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I want to round off by reflecting on three clips that I have introduced earlier.
Cali (the cockatoo) and the two cats, Audrey and Jackson, are working on a common problem: what is inside the box? Watch the clip carefully and with empathy.
In the end, all three managed to get together inside the box. All three of them!
The bear, the lion and the tiger were found in a drug raid, chained in the basement. Three abandoned children who only had each other. If they had met in the open as adults, friendship probably wouldn't be the first option.
In the 17th century, live animals could be autopsied without anaesthesia. Then you could see the exposed heart beating in a living animal. Screams and squeaks were nothing but a response of the biological machine, like the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock.
In my teens, I worked preparing food for bacteria at a microbiology laboratory. One day I came by the animal department. On either side of a small table sat two men in white coats. On the table was a box of the type that coconut balls sometimes are delivered in, basically a larger cake box divided into smaller compartments. Something soft and yellow floated over the cardboard box. In each of the compartments was a small chicken.
One man picks up a chicken, folds its wings open to expose the breast, and the other man sticks a syringe into the live chicken's heart and sucks up a small amount of blood. The first man cuts the head off the chicken with a pair of scissors and throws the separated body into a plastic bag, which hangs on a hook.
The two I managed to steal grew quickly and could soon enough not be kept in a city apartment, so they had to migrate to a farm outside of town. I have no illusions about their future lives, but the scene with the exposed chest, the needle, the scissors, the severed head, the nonchalant gesture when the body was thrown into the plastic bag ...
Medical research is only a small part of the world's industrial animal husbandry.
The next clip shows Blossom, a turkey rescued from slaughter and placed in a sanctuary where Minnow, a dog, already lived. Blossom's turkey friends had their throats cut, their bodies split up, wrapped in plastic – eaten on a sandwich maybe. Blossom and Minnow get to join in and show their personal adaptation to life with people.
Friendships like this are what people like. The web is teeming with rescued and cared for animals. I hope people realize that what are wrapped in plastic in the refrigerators are animals that never had a life.
A dog is a dog, a cat a cat. A dog that sees a cat as a cat can sometimes get upset. A cat that sees a dog as a dog may go in defence. On the other hand, there are dogs that live in friendship with cats. The external form does not have to be what confirms the other.
When there is food, and the threats from external enemies are gone, encounters have better chances. Searching for food and be alert takes a lot of energy that security and care can release.
Behind every living form is a being's disguised consciousness. Roman snail, dolphin, human, lemon tree, earthworm ... all living beings, with senses and limbs needed for the life that is theirs. Each with their own unique way of experiencing and relating to our common world.
What I write here is just a way of seeing life, a sketch of a decent way to relate to our fellow beings and the world at large.
You can make any assumptions you want. What you see will in any case be a limited interval, whether it is about science or religion.
A roman snail has the physical body and sensory equipment that allows it to sense and handle the world like a roman snail. A roman snail sees, smells and tastes the world in its own way, and probably has as much interest in a cheese grater as a human has in a splinter of a decaying leaf.
Plants can listen and remember. A tree senses and reacts to its surroundings.
An amoeba explores its environment, knows what is favourable and what to avoid. It reads the world, reacts to the impressions, decides a direction and creates physical impulses that steer the body in the right direction.
There is a dominant being that has broken the bonds and acquired the power to bring about great and sudden changes, to which many lives on earth do not have time to respond and therefore die out. This strange species has power that otherwise only meteorites and volcanoes have.
We thought we had a handle on existence. After the unparalleled discoveries of the twentieth century, we hoped that suffering could be mastered, maybe even hoped that in the future death itself might be forced to give way. A childish wish.
Then we discover that the air is agitated, the ice is melting, the seas are swelling. Earth's dynamics are changing, it shakes and roars. Animals and plants leave us, and we begin to understand that the most powerful of civilizations has become its own slave.
About to get very lonely.
There are more tigers in captivity than in the wild. Small fractions of earth's vertebrates live freely&mbsp;the majority live in captivity waiting to be killed.
Those confined are chicken drumsticks, prime rib, eggs, cheese, chops, milk, spare ribs, beef tongue, sausages and minced meat.
Factors of production, carcasses, herds. Raw materials with life stolen. Death creates the value. The violence from society flows over the world.
Is it something to be surprised about that that the oceans want to scrub themselves free from the impurities of industrial society, that everything is so fragile that the smallest spark causes continents to burn, that the clouds strain their forces and drown entire countries? Is that something to be surprised about?
What is it that holds the human spirit captive? Many indigenous peoples show that it is possible, that it is possible to preserve the relationship with nature and the place where you live.
Industrial man has no domicile, but builds his solid ground on material possessions and would rather look forward to the ever-new, than listen to the experiences of generations.
We are no longer five hundred million, as in the 16th century. Our logistical structures wind like pipes and wires over the mountains, through the oceans, turning wilderness into flowerpots, trampling the earth into ash, concrete and asphalt.
Earth may mourn, but probably does not care; she just offers opportunities to which life must adapt.
Today's agriculture and animal husbandry are governed by the same conditions that govern any other industry. Life has become an economic machine.
Is it any wonder that a civilization, which from soil to freezer is pervaded by violence, filled with anxiety and fear?
Has the great ape Homo sapiens had its chance?
Here is an alternate way of seeing it: Homo sapiens is a force called in by nature to bring about a change, so that evolution can restart from another point. Like when the dinosaurs had to back off and mammals took their place. Is it the octopuses' turn now?
Anyway, the party is over.
That is, the party that broke the decor, disturbed the neighbours, behaved recklessly and lived without a thought for others. That party will soon be over.
We could at least admit that the basic concept was wrong: we are not masters of the earth. We don't even have control over ourselves.
Imagine that you are a creature from space and have stopped at a small blue planet. There is life on it. You are a visitor from an alien galaxy and see everything from a distance.
You have a seen continents drift apart and join together, seen mountains grow up and been worn down. You have seen the clean, healthy seas, seen the growing life in the seas and seen the first tentative movements of life on land.
You have seen earth-shattering events. At some point you may have thought that all was over, but life came back again. It just took a different path.
What do you see down there? Winding roots of paths, streets, roads. Wires, cables, masts, pipes, wires and hoses. And not much virgin land left.
As a being from space, you only know what you can see. You know nothing about job market, crying and longing, ambitions, bureaucracy, power and games.
You see cities swell and oceans full of alien substances. You see the colours fade and the veil of life thins out.
Do not hesitate about the change that is going on.
⊱≎⊰
All creatures are equal
They differ in the abilities
they are equipped with
That what makes them real
The truth is just a dream
A fantasy is a reality
Why shouldn't a stone know
and water remember,
a cow mourn
a tree speak
If it makes us
caring and respectful?