Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo sapiens inspired us to reflect on the issue of animal rights. In the past, survival was the priority, but nowadays there is a growing social concern for animal rights and their suffering. It is not only important for animals to survive, but also to fulfill their instinctual needs, and we need to discuss how humans and animals can coexist together.
I read Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens. In the section about the mechanization of modern production, I read that the production process involving farm animals has also become mechanized and that animals are now treated like machines. Although the overall focus of the book was on the mechanization of the production process rather than animal rights, the issue of animal rights struck a chord with me.
Animal rights is one of the most important topics in modern times. In the past, we didn’t care much about the treatment of animals because human survival was an urgent issue, but now human survival is no longer an urgent issue. In this environment, animal rights that weren’t discussed much in the past are coming to the forefront. For example, in the past, when food was scarce, it was important to hunt and eat animals, and it didn’t matter if they died painfully in the process. Today, however, the cruelty of slaughter is recognized as a social problem. So how far should animal rights be respected?
Perhaps the most problematic example of animal rights is the issue of livestock farming, which was also discussed in Harari’s book Homo sapiens. In the past, mass farming was rare, so animals could be raised in a more or less natural environment. For example, cows could graze in the fields and chickens could run around in the yard. Even today, some animals are raised in this way with a certain amount of respect for their needs. But in facilities that mass-produce meat, milk, and other products, things are different. Egg-laying chickens are often crammed into small spaces that make it difficult for them to move around, a practice that has been called into question. In mass-production facilities, cows are sometimes bred to be milking cows and focused solely on milk production. There’s no way this is good for the animals, and in fact, there’s plenty of evidence that they’re under extreme stress in these conditions.
It’s important to note that this is not a problem for the animal’s survival. It’s a money-making endeavor, and if an animal dies, it’s a loss, so they’ll make sure their survival is not compromised. Nevertheless, the fact that animals are suffering so much means that they have instincts and needs, which are animal rights. In Harari’s Homo sapiens, he writes “Objectively speaking, the calf no longer needs the bond with its mother or playmate to survive or reproduce. But from the calf’s perspective, it still feels a strong need to bond with its mother and play with other calves. If these needs are not met, the calf suffers severe distress.” This illustrates that even when survival is not an issue, animals can suffer psychological distress if their needs are not met.
This was proven in an experiment conducted by psychologist Harry Harlow in the 1950s. Harlow separated newborn baby monkeys from their mothers and gave them two types of dolls. One was made of wire and had a milk bottle attached, while the other was wrapped in cloth and resembled the mother, but without the bottle. If survival was the only consideration, the monkeys would have an advantage in choosing the wire doll. However, the monkeys preferred the cloth-covered doll and spent most of their time with it. This shows that animals have social needs that are not related to survival, and suppressing them can cause serious problems for animals.
There has also been a lot of research into the physical pain animals feel, and it turns out that some animals feel pain just like humans do. Lobsters are one of them. In fact, in Switzerland, it’s against the law to put lobsters in boiling water alive. This is because scientists have discovered that lobsters have a higher nervous system and feel pain just like humans.
As you can see, there are good reasons to respect animal rights. However, how much they should be respected is a matter of deep consideration. Although animal rights are recognized in our society, they are not valued enough. It is my opinion that animal rights should be treated not too differently from human rights, although it is difficult to achieve full equality with human rights. In other words, animal rights are not enough, and animals deserve more respect than they currently receive. It is unlikely that humans and animals will ever be treated on a completely equal level, but they should be treated on a slightly lower level. This argument stems from the fact that animals have selves, have needs, and feel happiness and pain. Although many people disagree with this, I don’t think there’s any particular reason to consider animals with these characteristics to be inferior to humans. The problem isn’t with the animals, but with us for not putting ourselves in their shoes.
A similar example is human rights. Today, everyone is respected as an equal human being, and this is taken for granted. However, in the past, people had different levels of human rights depending on their race or gender. It took a long time for people to recognize each other as equals. For example, did slave owners really see their slaves as equal human beings? Probably not. There may have been respect and consideration between people who were similarly situated to them, but not slaves. Because they didn’t see the other person as an equal human being, they didn’t feel guilty about committing acts of inhumanity. Similarly, we can understand the disregard and oppression of women in the past, the failure to see black people as equal human beings, and the violent oppression of colonization in the same way. All of these things happened because people didn’t see the other as an equal to themselves.
I think the issue of animal rights is similar: animals deserve to be treated with respect, but the current social climate doesn’t allow it. There is no clear reason to view animals as inferior to humans. But at the same time, there is a practical issue. It’s a matter of human survival. We have no choice but to kill animals in order to survive. There may come a time in the future when technology will allow us to fully protect the rights of animals, but that’s a long way off, so for now, it’s impossible for humans and animals to be completely equal. No matter how much we try to respect animals, it’s hard to do so when so many of them are slaughtered every day. And with every right comes responsibility, and it’s not clear that animals are capable of fulfilling that responsibility in the same way that humans are. If humans try to respect animals, but animals don’t respect humans, problems are bound to arise. For these reasons, it is my opinion that while it is difficult to treat animals as fully equal to humans, we should respect them as much as possible.
No one has a problem with you kicking a rock that’s rolling down the street. A stone is just a collection of particles with no self and no nervous system capable of feeling pain. But animals are different. Animals have a sense of self and are fully capable of feeling physical and mental pain. This is an empirical and experimental fact. Knowing this, I think it’s wrong to inflict pain on animals for economic reasons or because we can’t be bothered to respect them. There is currently a lack of respect for animals, and it will take time for full respect to be achieved, but as with human rights in the past, I hope that as people’s awareness improves, animal rights will be fully respected.
