How unsurprising that it would take an animal and a question of pain and injustice dealt to an animal for me to break the long, lazy silence of this blog.
I know someone who has a habit of trying to justify—or at least sound like that is the intention—several extremely dubious—some would say appalling, I being one of them—practices. I don’t remember how, but today the name of Laika came up. You know, the dog who was caught off the streets, chosen to be sent away from Earth to be killed in space, and who was put through a painful training before that. The argument offered was that even if Laika exploded inside the craft, she could not have felt pain.
How bloody convenient. And how catastrophically inaccurate, ‘I assume’. I used to think that ‘at one time’, people thought that animals feel no pain. Turns out most people still assume that they cannot think, and (hence) cannot feel fear, love, happiness, pain…in short, practically anything except perhaps hunger and thirst.
Is it any wonder, I wonder, that we do what we do to each other, given what we do to them—the non-human beings? Is it not the same attitude, the same assumptions again, that are at work when we kill an animal, fell a tree and harm a human being with indifference, ‘necessity’ or even righteousness? Is it not the same confidence that the other is in some vital way inferior to us, less deserving of consideration? Even as I write it the question reads naive. But the answer is far from simple or obvious, so perhaps more people need to entertain the obvious question.
I had hoped to feel better by finding something redeeming in Laika’s story from random internet articles—Wiki and The Guardian. I ended up mixing tears with my coffee. Would this be redeeming? ‘In 1998, 79-year-old Oleg Gazenko, a leading scientist during the Soviet animals-in-space programme, told a press conference: “The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of a dog.” (The Guardian)’
The only hope and consolation is that she, and the countless others we have been unforgivably unfair to, are in a better place now. If God is really merciful and powerful, then maybe, just maybe, even if they suffered much, they didn’t suffer long. But I do not assume. If Laika and her fellow…victims can hear me, I want to say that I think they are incredibly beautiful and precious. And whether or not I have played any part in causing pain to any of them, I am very sorry for what they have suffered. Rest in play and peace.
table for one 