Empathy - Misplaced?

The recent unfolding of incidents around my home state Kerala where a pregnant elephant ate a pineapple filled with firecrackers which ultimately resulted in the untimely death of the poor animal. The image of the elephant standing in the middle of a river unable to control the pain melted the hearts of people around the globe whose aftermath made a multitude of social media stories, cartoons and hate posts. If you are someone who has not yet read about this news, Google it and give it a good read.

While this incident shook me like most others, it also raised a lot of questions of our feeling of Empathy towards our fellow beings and animals. For now, I would like to focus on the empathy we feel towards animals in general. Now that you know of such a cruelty that fell upon an unsuspecting gentle giant, take a moment to realize that one of the most loyal beings to us humans - dogs; are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world. They continue to be slaughtered on an daily basis and enjoyed by a group of people who feel no guilt while indulging in it. 

Now if you are an avert meat eater like in most western nations you would also feel no empathy while enjoying a piece of nicely cooked steak on a daily basis. This is where my friends, the whole point of misplaced empathy begins. How is that a wild animal which suffered an act of barbaric treatment by some folks different from the cows, chicken, pig, goat, sheep etc. which are treated even poorly and mass-produced in large ranches? With the growing demand for meat across the world and with developing nations starting to copy the western ways of eating, the global meat and seafood production is growing at a rate unsustainable by our planet. 

Those of you who know me would relate very well that I myself am an avid meat eater and have enjoyed countless servings of delicious chicken, beef, pork, fish and what not. Over the years growing up, we have been taught to ignore or turn our backs on the act of killing which goes on at the local slaughterhouse from where we used to purchase our meat. Somehow the notion of the broiler chicken being a commodity rather than a life form was imbibed within us which led to us ignoring the very fact that there was a genuine moment of suffering before it was made into meat. 

And as the fast-paced highly competitive world shoves different challenges in our faces - education, jobs, work pressure, family pressure etc. we tend to conveniently ignore the suffering that animals have to undergo to make it into our daily platter. I had once heard that for most people to enjoy meat, it has to be in a form that fools all our 5 senses - smell, taste, vision, touch and hearing. We fool the ears by lending a deaf ear to the suffering the animal had to undergo to become meat, we cook the meat such that the texture of its flesh changes and becomes acceptable for us to touch and eat, we use a variety of flavors/spices added to the meat to make it taste and smell to our liking; only after all of these processes are most of us able to enjoy a piece of meat. 

For those of you who argue the fact that man was once the Hunter Gatherer and an omnivore, I do not want to challenge any of your beliefs but rather shed some light on how the living conditions have changed greatly for the human being over the course of evolution. The once hunter gatherer had no grocery stores where he could walk in and pick up what he liked to eat, nor did he have the means to live and travel like we do today. 

Arguments can be made in all sides of the camp of people who are meat eaters, vegetarians, pescatarians, vegans, and all the hybrid forms of eating which we have invented over the years to justify their own reasoning of why their beliefs are better than the other camp. No one group of people are completely right and completely wrong, because in the world that we are in now there is an abundance of information out there in a multitude of forms to which at least some percentage of the world's population would find a liking to. 

I am not here to shun a group of people for that they have been doing over the years, but rather accepting my own flawed views about the way in which the other fellow beings should be treated. Shed a moment of thought into the kinds of beings around us, people and animals included; think about how if you cared for some of them in some form can help greatly alleviate the suffering they have been undergoing due to your daily life. And if you are able to sit back and come to the realization that you were in some form able to be part of liberating the suffering of another living being - be it human or animal; then you have indeed brought a change in this world.

"Live and Let Live"

Peace.