I agree with Greyson when he says that, “after watching all the gruesome brutality on screen today…I have never felt more of a connection to animals suffering.” In a word, today was horrifying. Watching earthlings was gruesome and devastating and horrific and tragic and so many other emotions that are just simmering underneath my skin. I definitely believe that and having to watch this film (or at least the first half so far) I’ve become more aware of my own feelings as well as expanded my capacity for empathy. Just sitting in the classroom, looking around at the other students experiencing this traumatizing documentary, I felt for Aparna and Dana and Nicole and Seton who I can obviously see where having as rough the time watching the images on the screen as I was.
When we had to watch the scenes of slaughter houses and the shelters killing overflow animals, I felt immense despair and the desire to do something to help the animals but knowing I could do nothing. I felt helpless and willingly ignorant because I know these things occur but I just don’t think about them. I felt overwhelmed and unable to comprehend the sheer cruelty of humans in three different scenes in particular. The first was when we watched those wretched man throw that poor, stray dog into the back of the trash truck. I couldn’t watch. What kind of person throws away a living being? The dog probably just wanted love. Even when he was sitting in the back of the truck, not really understanding what those men were going to do to him, he looked up at the men, looking for love or even just affection. This display of distilled cruelty was horrifying (I’m crying just thinking about the scene again). These men prove Leonardo da Vinci’s words true, “truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the deaths of others” (230).
Another scene that left me speechless and shaken and sitting in abject horror was when that cow was writhing on the ground in his own blood with his trachea and esophagus out of his body. And yet the men just stood around and did nothing. I hope I’m never so desensitized to others suffering that I’m able to do that. The last scene that really made me just want to check out emotionally for the rest of the day was when we had to watch the dolphin hunting. Dolphins are animals that are completely devoted to their family, and for humans to use that against them is unspeakably cruel. Then they go on to drag these suffering creatures through the streets as they bleed out struggling and in the incredible amounts of pain. The way the people go on with their lives ignoring the Dolphins is unimaginable to me. Watching the scenes I felt inferior, useless, sorrowful, desolate, mournful and pessimistic. And I also felt resentful and infuriated with these people who could just stand by and watch.
Personally, I wasn’t really able to come back to feeling compassion through being with what is like from Dass would say or find the equanimity that Siddhartha found. My mind was mostly consumed with the sounds and sights of immense suffering. The squeals the pigs screamed in the terrified screeching of the cattle filled my ears leaving me feeling desolate and helpless once again.
I have to agree again with Greyson when he writes that, “watching the scenes of humans mindlessly mutilating and inflicting pain on the animals finally pushed me over the edge.” Now, to be fair, I was probably already over the edge, but these scenes just exemplified and exacerbated the senseless cruelty. These animals are already destined for the slaughterhouse. They do not need humans to make that path any worse.
One thing the documentary did say that I was dumbstruck by was that, “several pet owners feel, particularly men for some reason, that neutering a pet emasculates the owner somehow” (200). What kind of ignorant, self-conscious insecure man (or woman) does it take to selfishly not neutering pets to feel better about yourself? In doing this, you are potentially dooming the offspring of your beloved pet to a short, unhappy life. I think this is despicable.
I hope that I can be more like the boy in the starfish story. But even though there were hundreds of starfish that needed to be saved, the boy was not deterred when a man pointed out the futility of his efforts. Instead, after returning a single starfish to the sea the boy replied to the man, “I made a difference for that one” (246).
