Who Cares?
We choose everything in this world. Our choices are based on both our interpretation of the world around us and our own nature. Amidst all of the possible experiences in the world, we find there are common understandings across oceans, cultures and languages identified as Human Universals*. Some of these universals include the expression of the experiences involving pain, hope, fear of death, jokes, memory, and play.
Humans from all walks of life choose to extract these meanings from the world around them. In an "isolated" culture without a written language, computers, cars, or fast food people respond identically to their environment in these universal ways as their university educated counterparts. You could be born the poorest of poor in an undiscovered primitive tribe deep in the South American Jungle and you would be able to experience the same emotional and intellectual range of Human Universals as a middle class American.
Despite the wide varied appearances of people around the world, there are many intellectual similarities. In a similar fashion, we share an amazing amount of genes with our fellow mammals. In fact, all life on Earth is so closely related to our biochemistry that scientists struggle to understand all of the outward physical differences. Determining the intellectual differences is even more complicated. Anyone who has had a pet knows they have personalities and can easily relate to their range of emotions. Pet owners see the joy in playing. They see their fear, hope, and they way they have memories of these things. In tragic cases, they've seen their fear of death.
If our biochemistry is so similar and we relate emotionally in similar ways as them, then perhaps these Human Universals are not just Human. One could say this is just a silly fantasy. However, the shear fact that these traits are UNIVERSAL among all humans suggests this species leap is possible, especially when humans have scientifically identified these traits in other species. When scientists look at physiological components of the development of intelligence, several mammals exhibit greater potential for intelligences than humans. Several large mammals have larger brains and longer gestation cycles than humans, two key factors in intelligence. Heavy our hearts should be knowing that we have misled ourselves in the mistreatment of such complex creatures capable of suffering on a human scale.
Of those things we are profoundly ignorant, we must proceed with extreme caution. These creatures need our help. Why would we assume that the lives they live are any less noble than ours? They have survived the same evolutionary traumas our species has endured. Most of them have specialized abilities that far exceed anything humans could dream of imitating, much less reproduce with technology. Yet many still insist we exploit them for their own purposes.
Gandhi said once, "You can judge the greatness of a nation by how its animals are treated." He didn't just mean the dogs and cats, but all animals. There are many things we don't know about our fellow habitants on this planet. We don't even understand their languages or behaviors. We don't know how they interact with their own environment. In many cases, it is too late for us to even study them. It has been estimated that we haven't even discovered 40% of the animals on this planet, many could be extinct before they are even found. Powerful is the irony of a world who spends several billion dollars on space exploration and searching for extraterrestrial life, when those in its back yard suffer with little notice.
In fact we know so little about them that we can not afford to error on the side of silly fantasies. We have to protect them and their homes for our own benefits as well as theirs. First we must choose to make a difference in the world around us. Often, we must choose to do the hard things, not the easy ones.
We have to ask ourselves tough questions about our stewardship of the Earth. Do we really need to harvest more timber from new locations? Do we really need to clear the land for another sub-division? How fast should our population grow? Do we really need to kill billions of animals every year for fishwiches, Big Macs, bacon, and boneless chicken breasts? Do we really have to drive everywhere? Do we need all that wasteful food packaging?
The choice is ours to make of what we ignore and what we care about.
* Donald E. Brown, "Human Universals" in the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences. This reference lists about a hundred identical characteristics found in every society ever documented. Many of these have also been documented to exist in other mammalian societies, most notably apes. Some scientists believe that many of these traits are heavily influenced by our genes. We share more than half of these genes with almost everything living animal on the planet.