Every life is the same. Human or not.

Have you heard of human rights? Did you know that we’re all equal under the eyes of law and society? Of course you did, but are these rights limited to humans? When we think about it, they are. For some reason, we are called superior beings to almost all creatures on this Earth with developed systems to perform multiple tasks and achieve the goals which our minds fabricate. Why is this so? Why do we place human life before others’? It is more important to us to save a human than to save an ant, a bear, or a tree. 

However, that is indecent and cruel. While we can fight for our rights as equal humans, man or woman, black or white, and young or old, these creatures cannot. These animals breathe, speak, think, dream, and love like we do. Their bodies are as unique as our’s. The earth would not be the same without each other. But why–I must ask, why. Why are we so much more important than our counterparts? When somebody’s pet dies, you can’t simply say “You can just buy another one. It’s just an animal.” When a child steps on an ant, killing it in the process, you can’t say, “It’s just an ant. It’s not like you killed an endangered animal.” Put yourselves in the shoes of the vulnerable–no, not just vulnerable humans– the vulnerable animals and insects. Put yourselves in the shoes of God’s creations. The ones who truly cannot speak and cannot move others. When we demolish forests and uproot trees, we cannot say, “We’ll just plant another one.” 

What we’re dealing with is life.

We can all agree that life is essential and precious, but what we usually mean is human life. We’re advocating for an end to racism, class discrimination, and age discrimination but it’ll never happen. When the most important element in this world, life, is abused, there is no hope. 

I admit that I have done my part in mercilessly slaying insects because of my intolerance when they bother me. However, I do let them live on as long as they don’t fly into my sight every single second. If they don’t pose a threat to me, I don’t pose a threat to them. Of course, this does skew my message of life as portrayed earlier in this post, but you can think of it as self-defense.

In any case, what I’m trying to get to is, my family bought a reef tank recently. I’ve already been burdened with my university deadlines but just for making my life harder, we got a reef tank. Now, it’s not necessarily a bad thing because I’ve witnessed the true bad qualities of some family members for real. Only at the cost of five lives, and counting. It’s not only about the cost of these fish, because surely there were some expensive ones, but their lives. They were forced out of their homes–away from their families and piled up together with hundreds of its own kind. Of course, only a few survive these conditions and they are quickly brought to the selling point. They are then adjusted to totally different water, which is quite difficult for them, especially due to the stress they suffered not very long ago. These fish may even need to be treated by chemicals, often copper, which puts their life on the line. In any case, the fish may be bought within hours or days and are adjusted to new water again. There are plenty of complexities afterwards–such as the fish being bullied, attacked–even killed by other creatures, infected, or badly treated. In my case, our fish died because of the lack of research. The fish quickly developed ich, so some died and some are dying. 

It might not sound like a big deal but once again, I ask you to put yourselves in their shoes. Starting from being kidnapped from home. How would it feel if you were struggling in the water, trying to keep awake from death’s lullaby, and your owner just stares back at you? How would it feel if you begged for help with your last breath–no, you can barely even breathe. Your gills pulsing mad like your heartbeat. How would it feel if your owner turned his/her back on you while all of this happened? Prepared your grave for you while you struggled and longed to live? Never shed a tear for you, after all that you’ve been through? And all of this could have been prevented, you know this very well. They had been watching since day one a parasite latched onto you. They did nothing, and you could do nothing but try to rub it off a rock. It only came off to multiply into hundreds more. You knew there was time and hoped one day your owner could get you out of there. You wanted to live, but now they’re waiting for you to die. 

If this is what the world has come to, I wouldn’t say human life is precious at all.