”The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men’s apples and head their cabbages.”

– Cyrano de Bergerac

These words by the 17th century French author Cyrano de Bergerac ring true to me, and have done so for a while. They rang true to me when I was younger, and learned about how we, human beings, are destroying our planet by exhausting its resources: we go on vacations, boarding airplanes that pollute massively for our entertainment, to pass time. They rang true when I was exposed to vegan ”propaganda”, seeing how animals, innocent as they can be, are mass-slaughtered, becoming mere means to satisfy our entitled human ends, ending up as steaks on our Sunday evening dinner plates. Or what’s worse, as patties in microwaveable burgers. They continue to ring true today, when living through a highly unusual time and we humans being in isolation, and seeing how nature flourishes in our absence: skies are blue again, animals are taking back territory they have not been able to reach in ages. This forces us to face the possibility that we humans as a species are not superior to other animals in the sense we credit ourselves to be. I mean, how could we, when the world as a whole seems to beam with joy and life as soon as we take a step back. Why is it that we think that only our agency and freedom, our human reality, matters?

There is a feeling of unease and discomfort when coming face to face with having done something that does not morally seem quite right. It is not an easy thing to come to terms with that the habits one has that are considered perfectly ok and acceptable by both oneself and everyone else around, might with a shift in perspective suddenly make one’s apparent infallibility crumble. That in fact the things that one chooses to do in everyday life actually cause suffering and are of oppressing nature, and are based on self-inflicted authority. Who gave humans the right to, for example, exploit animals as we wish as our vehicles and instruments?

Of course the answer is that it is easier to deny that animals have an ontological nature of their own. For most people the starting point is that there just simply isn’t anything of value, any other metaphysical reality outside our biased, arrogant human-ness, and the possibility of anything else is unsettling. The Brethren of Purity, a group within the Ismailis (a sect within Islam, operating around the 700s AD) often appraised for their impartial approach to knowledge, made genius use of the unease that this shift in perspective brings about in the average human. When it comes to modes of teaching and knowing, they were of the opinion that the simple human intellect is not made for abstract learning, and that there is something to be rectified in the way humans fail to give thanks to the blessings that animals are. The Brethren of Purity (and the Friends of Loyalty, as the name continues) made it clear that one should ”shun no science, scorn any book…”, and see that all knowledge comes from the same source, and that there is a perennial and immutable truth underlying the surface-level manifold of sciences. When humans are oppressing the nature around them, they no longer moralize or philosophize. This new mode of teaching was based on pointing out the arrogance and ill-doings of humans by giving up the podium us humans have given ourselves. These teachings employed dramatic irony and produced an unsettling shift in dynamic by giving animals a voice, creating powerful conceptualizations where animals would mock humans and their arrogance, inviting human beings to think about abstract concepts which by nature are external to the human body.

By breaking down a normal hierarchy like this and, in a way, humiliating arrogant humans and showing that there is no morality in not showing pity for animals crying for mercy before being slaughtered, one can get used to thinking outside the normal societal constructions. Philosophical salvation from the constraints of the fallible human intellect and the prison of materialism is only possible through challenging the comfort we have grown accustomed to. It is in revealing the ontology of otherness, or in other words, recognizing the ontological fundamentality of something outside of oneself, that the abstract can be accessed. Ideas have higher reality than sensory things. Animals have virtual subject-hood, and are free, responsible moral agents. I think one does a huge service for oneself by admitting to the suffering one has caused because of self-centeredness, and not only in the case of hurting animals but also us humans hurting one another (unethical labour and so on). For it is only by owning up to one’s past mistakes that one can grow and not continue to inflict pain on one’s surroundings. In a sense, discomfort is a gift, and should be embraced in order for a finer, better normal to emerge from the ashes of the former.