The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals and the Call to Mercy

[Guest guest]

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=208

 

“The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness and

benificence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures.

Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and

everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty.”

 

–Thomas Paine from The Age of Reason

 

Despite the trappings of a civilized culture and the incredibly

persistent myth of our moral exceptionalism, we in the United States are

collectively a group of mean-spirited, depraved barbarians. Sparing our

psyches the pangs of conscience by ferociously devouring the corporate

media’s seemingly endless supply of rationalizations, euphemisms,

historical revisions, distractions, denials, distortions, and

affirmations of our pathological self-absorption, we each carry a degree

of responsibility in the infliction of immeasurable unnecessary pain and

suffering upon the rest of the Earth’s sentient beings.