I sometimes wonder if we have progressed at all since the days of the Roman gladiators, and feeding Christians to the lions? Why is it when I see people cheering at bullfights I get this huge feeling of elation when the bull turns the tables on the Matador and does to him what he is trying to do to the hapless bull?
Why do I not see the Matador as a brave gladiator but a cruel heartless sadistical fool and bully?
If we have to eat meat then dispatch the animal in the most humane way possible. Why do humans with supposedly more than the minimum of required brain capacity have to torture the beasts? I feel nothing for the hunter when the tables are turned and they are eaten or maimed.
I was at a farm once when my well meaning host felt he was doing me a huge favour by setting up a hunting party, and was quite astounded when I declined his offer. He then declared that I should prove that I am a man by shooting a buck. I wasn't impressed by his rather skewed reasoning and said I did not feel it necessary to prove my manhood by blowing-away a defenceless beast with a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights. If he or his friends felt it necessary to prove 'their manhood' in some such way, then they should go hunt a lion armed with a knife or spear. That would even the odds and raise the claim for their braveness and manhood?
As an artist I explained, "I am a creator and not a destroyer!" I would leave the destroying to them if they considered that important and was the only way they could manage their blood-lust.
I was considered quite odd and possibly not really a man by them. Few that know me would agree with that sentiment, and I do understand that at times it is necessary to kill when there is danger, and sadly when it is necessary to cull animals for one reason or another, but I cannot see any manliness in killing animals unnecessarily, or worse still torturing them such as in bullfighting and then calling it 'sport'. I shouldn't imagine the animals consider it sport at all.
We do live in a strange world where science is forging ahead leaps and bounds and where we are getting ever closer to the discovering the very essence of our being, and the very fabric of life, while other areas of our society remain firmly in the dark ages.
Am I alone in seeing things this way?
