The family Friday night has arrived
and you wait for the great feast. Your mother prepares a large steaming steak
and puts the plate in front of you. The steak seems juicy and your mouth
waters. Then, a scene of a dying cow writhing on the floor with blood gushing
out of its slashed throat suddenly flashes in front of you. In front of your
eyes, the scrumptious meat turns into a mere burnt piece of cow corpse. The "Earthlings,"
by Shaun Monson, had succeeded in a way to implement gruesome awareness of part
of animal reality.
Many reviewers act emotionally to
The Earthling as the film itself succeeded in approaching its audiences in pathos,
rather than in logos. Reviewers simply come to consensus of becoming a
vegetarian for the humane treatment of animals. They become appalled at the
graphic description of the film and "realize" how barbaric their
lives were to be once indifferent to the plight of the animals. However, I
personally do not think that such matters of animal rights are as simple as people consider them to be. The
"edifying" reviews make meat-eaters seems like sinners, ones without
any "moral" or "compassion." Pathos is important, but it is
not the master key to such a difficult problem. Rationally thinking, I do not
find fault with the pure carnivorous act nor think it as a sin. The act of one
animal species preying upon another species is a biologically natural phenomenon,
not a demonic practice.
"Earthlings" itself also
implies about speciesism, the discrimination between different species.
Although the film has a title called "earthlings," it focuses
primarily on the wrong treatment of animals by human beings and the speciesism
laid beneath. However, people should not forget that plants also inhibit earth.
They are another species and another living life. If all species are to gain
same respect, animals and plants are alike. Thus, herbivores and carnivores are
ultimately for the same goal of gaining the needed nutrients, whether they
achieve it through eating meat or eating plants. Vegetarianism is not more holy
or sacred than an ordinary omnivorous diet of human beings. It is just a
difference in diet habits, nothing more. Reviewers should not be chastising
non-vegetarians as morally defected people without either compassion to animal
beings or the will to change for the animal's future. Reviewers of the film
tend to go deeply into the food part, probably because the food category took a
major part and was most graphically described in "Earthlings," which
also means that the film was quite biased in some ways. Among the five
categories of pets, food, entertainment, clothes, and science, the field of
food was most closely related to the human's three basic necessities of life,
food, clothing, and shelter, considering the fact that there are other equally
competent artificial fibers that can replace animal fur in the field of
clothing. Since food is one of the basic necessities and practice of eating
meat is a natural behavior, there is no rational reason for morally banning
meat from the society.
The real problem lies with the
degree of human greed. Returning to the topic of food, it seems clear there is
nothing wrong with the actual act of meat consumption, but the problem comes
with the degree of the consumption. A heavy diet of meat of every meal is
actually an overconsumption. There are also serious health diseases relating to
the overconsumption of meat, such as obesity, arthrosclerosis, and colorectal
cancer. Such heavy meat consumption triggers a health warning and can be
prevented. Human beings, as omnivorous creatures, by consuming adequate amount
of meat and more greens, they can be moral about the animals. With the whole
animal slaughter for food amounting to a tremendous number, changes in diet of
billions people can accumulate into a dramatic decrease of animals dying from
human extravagance. Even in the process of slaughtering, people can reduce the
pain of sacrificing animals. For example, "Earthlings" presents the
violations by the Kosher slaughter, in which they "use the electric prods
on mobilized animals," "invert frightened animals for the slauther's
convenience," and "rip the tracheae and esophagus before the animal
has bled to death." At least if the slaughter houses adhered to their
rules for "cleanliness and minimal suffering," that would be the best
situation given to the animals. Other four fields except food shows the
extremes of human greed and luxury. Other animals kill animals to satisfy their
basic needs, such as food, but not for pleasure. Pets, luxurious fur coats,
circuses, and animal experiments into cosmetics are not related to basic
necessities of human. Animals killed in the process mentioned before died
because of pursuit of human pleasure and greed.
The film itself does not elucidate
solutions in the narration, but I think the film itself is a form of solution.
Shaun Monson stated his strategy as "hope that people will have an open
mind." The basic solution to the problem lies with changing the underlying
perception of the society about other species and living beings, both animals
and plants. In this materialistic world, other lives are not treated as
"lives," but rather as profitable objects. The perception is evident in
a satiric scene when a woman asks the price of a fur coat only to receive a
reply, "It's $49,500." There is a paradox. While people deem the
value of human life as immeasurable, they ruthlessly kill and attach price tags
to what was once living. "Earthlings," although it might be biased
and extreme in some cases, definitely aroused attention in its watchers and
made them aware even a little bit of what kinds of plight the animals are
facing. Instead of having short-termed superficial empathy ending shortly with
the film, people should consider what devastating effects human greed had put
animals into in a long-term. Next time you see a juicy T-bone steak, do not
feel guilty about eating it. Just think before you eat.
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