Start giving a sh!t

"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men." ― Alice Walker

Do you catch the mindset that underlies these three attitudes expressed in the lines above? We, humans, are strange animals. People don't want daughters among Indians (for example) because they are (apparently) in no way a source of income, in fact, the whole dowry situation makes them a liability. Girls came close to extinction (and complete extinction) in many villages across India due to female foeticide and a maddening love for sons. Whereas, when it comes to cows and buffaloes, we want female calves and not the male calves. Why? Simple. 'cause the female calves are a source of income and male calves have very little use.

USE. that's the word. You want humans to pay heed to anything, you have to convince them that there is some use. Logic is not the way to go. Because logic says, stop the mining and deforestation, stop the wildlife trade and so on. But have we stopped? Nope. Is it an issue of the impossibility of such an action? Nope. If the governments can shut the whole world down during the Coronavirus pandemic, we know that they can do anything that proves to be of some use to them. Do you think that the authorities can't stop the illegal sex trade of little children across the world? The reaction to the pandemic has proved that we, humans, can do anything. Nothing is impossible.

Recently, I watched an interview of an environmentalist on the BBC. He confessed that the

animal rights activists, the keepers of the rights of mother nature, have essentially failed. The environmentalists have failed. Do you catch the gravity of this? At individual levels, we may care about mother nature, or wildlife and all that. But we always think that these issues are for the environmentalists to bother about, we can just like or share and basically, express our support. Honestly, most people don't even care in the first place but let's focus on those who want to care. We are mistakenly convinced that that is all that we can do. But it's not true. Every choice we make is a matter of support for or against something.

Going to vote for an election is not the only vote you are casting. When you buy something for consumption, that is you giving your vote to the ideology behind that product. Eating meat is voting for industrialized, large scale, cruel slaughter of animals. Buying milk is a vote for the brutal impregnating of cows and cruel treatment of baby calves and their mothers that goes on in the dairy industry. Buying leather is a vote for a totally unnecessary and plainly brutal industry. Watching child porn is a vote for such a trade. Buying plastic is a vote for the irrevocable damage to sea animals that eat this plastic as it is dumped in the seas. I can go on and on.

My point is. That your choice is a vote. And when each one of us votes for the right thing, we are essentially becoming part of a wave of the mindset that governs the way of human life. Stop thinking that your choices, your existence, is harmless or redundant. You have power. Your every decision is guiding the direction of this human wave. So make informed decisions. Start giving a sh!t.

ToOdLeS