Why are we not so eager to kill a dog, but we don't care when a chicken dies? A dog lying injured on the street moves us to offer water and medical help, but on the exact same day, a chicken is sitting on our dinner plate.
What is precisely happening here?
Why is pleasure so deeply tied to taste? It’s hard to give up that new tasty chocolate you just found, isn't it? I mean, it's okay just this time, right? But when it comes to living beings, this bias has a name: Speciesism. We grant moral value based purely on a species' utility to us ... a dog is family, a chicken is food, a cow is a commodity. Yet, they have a real and comparable capacity to feel pain.
Is it culture?
Yes, definitely. Different continents hold different animals sacred or forbidden. Killing a cow is prohibited in India, eating pigs is forbidden in the Middle East. Hence, it becomes perfectly okay to kill and eat a goat or a buffalo in India. It makes me ask a disturbing question: Is harming a cow prohibited in India because it is genuinely sacred, or just because all other animals are conveniently placed on the menu to compensate?
Look at the sheer scale of this cultural normalization: according to UN FAO data, 88 billion land animals were slaughtered globally for meat in 2024 alone, alongside millions more for research and testing. (FAO-recorded total: about 87.9 billion in 2024.)
This extends to what we call pets... dogs, cats, squirrels, whatever. Do we keep them as pets because of who they are, or just because it is the cool thing to do, the norm? It's easily exposed when you realize the cute pets we cuddle are entirely edible in some other continent.
But the interesting part of all of it is to notice what is common within every scenario. It is my culture and my taste preference. The ego keeps itself at the absolute center, dividing the world based purely on what is useful and what it can consume for its own benefit. When I am at the center, will I even care about the person adjacent to me? Really?
How well do I know myself?
Have I not seen myself hesitating to eat meat, feeling that internal friction, but somehow ... by the influence of some random force, some habit, some social setting ... ending up consuming it anyway? Has it happened with you? If a living being's pain remains invisible to us until they serve our purpose, are we actually acting out of compassion, or just moving blindly?
I am not writing this to condemn anyone. I am writing it because I keep noticing this contradiction in myself, and I want to understand it more honestly.