The petition
This is a Petition REQUESTING THAT A DISCUSSION BE INITIATED & MAINTAINED, in the public domain, with a view to advocating for legal recognition of a HUMAN Right (-and-responsibility) of ~Compassionate Stewardship Over ALL Animals~ because this will ultimately be a vital resource in the advancement and protection of ANIMAL Rights:
An alternative terminology for conveying the concept of the right of all Humans to engage in "Compassionate Stewardardship" would be to refer to the Human Right to be "a Good Shepherd to ALL Animals". At the moment in society, there is a vast network of activists, lobbyists, animal rights oranisations, animal rights lawyersand so on. These are often groups of people with hierachical structures and they have their place .. but what there is NOT, is a grasroots & loose network of UNAFFILIATED INDIVIDUALS who are legally empowered, as individuals, with a strong HUMAN RIGHT to Good Shepherdship. Just as an individual shepherd {literally looking after his sheep in a field }is able to spot a problem and find a remedy, so an ordinary individual, armed with a legally-empowered Human Right to be a Good Shepherd or Guardian to ALL animals, could likewise spot and remedy problems. A state of perpetual, low-grade, gentle maintenance of Society's Compassion would result! This is quite the opposite to the way most animal rights work is done at present. Big Problem Big Campaign is the order of the day!
###This is why VEGANISM is so important. It is perhaps THE FIRST most powerful existing EXAMPLE of WHAT THE FUTURE OF ANIMAL RIGHTS WORK NEEDS TO LOOK LIKE. It is made up of basically unaffiliated individuals, who in very low key ways, by their food choices, live in a perpetual small-step-by-small-step state of "guarding" ALL animals!!###
A HUMAN Right, which is our arguably inherent right and responsibility to COMPASSIONATE STEWARDSHIP OVER ALL ANIMALS, could prove to be a potent resource in abolishing cruelty to, in the first instance, factory-farmed animals. Among these animals are those sold as 'meat', day in day out, in that societal institution which is ~our supermarkets~. These animals have come to be seen as beyond the legal neighbourhood of any really significant human concern. And this situation is not REALLY getting any better by merely advancing ANIMAL rights alone, in isolation from other related rights and responsibilities!
So, the powers-that-be are being petitioned here TO BEGIN DISCUSSING in The Public Domain the issue of ~legally invoking A HUMAN RIGHT to (be unviolated in exercising one's inherent impulse to) Compassionate Stewardship over All Animals, as a resource with which to argue into legal reality THE DREAM OF ENDING ALL CRUELTY TO ALL ANIMALS!~
To be assailed in a supermarket..which IS an institution of modern society..by the odours &/or sight of, and the emotions evoked by, the flesh of tortured and murdered animals, who are our fellow sentient beings, IS arguably a violation of such a basic HUMAN right!
If this reasoning were to succeed, it may well awaken further dreams of a non-violent and sustainable future all round!
So now please imagine going to sleep tonight and having THIS DREAM. The supermarket scenario dreamt of, below, is far from perfect. However, it is a step further along than we currently are, and it is a realistically do-able step, from where we are, regarding 'Our Institutions' becoming accustomed to expressing respect for animals...
You are in a supermarket. As you emerge from one of the aisles you pass by a partitioned-off area where a simple, unembellished sign directs 'the registered meat addicts' to their craving. It says, 'Animal-Flesh Food. Adults only! If you look under 18 yrs of age you may be asked for ID.' You've never ventured around the partition yourself. Still haunted by the blood-red colouring in your mind's eye emanating from the ~walls of death~ from the supermarkets of your own childhood bearing shelf upon shelf of the mutilated bodies of so many animals wrapped in their sanitizing plastic, you hurry on.
"I wonder if I were to write to the supermarket manager?" you think to yourself. The Animal Flesh section is just too close to the Pure Vegan food aisles! Your 'wondering' is abruptly halted by a commotion as you turn into the next Pure Vegan food aisle. Its a surprise to see the supermarket manager right there in front of you. "Speak of the devil!" you smile to yourself...but then, "No that's not fair. He was one of The Affirmative Action movers and shakers who got the supermarkets involved in really educating the public about ~the vegan alternative~. Those in-store vegan cooking demonstrations were a big hit!"
"What is this doing here?'" the youthful customer is saying. "Look at this, its so dishonest!" The manager takes the canned ham and reads the label. "Happy Farms Free-Range Pickled Pork'". He knows it goes against the Revised Labeling Guidelines For All Supermarket Products. No 'thrilled to have become a murdered animal for your dinner plate' words or images allowed, nowadays! Not without a whopping great fine into the Public Coffers for violating a member of the Public's Human Right to enjoy Compassionate Stewardship Over ALL Animals!
Suddenly you realize that time is flying by. The manager is still busy with the other customer. You head towards the check-outs.
'Animal Flesh-free check out aisles to your right', the sign says. You're still saying to the checkout assistant, "I dont think thats my mobile, it sounds different.." when you are rudely flung back into the here-and-now. As your hand flounders for the alarm clock, it hits you. It was all a dream!
[N.B. The 'Supermarket' example, of A societal Institution, could be replaced by other types of institutions - the Animal Testing industry, the Live-Animal Export industry, the Hunting fraternity, and so on...but the Supermarket example is a relatively straightforward one to start with..since anyone of us can freely enter there, and indeed, must do so to live with reasonable ease in modern society. However, no matter what the particular Societal Institution and no matter what the scenario, THE CRUELTY ANIMALS ENDURE COULD BE FORESEEABLY ABOLISHED if each individual human being had a legally and socially accepted Right and Responsibility to be, to ALL animals, a Compassionate Steward or, Good Shepherd - a right and responsibility which could NOT be violated! Does this seem far-fetched? It is not! It is realistically achievable and society WOULD adjust..and not just adjust, but be better off in far-reaching ways. How many people would need to assert, in a suitable socio-political-legal forum, that his or her Human Right to this Stewardship was being violated by an act of cruelty in one of our institutions? Really only ONE at a time!...and so it would be an organic process of reversal. The Money and The Intellectual Energy now invested in cruel acts, 'in the service of society', WOULD be re-directed INTENSIVELY & URGENTLY to activities involving developing and using non-animal models in research and all other manner of such 'alternatives' as would be needed! IF EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST IMMEDIATELY INCLUDED, AS ONE OF THEIR ACTIVITIES, AGGITATING FOR THIS ONE HUMAN RIGHT-&-RESPONSIBILITY, THERE WOULD IN THE QUITE FORESEEABLE FUTURE BE NO INSTITUTIONALISED CRUELTY TO ANIMALS LEFT..and all we would have to do is to remain vigilant in our Good Shepherd, or Compassionate Steward role, since there will always those intent on violation! But why hand it to them, literally in some cases, on a plate?!?]
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION IF
you also have a dream, of human society moving closer and closer to the time when The Rightfulness of Compassion will be so honored as to effortlessly permeate our powerful institutions,
AND IF
you feel that the related propositions, below, ring true enough to warrant further discussion of them in The Public Domain, with a view to advancing such compassion in our institutions.
Propositions for discussion, with a view to a Cruelty-Free future for society:
1. As humans we share an inherent spiritual impulse to engage in Compassionate Stewardship Over ALL animals - animals who, like angels among us, are crying out TO TEACH HUMILITY to Humanity. Without Humility Man WILL destroy The Planet!
2. Organized religious traditions, which remain deeply ingrained in secular society, have misinterpreted our inherent spiritual right AND RESPONSIBILITY to engage in Compassionate Stewardship Over All Animals, as being, the more insidiously destructive, human RIGHT to engage in an unbridled DOMINION or DOMINATION Over All Animals .. and, this is destroying the soul of our institutions. Supermarkets, being as they are, in a position to powerfully re-inforce OR help change our value system, via that which they display as 'normal' and 'acceptable', can reasonably be called A Societal Institution.
3. Our, arguably inherent, impulse towards a Compassionate Stewardship Over ALL Animals gives rise to this issue; DO we have a HUMAN RIGHT to not be violated in the exercise of our Compassionate Stewardship Over *ALL Animals, a right which could be protected by law?
*Here ALL animals means not just our pets, but also those in the (physically or emotionally) far-away slaughterhouses .. who become those who are cut up and wrapped in plastic and placed on supermarket ~walls of death~ displays.
ALL these animals COULD be argued to be within the legal neighbourhood of our Compassionate Stewardship Over ALL animals! Therefore, it COULD be argued that the dream of reforming (i.e., reversing the tolerance of) the CRUELTY TO ANIMALS which IS ingrained in our secular-Christian societal institutions,which does include our supermarkets) CAN become a, legally advanced and protected, reality! Not only can INSTITUTIONALISED CRUELTY be reasonably shown to be anathaema to the inherent compassion of Christ (thus negating the, so-called CHRISTian, pro-(selective)Cruelty argument, which cites a tradition of Dominion Over Animals going back to the Old Testament) it also CAN BE REMEDIED .. BY, via voluntary action and legislation alike, INVOKING A HUMAN RIGHT to, within the course of our ordinary daily lives, engage unviolated in our inherently bestowed Compassionate Stewardship Over ALL Animals.
Animals simply do need us to be their legally empowered Good Shepherds .. the Compassionate Stewards of THEIR Rights! The sooner we actually realise this and do everything to enshrine this inherent and vital Human Right in strong law the sooner the suffering ends!
Signatures will be collected continuously, for as long as it takes. However, at regular periods, say every 12 months, the petition and its total signatures to that date will be circulated to Supermarket Owners and Managers, to a broad range of Political Parties and a broad range of Community Leaders, worldwide.
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