Human Ethics and the
Insensibility of Other Animal Species
Love And Birds
When the guns stop their shouting, birds hasten to sing. In
the midst of desolation and the horrors left by human wars,
birds sing perched on the boots of the dead soldiers,
inattentive to death. It’s a well known scene for those who
have experienced war.
This indifference of birds sounds strange. It shocks us,
hurts us. And may lead us to think: «How far and above other
species we are. Only we are able to truly feel and have
conscience. Only we are capable of thinking and loving in
superior terms».
Well, maybe. But we can’t help being as the birds,
insensible to the sight of a thousand and one massacres – at
the human level, and outside it. Absorbed and used to the
cruelty of life as we are, we don’t see how indifferently we
behave towards the poor and the unfortunate of our species,
and how cruel we behave towards other species.
Positively, we don’t think of the millions of animals we
daily slaughter in our shambles, or of the many billions we
keep confined in cruel conditions, before killing them.
In this view, it’s entirely out of place to become
astonished with the insensibility of the birds that sing in
the branches of trees next to the human corpses left by our
own wars.
Português