Today a friend pointed me to the documentary Earthlings which seems to be already known of everyone but me. A half-enlightening experience: while I was already aware of the issues, and I already knew some facts, the images made my understanding more vivid; an unpleasant but refreshing enhancement.

But still, something in this documentary was bothering me all the way. Now I can see it: the title.

“ Earthlings ”

And the documentary goes over animals, about how humans relate to (and use) other animals. Did they not forget something?

What about the other earthlings?

Turning vegetarian after watching such a documentary completely misses the point. All in all, any human has to learn to deal with fellow living beings. That always involves killing to survive, often in nasty ways for convenience. We should just choose how to minimize the amount of inconvenience for our community of earthlings as a whole.

Topic for this week’s discussions: if you were to get a mental picture (or a perception) of each living thing that is used or killed to sustain your own life, where each being would be expressing their opinion by speaking in their own distinct voice (possibly a little squeaky), how would you deal with the situation? Imagine, for example, the opinion of that branch of parsley on the cutting board if it was expressing human-like feelings and consciousness about its fate…

Life is tough.

One day, we will wake up in the morning and see a world devoid of plants. Like the dolphins, they will have left us to our own device.