Since my last post, Michael and I have bought a house, moved, and I have started my second year at the University of Washington. This morning, however, I write because I need to share something that I am feeling, and that I know I will continue to feel and encounter for the next three years, given my chosen course of research and work.
This morning, I am putting together the first draft of a reading list for my Critical Animal Studies exam, which will take place in the Spring. I've just cracked open the introduction to Matthew Scully's book, Dominion, which is a call to compassion and our nature-given (or God-given, as I believe he also strongly asserts) duty to animals.
I have read two pages, and I am heartbroken. Think about what you eat and where it comes from today. Reflect upon and wonder at the clothes you wear and the shoes you covet, and how they might be made. If this brings you to consider things like sweat shops and less-than minimum wage jobs, that's not a bad thing, either. Our consumption of food and of things has increased to the point that we engender horrific conditions and circumstances in order to meet these "needs".
I'm sure you're all excited for the weekend; I am too. But today please, feel something for these living, breathing beings that are, grossly more often than not, treated more like a machine than what they are. This brings me to mourning, but it also urges me, cries out to me to work each day to ask questions and to respect the beings that surround me and that are often hidden from me in the interest of production.
