Why Humans Don’t Want Other Animals To Have Rights

As I’ve noted before, Steve Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project is just about the most powerful campaign out there that is trying to change the way humans relate to animals.

Wise really gets it, and has started a series of video interviews exploring the issues at the heart of humanity’s immoral treatment of nonhuman animals.

First topic: the degree to which humanity is deeply involved in the exploitation of animals (and therefore resists giving animals rights that would change that relationship).

As Wise points out, it is almost, or simply flat-out, impossible for a modern human not to be involved in the exploitation of animals.

That is probably true, and something I am acutely aware of in my own life. But there are degrees of complicity, and the biggest step anyone can take to greatly reduce their complicity is to go vegan. After that, you need to pay attention to details like: products which use animal testing, or medicines which are developed with animal testing (a very complicated issue).

Beyond direct exploitation, there is the vast question of all the many ways in which humans indirectly exploit animals by lifestyles and choices which destroy habitat.

How far can you go to balance your life with the lives of nonhuman animals? What is the most difficult form of exploitation, direct or indirect, to reduce or eradicate from your lifestyle?

(Thanks to JV for tipping me to this video series).

5 thoughts on “Why Humans Don’t Want Other Animals To Have Rights”

  1. All animals should be entitled to the right to not be considered the “property” of a human. I find it disturbing that some people feel that sentience is not enough of a guideline to “decide” which animals should be “granted” rights. Some people are more than willing to “grant rights” to elephants, dolphins and chimpanzees because of how much “like us” those animals are, while completely neglecting the fact that frogs and squirrels also have interests in not being used however humans see fit. When we start discussing which species are most “intelligent” and like us, we commit speciesism. ALL animals should be considered NOT PROPERTY and not ours to do with as we please. ALL. It does not appear that the Nonhuman Rights Project feels that squirrels and frogs “count”. Deeply disappointing.

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