Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who didn't pay someone to exploit & slaughter a turkey this year and take their life, relationships, wellbeing, autonomy & freedom away from them. π¦π¦π¦πππ To the rest of you, I wish you well in spirit. But I also wish you'd make different choices and be kind to innocent vulnerable conscious beings instead of cruel to them when given every opportunity.
Stephen Hawking was dumb. Yeah I said it. Because he thought that other animals didn't matter as much as humans, and we could conduct experiments on them and exploit them for our own benefit. (In reality, we have much better alternatives anyway). He also made mocking and critical comments about the idea of animal rights and animal rights activists, and even moderate animal welfare advocates, and used some really poor and fallacious logic to justify exploiting animals both for research and for food. For all his intelligence, he was dumb on the subject of animal rights and animal ethics more generally, and also made some quite silly and poorly received comments about philosophy not mattering as a field in order to dismiss his logical errors & contradictions and the academic critique they were met with.
Just as many of the most influential and intelligent people in history dropped the ball when they made absurd justifications for bigotry against our fellow humans, many did the same of our fellow animals. It just reflects the outdated thinking of the time, and being consumed by culture in an negative, harmful, oppressive way while others were more independently-minded and principled (like Einstein, Tolstoy, Tesla, DaVinci, Plutarch, Pythagoras, etc - all vegetarian/possibly vegan and talked about other animals deserving rights).
Other animals care about their lives in all the same ways as us. They're sentient beings with a conscious experience. What's legal isn't always ethical if we look at history. Be on the right side of the justice issues of your time. If you've gotten through your life thinking it's okay to violate nonhuman animals' interests and moral (would-be-legal) rights for unnecessary purposes, it doesn't mean you're stupid. Something just hasn't clicked for you yet. We can all change, starting now. End speciesism, or at least end carnism. End the domination, exploitation, victimization & oppression of the nonhuman animal species by the human animal species without need and for mere greed. Leave animals in peace, protect the planet from environmental destruction, do the right thing for your health and humanity & all sentient beings, and go VEGAN. π¦πππππππ¦