Psychological Implications From the Death of Cecil the Lion
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Deborah Tanzer, Ph.D.
August 2015

The worldwide outcry of horror, outrage, and condemnation at the brutal murder of Cecil the lion was magnificent and encouraging, showing that humans can have deep feelings for animals and moral repulsion at the injustice of murdering innocents, violating their rights to their lives, in this case for pure pleasure.

But there is a disconnect, there is a human failure to condemn the same actions when they are done to other animals. Like Cecil, they too are innocents, they too have the same rights to their lives. And they too are murdered by us for our pleasure, especially the pleasure of our palates.

The worldwide outcry of horror, outrage, and condemnation at the brutal murder of Cecil the lion was magnificent and encouraging, showing that humans can have deep feelings for animals and moral repulsion at the injustice of murdering innocents, violating their rights to their lives, in this case for pure pleasure.

But there is a disconnect, there is a human failure to condemn the same actions when they are done to other animals. Like Cecil, they too are innocents, they too have the same rights to their lives. And they too are murdered by us for our pleasure, especially the pleasure of our palates.

As a psychologist, I know full well that people disconnect and dissociate when their internal or external status quo is threatened, so we run from knowing that by killing animals to eat them, or paying someone else to, we are doing what we condemn as immoral in the case of Cecil. But I know too that people can change, and do, even when it feels difficult.   I urge everyone to think hard and deep about this, and transcend our dissociations, which do such horrific violence to the animals we kill, but violence to ourselves as well.

I will close with a beautiful quote from the great Greek philosopher Plutarch, which speaks eloquently to this issue:

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.


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