Photo taken today at about 1pm
I doubt anyone would complain to the town council about this man smoking on this bench. The smell of a single stick of cigarette could be detected 2-3 metres away. Why? Because he is a human.
Photo taken on 04-06-2008
The differential action towards human and animal by the town council is SPECI-ISM.
Pete Singer - "In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics."
"In the first place, it is my opinion that the sky was made to shelter all creation, and that the earth was made so that things created able to stand might have something to stand on. Even those human beings who love argument for the arguing's sake could surely not deny this fact. Next we may ask to what extent did human effort contribute to the creation of heaven and earth; and the answer is that it contributed nothing. What right, then, do human beings hold to decide that things not of their own creation nevertheless belong to them? Of course the absence of right need not prevent such creatures from making that decision, but surely there can be no possible justification for them prohibiting others from innocent passage in and out of so-called human property... .....therefore I enter wherever I like." Natsume Soseki (1867-1916)
