Cruelty to Animals

Why are we cruel to animals?

Cruelty, by definition, is willfully or knowingly causing pain or distress to others and enjoying the pain or distress of others. It is an act which one takes in conscious pursuit of pleasure, which is derived from imagining how much distress and pain one's act causes the object of the attack. This kind of act is fully conscious and is preceded by exercising one's intellectual ability to put oneself in another person's shoes and vividly imagine the effects of such actions.

Usually, people with higher IQ and highly developed imagination are known to be prone to cruelty. I am talking about "normal" people, not some of those cases of mental illnesses that drive people to cruelty, sometimes even without their being fully aware of what they do.

Since it is the result of willful, premeditated activity, cruelty is certainly human phenomenon. Animals are not cruel by definition as they do not treat other animals in such a conscious, knowing way, like that proverbial cat, which plays with mouse. On the cat's part it is an instinctive activity, which itself gives that mouse a pleasure. Not because the cat consciously enjoys the suffering proper of the mouse.

Our cruelty is not the result of ancient animal instincts affecting our behavior. As opposed to animals, we can willfully and consciously control our actions. As social beings, we depend on our upbringing, though, for it determines the strength of our will and our respect (or the lack of it) for other human beings and animals. We can appreciate life in general.

In this respect, we are NOT animals! Unless we choose to be like ones, for sure. Anybody who is cruel to animals chooses to be so. Otherwise, such person belongs to a psychiatric hospital. The problem is that a person who is cruel to animals is usually cruel to humans as well. The link between animal abuse and aggression in humans is also an important area of research.

We do not deal with the problem of our cruelty to animals for one major reason - we are accustomed to cruelty to human beings! The problem is that we do not deal with our cruelty to other people! Moreover, our society teaches children to be cruel. Works of art and science, and certainly political activity of our governments and power institutions teach us how to enjoy distress and pain of others or, rather, how to be more like animals and not even think about it when we play our games.