Why waste time caring?
Why waste time caring about a bird with one wing when there are more serious issues like crime, drugs, corruption and child abuse running rampant through our land?! A boy was recently buggered and thrown in a pond to drown for God's sake woman! What does it matter that a crippled bird needs to be fed by humans for the rest of its life? You must be joking ... asking us that question!
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Elspeth
posted by Elspeth at Sunday, February 05, 2006
3 Comments:
Very interesting question. And if you were to continue the discussion and ask these people who scoff at your concern for the bird, what they are doing to show their concern, for example, for the suffering mother of that poor child, I am certain that the silence would be long and deep or broken by scrambled excuses. Has any one of these detractors, jumped into a vehicle and gone to find the woman, with if nothing else, at least a container of sandwiches and some drinks, to sit with her for a while and let her know that a complete stranger heard her story and shared her pain? No, it is more likely that they would have bought bigger locks for their gates, huddled with their own to shake their heads in despair and ratcheted up the horror content in the stories they tell their children to encourage them to distrust people even more.
When your neighbour’s house is on fire, what do you do? Do you bring out your hose to help him put out the blaze, or do you focus only on giving your house a good soaking?
My mother was reading the blog and asked me if someone had told me that. I told her no - I was actually just being sarcastic (writing as if someone was telling me this) based on a conversation I had had with someone in which the person had displayed a similar attitude towards something else (which other people care about but which she didn't) ... and it made me think about people who may think that way about the pelican situation (which they have a right to, as its their opinion and not everyone feels the same way about the same things). In what I wrote, I was just transferring the 'pelican' situation to what she had said about 'crime' being a more important issue - to provoke thought.
Why waste time caring about our animal brothers? Here are some quotes for us to think about.
Give a drink of water as alms to the birds which go forth at morning, and deem that they have a better right than men [to thy charity]. For their race brings not harm upon thee in any wise, when thou fearest it from thine own race.
Ma'Arri (973-1058)
The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.
Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Our treatment of animals will someday be considered barbarous. There cannot be perfect civilisation until man realises that the rights of every living creature are as sacred as his own.
Dr David Starr Jordan (1851-1931)
Man cannot pretend to be higher in ethics, spirituality, advancement, or civilisation than other creatures, and at the same time live by lower standards than the vulture or hyena.
H.Jay Dinsah (1933- )
As we increasingly become aware of the One Life breathing in each brother form of life, we learn the meaning of compassion, which literally means to 'suffer with' ... How does [the] self cause the desire which causes suffering?...by the illusion of separateness, the unawareness of One.
Christmas Humphreys (1901-1983)
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