hurt for a run over cat, and entertain a terrible fear of ever hitting a dog, and then have bbq chicken and roast beef a little later. I'm a hypocrite, for sure! I don't get down on people for eating meat but I do get down on them for abusing and/or neglecting their animals. And I can't stand the slaughterhouses and chicken processing plants. But in my past job, I even had to write the software for chicken processing machinery for some of the Tysons and Purdue plants! omfg: This is a brutal planet where life mostly subsists at the expense of other life. But I don't know where to draw the line anymore between being callous toward other life forms on the one hand, and being overly sensitive toward them on the other. How many insects do I kill each day with zero awareness - or care? Or let's take it to the extreme - shall I worry and fret about the millions of bacteria I kill when I wash my hands? I look at my two dogs that I adore and wonder how anyone could ever mistreat such wondrous creatures. But, from a biochemical - molecular biological perspective, even single celled life is "wondrous". I seem to value conscious life forms that possess more complex nervous systems more so than less conscious and complex ones, and do so proportional to the degree of that complexity and conscious producing functionality. But I ask myself, is that right??? Does any of this even matter? And if so, why? How am I supposed to regard all these other living entities??? When it comes to humans, I don't ever want to deliberately hurt anyone - in any way - no matter whether it's physically or emotionally, or whatever. But I'm certain that I probably could and would under the right circumstances. Lord knows, I've deliberately hurt them in the past - at least emotionally. Woe is me. Sometimes life as a human being on this planet is a very odd and troubling thing! And tomorrow I will more than likely get up and live as if none of this ever crossed my mind.
It is a philosophical conundrum is it not? I have empathy for a cat but none for the chicken I just had... seriously, I just got done with dinner 3 minutes ago. Perhaps my nonchalant view of eating chickens would change if I had to slaughter it before I cooked and consumed it. But in reality butchering our dinner was a way of life for humanity for only God knows how many millennium.
As my cat sleeps right next to me, I know what you mean. For all intents and purposes, humans are gods to animals. We can control what they do, and we can kill them without a second thought. What you're feeling is the idea that you're abusing your powers as a god. How you decide to cope is all up to you, but don't let this eat you up alright?
We had a pet chicken when I was a child. It had its own personality and was withal a delightful little animal. Of course, the chickens that live for 6 weeks in tiny cages are kept from being what they could become, something like a child raised under horrible conditions. One must debase a creature, and know nothing of it before a person of conscience could kill it.\\ - - - Updated - - - In reality, our species childhood does not have to, and many ways should not determine our future.
This raises an interesting line of thought for me. I, too, am guilty of the cat/chicken dychotomy, with empathy for one and not the other. I see the same thing in the believers who see the world as a beautiful place and never consider that the bulk of the people on earth live in terrible poverty, that struggle and desperation are the primary currency for most people and for them the world isn't this valentine we have been given. I think we are all selective in where we place our empathy as a means of self preservation.
