Isacat Animal Rights Summary

In How to do Animal Rights, Isacat brought to light the issue which includes humans are becoming responsible for the mass extinction of animals. Humans have been the “enemy” of animals for millennia’s, because of the actions we’ve been taking against them. These actions include eating, wearing, killing them for sport, and experimentation, all to meet the demands of the increasing number of people living in the world.
This reading is engaging to me both socially and culturally, both topics are brought about with the phrasing of ‘Animal Holocaust’. Originally when I read the article the comparison between the ‘Animal Holocaust’ and the actual Holocaust, I wasn’t able to see the connection. However after looking at it more closely I was able to draw the parallel. Socially viewed; in the Holocaust people were killed only because one man didn’t like them, and since he was ruler everybody else just fell in line. By

comparing the “Animal Holocaust” with the real Holocaust, it isn’t fair in saying that their similar because nobody is telling us that if we don’t kill animals were going against anybody. In some aspects it is fair in saying they are similar though, such as experimentation, Dr. Mengele conducted genetic research by using humans as test subjects, and medical corporations use animals to test for genetic research and medicine. What makes these similar is that in both senses Dr. Mengele and medical corporations are doing it to try to better human life. The examples of eating them and wearing them however can’t be compared accurately because the Nazi’s didn’t eat or wear the people they killed, and with some humans, eating and wearing animals is how they have always lived an example would be the Native Americans. For them it was about survival, for the Nazi’s it was about following orders. In a cultural view it can be related more correctly, because both the Holocaust and the Animal Holocaust lead to just about the mass extinction of a both people and animals that didn’t deserve it. Through out How to do Animal Rights extinction of species is mentioned a lot and in a cultural view it provides a negative view of the way humans have lived for years, every time it is mentioned it’s a reminder that something needs to change.
I have never thought about how much humans were impacting the lives of animals and the environment until after reading this. I knew that some species went extinct and I knew that others were endangered, but when Isacat started to bring up the topic of mass extinction and in paragraph seven Isacat discussed more about how fast it happened, made me realize that if humans keep going at that rate the animals we know today, our great grandchildren might never get to see it unless it’s in a book. Also in paragraphs eight and nine the environment views were brought in. I always believed that just nature in general was also playing a part in the “destruction” of itself. When in reality humans are pushing nature over the edge, to get what they want.
After reading How to do Animal Rights I have more question that I thought I would.

In paragraph thirteen Isacat states this “We could not have evolved without animals and they gave our species food, clothing, shelter and tools”, Isacat then quoted Woody Allen; "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” These two statements leave me with the question that if humans choose the wrong path, and we continue down that road, we’re going to keep kill trillions of animals a year and continue to polluting the earth, how long until it’s just all gone? How long until the animals that help humans evolve are lost to this world and humans can no longer evolve? Will we eventually just go extinct like the animals? If the environment isn’t fixed how long until global warming takes full effect and the word is like a desert? I’ve never thought of these things happening until now, and it changes my view on the

world.
The topics mentioned in this reading like Global warming, consumption of our resources and human overpopulation are all the major issues, those issues are popular in current events now because people are starting to realize that the issues exist and if we as a population don’t try to fix as much of the damage that we created over the years now, then in later years it’s not going to get better it will just keeping getting worse and worse and at some point it will be too late to fix it at all.