Vegan Blog #6

Vegan Blog 6

I remember a very disheartening experience I had, when as a child, I was first taken to a zoo. First, there was the smell. In the indoor sections of the pens the stench was overwhelming and wholly unexpected. My knowledge of “animals” came from picture books and television wildlife programs and smells did not exist there. The confinement in small quarters, and the lack of frequent cleaning made the “animal’s” visceral reality shocking.

More disturbing by far was the faces of the “animals”. I expected friendly, docile, loving, respectful faces. Faces that in effect said, “You are my master”, “I am your subservient inferior.”  What I saw was entirely different.

The captive inhabitants ignored us almost completely even while many people crowded the cages and manically tried to attract the “animal’s” attention. They waved handkerchiefs, made what they thought were animal noises, yelled and screamed at the “animals”, pounded on the bars or glass, some threw objects or popcorn at them. These people seemed either enraged at the animals’ indifference to them, or desperate for the “animals’” attention.

But the thing that shocked me beyond anything else, was when the occasional “animal” did look in my direction, the look that has stayed with me till today, many decades later, was one of utter contempt.

After years of confinement one can imagine that the inhabitants of zoos would grow indifferent to the clamoring throngs of visitors. They would need to screen them out of their consciousness to preserve what remnants of sanity remained to them in such unnatural settings. But the look of contempt? What can we make of that?

Recently I stopped on a rural gravel road near where I live because a group of cows along with one goat were grazing near the road and I love photographing and looking at cows. There were several females, one nursing calf, and one goat all coexisting very nicely as a group around a large uprooted stump.

When I emerged from my car with my camera the adult cows looked at me warily as I approached. Then, as I locked eyes with one of the lead cows, I saw that look once again that combined disgust and contempt.

For us humans this is almost unbearable. What an affront to our status. These cows belong to us don’t they? They are our possessions; they live at our behest and on our behalf. Don’t they realize we hold their lives and deaths in our hands? After all the centuries of our breeding them, slaughtering them, trading them, herding them, confining them, don’t they realize who we are?

If they still look on us with contempt rather than respect after all that history they obviously must be very stupid “animals” …  Or are they?

Perhaps my perception as a child, and now sixty years later as an adult is distorted. Perhaps I am in error.

Find out for yourself. Go to a zoo. Go to where you can see cows eye to eye and see for yourself what is actually there in their faces as (and if) they look at you.

And if you then see what I have seen, ask yourself, why do they look at us as they do? What is it that they see? And then ask yourself, what if what they see is the truth?

If we are willing to look with fresh eyes, if we are willing to see what really is there to be seen, we may discover a way back to actual reality… liberating though painful as that may be.