To Mistake the Symptom for the Disease

"Animal exploitation and murder are no more the result of a particular belief system, political system, or economic system than are human exploitation and murder. To think that they are is to mistake the symptom for the disease. The disease is selfishness, greed, arrogance, and a lack of compassion. As Lord Acton told us, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Human history demonstrates that whenever a system (economic, political, religious, whatever) is installed that is designed to end, or at least ameliorate, human oppression, it is fairly quickly corrupted into a new mechanism for the same old oppression. Communism, is one example, institutional Christianity another. Political and economic democracy slow the process by distributing power widely enough to prevent its concentration while placing a significant share of it in the hands of those most vulnerable to oppression. As Winston Churchill reminded us, "Democracy is the worst system of governance ever devised except for all of the other systems that have been tried from time to time." Radical social revolutions simply put a new class of oppressors in charge. I wish it were not so, but it is."

"To put it bluntly, we enslave and murder animals because it is in our self-interest to do so and we have the power to get away with it, not because of capitalism, liberal democracy, the Judeo-Christian dominionist tradition, or any of the other reasons so commonly given. These are merely after-the-fact justifications. We enslave and murder animals because we can and we enjoy the results. Change the political or economic system, and that fundamental fact will still be operative, and the enslavement and murder of animals will continue unaffected except that it will now be justified by a different set of theories, one that is compatible with the new system."

- Norm Phelps -

Until there are no beings whom we still define as "other"

Trends

The campaign against fur was once considered to be the most successful campaign ever by the animal rights movement. But after almost a decade of being branded politically incorrect, fur is back in fashion, coming in all colors, shapes and sizes.

The Fur Council claims that in 1985 only 42 fashion designers included fur in their collections. 20 years later the number has risen to more than 500.

The fur industry resurgence in the last 5 years is an irrefutable evidence of the sole significance of trends in human behavior and public political views.

It is not empathy, rationality, concern and ethics that dictate humans’ behavior, it is fashion, in this case ambiguously speaking. It is trends, not rational and practical compassion.

In spite of Al gore, Cindy Crawford, the Atkins diet, super size me and so many other trendy examples, activists still rely on trends and on celebrities to carry on moral and social justice campaigns.

Animal rights activists know just as we do how provisional and arbitrary trends are and that the same people that are against slaughtering animals for their fur, turn around and eat their flesh, or wear their skin.

Disappointment after disappointment, but the activists never learn.

They cover their eyes and ears because they can't control their urge for a short term goal.

The expectation that the same principle of action only using the good celebrities in a smart and sexy way will change the world is false and ridiculous. The same methods that are responsible for so much of what is wrong with the world can’t be the solution too.

Instead of looking for the current trends and how to use them for their goals, instead of dividing the world to good and bad celebrities.

Animal rights activist should ask themselves what are the chances for a vegan non-speciesist world when the moral message becomes a minor by product of the current trend and the mega celebrities’ reputation improvement efforts.

* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Nonviolence

The non violent approach which is both speciesist and ironically extremely violent.

The non violent approach is speciesist because it is non violent towards humans but at the same time and as a consequence it is violent towards non human animals.
It gives humans an automatic and evident power to decide whether or not they are willing to stop torturing. It is not supposed to be the abusers' decision and the animal rights activists let the abusers make this decision, a decision that regards other creatures' suffer.

The non violent approach is violent because refusing to use violence to stop much more violence is actually supporting violence. From the moment you are aware of the possibility to stop someone’s suffer using violence and you refuse to use it, you choose suffer.

The speciesist and violent approach is in the concept that the one and only duty of activists is to convince the abusers to stop abusing and not to stop the abuse.
As far as most activists think, their variety of options is expressed in persuasion methods only. The basic approach is hardly ever questioned. Convincing people to divert their diet is the only option, the differences are in the ways to do it.
If something didn't work they will try another but all the options have the same in common, they all are different tactics with the same strategy, to convince the abusers to stop abusing, but not to stop the abusers.

When you maintain a non violent approach, if you fail to convince a non-vegan speciesist, he is free to go and continue the abuse.
It shouldn’t be their choice. You don’t ask the tortures if they would like to stop torturing. You just stop them.

We know it is not easy as "just" stopping them, but it is what we’ve got to do. It begins with you realizing the absurdity. With you stop asking the oppressors to stop oppressing and start to find a way to stop it all.

* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Asleep

A world which battery cages could have been invented in, is a world that unlegislating them won't cure anything.

The animal rights movement must wake up.

Society is irrevocably speciesist and immoral.

Gains made are easily reversed.

History has shown that working within the cruel system and winning small battles for the animals proved to be irrelevant. The animals’ carnage continues.

Animal abuse will go on until mankind becomes extinct, or the planet is destroyed.

It’s time to open our eyes and admit that we shall never overcome.

The opposition is stronger, better financed, and more numerous than animal defenders.

If you are only interested in clearing your conscience, you better stay in the conventional movement.

If you are interested in liberating billions of animals and humans from life full of suffer... there is only one solution.

* Much of the text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Pure Speciesism

For some reason animal rights organizations "decided" that no matter what humans do, they must stay.

This is pure speciesism.

The most violent, greedy and destructive specie - the one which is the root cause of the problem they fight against - must stay. Amazing.

The automatic chance humans get and the speciesist request to be patient won't be given in case of human victims.

Right now, animal rights organizations act as if the human species is simply the best specie ever...

Every day that you choose to give humans immunity, you choose the other animals should wait.

* Part of the text is taken from the Only One Solution website.

"I do it only out of duty"

Number of insightful quotations taken from the page "Words of Wisdom" on http://www.whyculturedmeat.org:


"Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral."
--Malcolm X

“Non-violence is not a moral principle but a strategy. And there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon."
--Nelson Mandela

"... humans are much more social than rational creatures. In everyday life on average, people try to merge into society, behave correspondingly, and afterwards rationalize their behaviour, i.e. find "rational" reasons why they act as they act. This observation is so obvious that it does not seem to merit quoting empirical support."
--Martin Balluch

"Let's be honest. The animal rights movement as we now know it will never become a revolutionary struggle because the representatives of the oppressed enjoy enough privilege from the system they oppose to prevent them from supporting, let alone engaging in actual revolutionary activity that would risk those comforts."
--Rod Coronado

"People involved in a revolution don't become part of the system; they destroy the system."
--Malcolm X

"Animal liberation is the most difficult liberation struggle of all because speciesism is primordial and universal. Speciesism is arguably the first of any form of domination or hierarchy and it has spread like a deadly virus throughout the entire planet and all of human history. The problem is not limited to Western culture or to the modern world, such that there is some significant utopian past or radical alternative to recover. The problem is the human species itself, which but for rare exceptions is violent, destructive, and imperialistic. Universally, humans have vested interests in exploiting animals and think they have a God-given right to do so. To change these attitudes is to change the very nerve center of human consciousness. That is our task - no more and no less."
--Steve Best

"Animal exploitation and murder are no more the result of a particular belief system, political system, or economic system than are human exploitation and murder. To think that they are is to mistake the symptom for the disease. The disease is selfishness, greed, arrogance, and a lack of compassion. As Lord Acton told us, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Human history demonstrates that whenever a system (economic, political, religious, whatever) is installed that is designed to end, or at least ameliorate, human oppression, it is fairly quickly corrupted into a new mechanism for the same old oppression. Communism, is one example, institutional Christianity another. Political and economic democracy slow the process by distributing power widely enough to prevent its concentration while placing a significant share of it in the hands of those most vulnerable to oppression. As Winston Churchill reminded us, "Democracy is the worst system of governance ever devised except for all of the other systems that have been tried from time to time." Radical social revolutions simply put a new class of oppressors in charge. I wish it were not so, but it is."

"To put it bluntly, we enslave and murder animals because it is in our self-interest to do so and we have the power to get away with it, not because of capitalism, liberal democracy, the Judeo-Christian dominionist tradition, or any of the other reasons so commonly given. These are merely after-the-fact justifications. We enslave and murder animals because we can and we enjoy the results. Change the political or economic system, and that fundamental fact will still be operative, and the enslavement and murder of animals will continue unaffected except that it will now be justified by a different set of theories, one that is compatible with the new system."
--Norm Phelps, Until there are no beings whom we still define as "other"

"I recall cutting my philosophical teeth on Marx, and then discovering Nietzsche, who confirmed my deeper biases toward pessimistic views on humanity. I've done a hell of a lot of work on AR and veganism here in El Paso and have been constantly in the media, doing interviews, and organizing groups and actions. But it cuts against my grain and I do it only out of duty."
--Steve Best, Until there are no beings whom we still define as "other"

Only One Solution

The Only One Solution may be the most important website there is. It gives you everything you need in order to understand why humans must be annihilated from this world. And that's not all, it also argues that it would be better if all species were to be annihilated.

The Only One Solution Manifest begins with the following paragraphs:

It is not easy to explain your most fundamental perceptions and ideas. It feels so clear, so obvious and right that ironically it is hard to pass it forth. Yet this is the goal of this manifest, this website and the only one solution movement as a whole, an explanation why the only deep-rooted, fundamental, radical, comprehensive and true solution to the world’s suffer is to destroy it.


It is a rather banal and self evident idea that many activists think of at some point in their lives, but we feel that mostly it pops up in times of despair and disbelief while it should be the primal concept at all times regardless of the state of affairs within the animal rights movement or with your own activism.
Such a fundamental and basic philosophy shouldn’t be built on a temporary situation or episodic mood. That is why we wrapped the idea with arguments that seek to construct a serious and comprehensive case for the annihilation idea. We want that what is now probably no more than a feeling or an opinion, will change into a purpose and then into action.


Please don’t automatically dismiss the idea as a cliché or a slogan, or an out of reach fantasy and get back to your familiar position in your organization. You are an activist because in some point of your life you realized how much suffer exists in the world and you have decided that you must stop it. The only one solution initiative is not romantic naiveness of inexperienced activists or grown fantasists. It is a rational and realistic quest for a sufferless world.
Even if you have doubts at least read the whole manifest. You may get new perspectives and new ideas, new arguments and new questions to confront with. The worst thing that can happen is a waste of a few hours, the best thing is that you will decide that from now on, you devote your life to end all the suffer in the world.



After reading the entire manifest, what is your opinion - would it be better if all species were to be annihilated, not only humans?

Recommended Book: "A Declaration of War" by Screaming Wolf

"A Declaration of War", written by Screaming Wolf, is a must read book for anyone who accepts humans are not superior to other living beings and is willing to act in order to achieve this notion.

Here is one section, among many that make this book so important to read:

To liberators, then, fear and pain are the primary motivations of people. Moving on to the weaker, but real, motivating force of pleasure, it is clear that people get pleasure from those they like, and treat them differently from those they dislike. What makes people like or dislike others?
Liberators believe it is our ability to identify with others, which is another way of saying our ability to empathize with them, that determines whether we will like them or dislike them.
Empathy is a feeling we get when we believe we can feel what another is feeling. It has nothing to do with the mind, but with the heart, and is therefore real and powerful in its effect on our behavior. It is the way we see our connection to others, and identify with their reality.
Without empathy we cannot feel affection for others. It is the basis of friendship and love. It feels good. And we need it.
According to liberators, love, the most pleasant form of empathy, is the second greatest motivator of humans, second only to pain and fear.
Liberators say that the reason we need love and empathy is because we all feel alone in the world. Humans are an alienated species, unsure of their connection with the rest of nature. It’s a frightening world when you have no real clue how to act, no internal instincts telling you what is healthy or harmful. If we had such knowledge, we wouldn’t need ethics or religion to tell us how to live. Both try to address human behavior and our place in the world. Ever since there have been people, there have been religious and moral codes trying to make sense out of the chaos of the human condition. This basic human existential uncertainty makes people lonely and frightened. Friendship is welcome relief.
On the other side of this existential coin is the need to feel control in the world. Liberators believe that power and control issues dominate most people’s lives. If people can’t be in control over their own lives, then they will try to be in control over the lives of others.
People fear being out of control, because being out of control is painful. We try to feel we will be okay in the world, that the environment is not hostile, and that our needs will be met. Seeking control over others is one way humans achieve an illusory peace in their minds that the world is a safe, manageable place.
Love for others and power over others are mutually exclusive. You cannot love someone you exploit, or exploit someone you love.
The way most people handle this paradox is by loving some and controlling others. And since control is often exploitative, it requires that you feel little or no empathy for those controlled, so you can avoid suffering along with them as you exploit them.
To illustrate this point, liberators use the example of Nazi doctors who conducted heinous experiments on Jews during the day, while acting as loving husbands and fathers at night. Humans label a group as « other », using race, nationality, sex, or species as the basis for the distinction, and consider that group unworthy of empathy and, therefore, a reasonable target for exploitation. So long as humans have some other group with whom they can identify and find empathy and love, they can satisfy their need for affection. By splitting groups this way, people allow themselves the pleasure of love with some groups, and the reduction of pain through the exploitation of other groups.
The groups they are kind to consist of human beings, particularly those of equal of greater power. The ones exploited are typically powerless, unable to reciprocate aggression, which is the case with non-human beings.

Read the entire book online...

The Human Barrier

What exploited nonhumans need to be liberated is very simple: they need humans to be extinct. This may be a daunting technical task but it is still a technical task.

What is impossible is to liberate these nonhumans and keep humans alive.