Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
I will always be vegan because “it’s the Golden Rule thing to do.” This moral and ethical precept teaches us that we should behave toward others as we would have others behave toward us. Non-vegans conveniently take the word “others” to mean other humans. Vegans consider others to include ALL members of the animal kingdom, both humans and non-humans alike.
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I will always be vegan because “it’s the Golden Rule thing to do.” This
moral and ethical precept teaches us that we should behave toward others as
we would have others behave toward us. Non-vegans conveniently take the word
“others” to mean other humans. Vegans consider others to include ALL members
of the animal kingdom, both humans and non-humans alike.
Generally, humans know that the non-human beings we call animals have
characteristics, and rights, that are fundamentally similar to those of the
human beings we call people. It therefore makes logical sense that the
spirit of the Golden Rule should also apply to non-human beings.
Non-vegans conveniently permit there to be a disconnect—a barrier—between
human rights and animal rights. However, elemental logic suggests that there
is no real conflict between these sets of rights. They are not mutually
exclusive. In fact, they are mutually inclusive. Humans should be “for”
both.
I often use the term “animal wrongs” instead of animal rights. This makes it
easier for people to see that they simply do not have the right to
perpetrate “wrongs”—either directly or indirectly—against the other sentient
beings known as animals. It is morally “right” for humans not only to stand
up against wrongs, but also to take personal action to end them. Americans
took such action during the civil rights movement in the 1960s; to move
toward eradicating the abomination of racism.
Today, we should create a national/international social justice movement
that focuses on eradicating the abomination of speciesism. It is speciesism
that is THE underlying cause of all the exploitive injustice that the human
species wreaks upon the non-human species. We’re at a point in our human
evolution where we must recognize that fact, and DO SOMETHING about it.
Most vegans understand that the practice of speciesism permits abject
cruelty against, and causes the undeserved death of, other sentient beings
by human beings. Vegans know that speciesism is wrong. Vegans make a morally
and ethically based “crossover”. They become “humaneitarians”—humans who
live as humanely as they can—in the true spirit of the expanded application
of the Golden Rule.
Because I so wholeheartedly believe that the vegan lifestyle represents the
“Golden Rule way to live,” I will always be a vegan.
Special thanks to Butterflies Katz for including this as one of 100+ entries in her short essay contest and the resulting published collection: Why I Will Always Be Vegan.
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