Actually...

I did just remember a conversation that I had with a few people on separate occasions and I've been meaning to throw it all down here.  My thoughts on this started back in Europe (or possibly before) with Nicole.  I suppose I'll start with an excerpt from my Europe journal:

"July 30th
As usual, a night of drinking resulted in another early morning.  I went to my usual spot to read.
The last few chapters of The Silent Sky were very difficult to get through.  Eckert did such a good job of making the reader empathize with passenger pigeons while not overly personifying them.  So by the end of the novel you, yourself, are no longer a human being but a bird.  And to witness the extinction of your entire race is unfathomable, yet this is what Eckert did to me.  In this short novel, he constructed and pulled you into a new frame of mind - living, thinking, breathing - and snuffed it out.  I barely made it back to the hotel room before I burst into years.  I was in awe at myself that I could let something affect me so deeply.  By most people's standards the passenger pigeon was a nuisance, billions of birds in the sky making noise and shitting everywhere.  Then I took a long hard look at humanity.  Fuck.  Would this story have the same effect on me if it were about mosquitoes going extinct?  I don't know.  Probably not.  I couldn't shake the despair and helpless feeling induced by this novel.  This situated itself heavily into my mind... until we went to the zoo.  It's funny how your brain will be out of control with agony in one moment and then suddenly the signal stops.  It flips a switch and it's all over and done with.  I was able to put these feelings aside for the moment... but I would never throw them away."  After some zoo shenanigans... "It's all too absurd that a few hours earlier I was severely distressed about the exploitation and slaughter of a species and then I paid money to see animals live miserably in cages and pens."

Now I shouldn't necessarily have said they live miserably, but they're not as free as you or me.  Sure, animals can live just fine in captivity and it sometimes even helps them reproduce and survive... but that's not really what I want to address.  I want to address our selfishness and stupidity.

Why is it that all the cute cuddly animals are the ones we value the most?  My sister shared an interesting anecdote about a girl in class one day.  She witnessed this girl distressing about a gnat bothering her and it created a small commotion in which some gentlemen attempted to squash it for her.  Like.. what the fuck did that gnat do to upset her?  Why does she fear/hate the gnat?  It's a GNAT.  Its name alone even sounds neutral or neutered or maybe like a small nuisance.

Imagine a situation in which a small kitten strolls adorably into a room and instead of people rushing over to pet it, everyone in the room tries to stomp it.  Everyone in the room will not rest until that cute little kitten is smashed, rendering it a pile of guts.  This is very unlikely to occur.  "Oh gross, it's a fucking kitten!  It's ruining my perfect Sunday afternoon Starbucks!  Oh gross - it just drank that coffee spill off the floor like some diseased fly.  Someone please kill it so I may continue reading very important opinion blogs on my iPad!"

I get that we have irrational fears of things.  Lots of people are afraid of spiders.  Even I am afraid of spiders to an extent.  But when I see a spider in the corner of my bedroom just chilling and minding its own business, I don't feel compelled to smash it into oblivion.  If it were a black widow which might kill me, I have some options: kill it, relocate it, or relocate myself.  Because I'm selfish and it would take me days to move all my pointless crap out of my room, I move the spider outside to freeze but hopefully find some food out there.  So I guess I cohabit if possible.  I can't kill it because the "I was here first" thing doesn't make sense anymore.

Yeah, you don't see many animal rights activists out there trying to spread the word about rats and pigeons.  Well, lab rats I suppose.  But we only test animals because they can't say no!  Fuck them, they spread disease and stuff anyway.  Let's just murder everything already.  Now you're probably saying, "But think about all the advancements in medicine because of animal testing that you benefit from on a daily basis.  You hypocrite!"

I am indeed a huge hypocrite.  I eat meat because it's all I really know how to do.  I'm not good at making the necessary lifestyle changes in order to feel like I'm better than everyone.  I didn't choose where I was born and what external forces shaped my life.  Oh well, I can still be aware of it at the very least.

Even though I'm against animal cruelty, I want people (mostly the self-righteous animal activists) to admit that they speak for animals because they are selfish.  They don't want to see animals go extinct because they derive pleasure from thinking about them.  We humanize animals and give them human personality traits.  This is really easy to do for animals like dogs and cats because we can actually perceive their emotions.  It's not so easy with insects or arachnids.  Good luck personifying them and getting people to give a shit.  We only care about ourselves and any likeness to ourselves.

I am just disliking this superiority we have created for ourselves... but really the argument works either way.  I can't say it's always wrong to dislike spiders because sometimes it might save your life to be wary of them.  I can't say it's always right, either, to be a proponent of animal rights because it feels so selfish most of the time.  Save honey bees!  Why?  Well because they make honey... you wouldn't want your personal enjoyment of honey to go extinct, would you?  Also they pollinate flowers... you wouldn't want pretty things like flowers to disappear, right?

I am just a little frustrated and this comes out as an incoherent rant that you should not take very seriously.  Let's just think about it some more.