Maichael > Maichael's Quotes

“What would it mean for us to come to terms with the knowledge that civilization, our whole mode of development and culture, has been premised and built upon extermination—on a history experienced as "terror" without end" (to borrow a phrase from Adorno)? To dwell on such a thought would be to throw into almost unbearable relief the distance between our narratives of inherent human dignity and grace and moral superiority, on the one hand, and the most elemental facts of our actual social existence, on the other. We congratulate ourselves for our social progress—for democratic governance and state-protected civil and human rights (however notional or incompletely defended—yet continue to enslave and kill millions of sensitive creatures who in many biological, hence emotional and cognitive particulars resemble us. To truly meditate on such a contradiction is to comprehend our self-understanding to be not merely flawed, but comically delusional...

In the nineteenth century, the animal welfare advocate Edward Maitland warned that our destruction of other animals lead only to our own "debasement and degradation of character" as a species. "For the principles of Humanity cannot be renounced with impunity; but their renunciation, if persisted in, involves inevitably the forfeiture of humanity itself. And to cease through such forfeiture man is to become demon." What else indeed can we call a being but demon who routinely enslaves and kills thousands of millions of other gentle beings, imprisons them in laboratories, electrocutes or poisons or radiates or drowns them?”
― John Sanbonmatsu, Critical Theory and Animal Liberation

“Even if we ourselves are not personally scandalized by the notion of other animals as close relatives, even if our age has accommodated to the idea, the passionate resistance of so many of us, in so many epochs and cultures, and by so many distinguished scholars, must say something important about us. What can we learn about ourselves from an apparent error so widespread, propagated by so many leading philosophers and scientists, both ancient and modern, with such assurance and self-satisfaction?

One of several possible answers: A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them--without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. With untroubled consciences, we can render whole species extinct--for our perceived short-term benefit, or even through simple carelessness. Their loss is of little import: Those beings, we tell ourselves, are not like us. An unbridgeable gap gas thus a practical role to play beyond the mere stroking of human egos. Darwin's formulation of this answer was: "Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.”
― Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

“By creating a false distinction between "good" and "bad" forms of animal exploitation and violence, the animal industry has convinced the public that there is nothing wrong with animal agriculture, per se, only with the way it is practiced. However, it isn't just the animal industry that has a stake in this. Capitalists and consumers, conservatives and liberals, small-scale farmers and corporate industrial farms alike all wish to re-"naturalize" animal husbandry as a permanent, benignant fixture of the human condition. The new hoax of "humane" meat is thus a convenience for all, a way to neutralize animal advocacy and to fend off the bad conscience of society." - The Humane Hoax”
― John Sanbonmatsu

“We need to stop talking about "factory farming." The problem is violence against animals. People will continue eating industrialized meat as long as they believe the myth that there is a "humane" alternative: "humane killing" discourse serves to legitimate the whole meat system.”
― John Sanbonmatsu

“The utilitarian-inflected discourse on animal "suffering" is the wrong point of emphasis. We need to talk instead about the fundamental causes of that suffering: human domination, exploitation, and mass killing of nonhuman animals. The problem isn't "suffering"; it's us.”
― John Sanbonmatsu

“Every significant philosopher of the last 2500 years has claimed that only humans are free, only humans have an ontological capacity for freedom. That is a lie. The condition for the possibility of freedom is merely the condition for the possibility of unfreedom.”
― John Sanbonmatsu

“The reason that we treat other animals as our slaves and as commodities isn't because they have this ontologically-rooted inferiority, it's that we see them as inferiors 'because' we find it useful to exploit them, and to harm them.”
― John Sanbonmatsu

“Let's all agree to stop using words like "pups," "kits," "chicks," "calves," etc., when referring to the young of other species. They are children. To use any other term is to reinforce the ideology of "otherness" that allows us to go on killing nonhuman animals with impunity.”
― John Sanbonmatsu

“All human culture is narcissistic: being based in the violent negation and exclusion of all other forms of animal life, it collapses into toxic self-love. It thus inevitably destroys its own object, too, i.e. itself, because genuine love requires an Other.”
― John Sanbonmatsu

“What does it mean to be human, when we've organized our whole identity, our whole economy, around harming our fellow creatures?”
― John Sanbonmatsu