We lose weeks like buttons, like pencils.

burningiraffe:

madshadysituations:

god okay listen up vegans:

as human beings we are intellectually superior to cats and dogs and llamas and goats and sheep and pretty much every other animal on this blue-green ‘n’ beautiful earth. what separates us from even the most intelligent of apes is the fact that we, as humans, can formulate our own ideas and theories and philosophies and opinions. we can create art. we can fall in love. we understand what regret means, what loneliness means, what power means… and what exploitation means. when we milk a cow with the intent of selling her milk, she does not know she is being milked for “exploitative” purposes. she does not know that her milk will be sold for profit. she cannot grasp the fact that some people will drink this milk and some people will not. it is doubtful, quite frankly, that this cow totally understands that she is an animal, she will die someday, she will give offspring, etc. so when y’all say “well!! u don’t see animals waging war or being racist or homophobic!!! an ant is worth just as much as ur worth!!!” you’re being kind of… well, ridiculous? animals don’t wage war because they don’t have the capacity to understand the hierarchical structure that breeds warfare. it’s scientifically impossible for them to grasp inherently human concepts, okay? i am a human being and my life is worth more than the life of an ant’s life or a dog’s life or a cow’s life. i understand consciousness. i can create. i can write and sing and dance and put forth art and ideas. i can wax eloquent and fall in love and i can bring forth radical change because my HUMANITY gives me the tools to do so. a chicken could not and will not ever be able to do this. certain animals nurture their young out of instinct, i will nurture my children (if i choose to have them) because i will love them. i will want them to grow up and be successful and happy. i will want them to bring forth radical change, i will want to give them the tools they need to understand the world and its intricacies. animals mate out of instinct. i have sex because i’m horny, because i want to feel a connection to another human, because i want to understand someone else’s humanity. okay? get it? what’s that ajj lyric? “i would kill a kitten to save a human being”, or something like that? 

i’m a (transitioning) vegan because i believe that animals can’t speak for themselves because they don’t have the capacity to do so. i don’t feel personally comfortable consuming and using animal products because animals are living, breathing creatures and deserve (even if they aren’t capable of higher thought) to be as free as we are as humans. we should not cage animals. i am a proponent of animal liberation and i always will be. but do i think animals are intellectually inferior to me? well, i mean, yeah. i do.

I agree with most of this but I’d like to point out a few incorrect things.

Ants wage wars between colonies and will go in and kill other colonies and their queen. Many other animal species that are pack animals [lions, wolves] wage something like a war over territory. 

Many animals mate for life which could be considered something like love. I mean, what is love really anyways? I consider it dedication personally which would be commitment. And then, think of any dog and its loyalty to its human. And if you want to bring up the argument that they can’t buy eachother gifts to show love, well that’s materialistic and penguins give eachother pebbles. They just don’t have capitalism or anything. We do because humans evolved to use tools. We literally don’t do anything without using something that isn’t part of our body. And we’re the only species who does. 

And what about mentally disabled people who can’t do most of these human emotions? Should we eat them? No, obviously not. 

And people only know these things because that’s how we’ve evolved. People are extremely domesticated. Take for example Genie. Long story short, she was locked in a bedroom strapped to a toilet, never spoken to, her meals were given to her and that was all she knew of people. For thirteen years. She became feral, like an animal but with no instinct. Humans no longer have instinct. If people are left alone like that, they don’t learn to take care of themselves. So sure, in civilized regards, we are far more intellectually advanced. But there was that thing Einstein said about fishes and intellect, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing its stupid. Humans can’t survive out on their own, so compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, we’re morons. We [for the most part] can’t even get our own food without using some kind of outside source [guns, knives, arrows, gardening with tools]. Note how you said “humanity,” implying humans. You can’t judge a non human animal’s ability on a human scale. 

Obviously I’m not bashing veganism; I just think your argument is flawed. I’m a vegan because I think its arrogant to think animals were put on this planet for us to use. 

This^! And I’d like to add that just because animals may have a different concept of life, it doesn’t mean their lives are less important to them, nor does it mean that they are just as happy in a factory farm as they would be in fields (give them some credit, they know better). Also there is a growing body of research about the social lives of animals and most of it suggests that even animals like fish and chickens can maintain complex relationships with group members.  Sure, we can verbalize our thoughts and emotions (well, some of us can) and we can write lots of stuff on the internet and whatnot, but that doesn’t make us fit to judge the lives of non-human animals. And it certainly doesn’t make us somehow better than them. Never confuse cleverness with superiority. 

(via wearyxvx-deactivated20121101)