DIVIDE & CONQUER: How the idea of human superiority over nature was invented
DIVIDE & CONQUER: How the idea of human superiority over nature was invented
Humans are animals. This statement, although true, is unsettling for many people. Such discomfort reveals a deep ambivalence about how we see ourselves — a part of nature, yet somehow different from the rest of it. Only in the past few millennia — under the influence of classical philosophy, Christian theology and Enlightenment-era rationalism — did humans come to see themselves as distinct, set apart by reason, language and the possession of a soul. This separation was not accidental: human exceptionalism and the belief that we could transcend our bodily limits helped to ease anxieties about our mortality, and legitimize […]
‘The Medium Is the Message’: Thoughts on the mass rescue of beagles from Ridglan Farms
‘The Medium Is the Message’: Thoughts on the mass rescue of beagles from Ridglan Farms
‘The medium is the message’, as the great Marshall McLuhan put it. The forms that communication takes matter even more than the content it carries because form changes how people think, feel, and pay attention. The message, in the Ridglan beagle rescue case, is that these dogs have intrinsically valuable lives worth living and worth sacrificing for. That humans can at any moment stop looking away from our atrocities against other animals and choose to intervene. An obviously different message than the one sent by haggling with corporations over a few inches of extra cage space — not that that […]
‘I Care’: Why vegan rights are the next frontier for animal advocacy
‘I Care’: Why vegan rights are the next frontier for animal advocacy
To protect vegans from discrimination, lawyers often have to fit ethical veganism into existing legal categories such as ‘creed’ or ‘freedom of conscience’. In Ontario, Canada, the Human Rights Code prevents discrimination based on creed in employment, housing, and services. Historically, this meant religion, but modern guidance now includes secular belief systems. Whether it is a firefighter in Ontario or a child and their family in a Danish daycare, the right to live compassionately and free from animal exploitation is a principle worth defending across jurisdictions. ICARE: ICARE’s fifth seminar on ‘Litigating and Legislating for Animal Rights‘, shifted the focus […]
