Most likely, anyone reading this essay published on this website is well aware of the widespread animal abuse, enslavement, and torture currently committed by humans. Also, most readers--more likely than not--care deeply for the welfare and happiness of these innocent and often helpless creatures. I am a university lecturer in English and the humanities at a mid-size university in the southeastern United States. Having been active in animal rights campaigns, both covert and above ground, I am appalled by the continued apathy in which humanity daily wallows. And I have a particular slant that often enrages thinkers in my discipline.

My slant is this: I am a humanities professor who is ashamed of humanity. We have not been the caretakers we should have been; we are out of control. I work in academia, and it is often sickening. Highly educated people spend vast amounts of time researching arcane and narrow topics to publish in highly regarded journals read by no one. The pointless subjects these scholars waste their time on are outrageous. Animal are under attack in a dreadfully violent war. They are often defenseless, and they are suffering now. It is my hope that more of these oft brilliant people will focus their talents and considerable attention upon ending cruelty and abandon petty academic subspecialties that do nothing tangible for the world at large. Sure, I can think of many who are active in various human rights campaigns, those presently being all the rage, but animal rights activists are still considered the crackpots of the universe and herein lies the point of this short essay.

It is time the public perception of animal rights activism changes. Organizations such as ALF, PETA, and others are often labeled as dangerous criminal terrorists who are insane at worst and misguided at best. I'm still trying to understand how certain members of the United States government consider ALF and groups like it similar to Bin Laden and actual agents of terror while Gangs have escaped the terrorist moniker. The question I am posing to people in my community is this: how can a message of total alleviation of cruelty and animal suffering be considered "extreme" or misguided? It remains unclear to me why taking a stand to defend helpless animals continues to be considered lunacy. The kind logic of animal rights seems irrefutably valid, so how is humanity so dismally and woefully confused?

Other activists do not meet such public disapproval. Labor unions, human rights' workers, and environmentalists often do not suffer public abuse and ridicule. I am enraged that when the subject turns to animal rights and proactive activities, supposedly educated people turn deaf ears. Why is it so hard to give up eating meat, I want to scream at most people in line at the grocery with their pounds of hamburger meat awaiting scanning and bagging. My demons…our demons…haunt me, and they are free of them, there in the grocery line. Example: If they had seen the videos of the cattle getting dismembered while alive and screaming, if they had seen the wide eyed terror of a cow missing its recently sliced off front legs and pushing itself helplessly away from the swinging processing blades with its hind legs, tongue lolling, entire regal body shaking with final futile effort, would they still laugh and get together, cook out, and sing the praises of the cheeseburger? Perhaps then they would not continue to fatten themselves with the remains of creatures with more animal grace and compassion than they will ever have. Or pigs. If they saw intelligent and kind pigs beaten, kicked, tortured, and butchered, if they heard their helpless and heart rending screams and squeals as dull minded men in hard boots kick them toward the knives, would they still tell me, "I just couldn't give up sausage biscuits. I just couldn't."

Being an optimist and an educator, I don't think a large majority of them would. And there is the answer: education. As long as our sick society accepts the traditions of hamburgers, sausage biscuits, bacon in the morning, turkey on Thanksgiving and the like, its citizens will continue to patronize the meat industry. The ignorance must be alleviated, and it is so wonderful that so many groups have been educating humanity's citizens. I believe in goodness, and I can't believe most people would continue to make the meat industry wealthy if they knew the horrors behind the doors of slaughterhouses.

I have participated in various activities, and I believe if we can control our rage, we must. I have desperately wanted to paint floor length fur coats seen in the winter. Never having the courage to risk outright illegalities, perhaps I am not qualified to speak for direct action operatives. However, I continue to support such philosophies and the ideas behind them. Nonetheless, I have labeled meat products at supermarkets with handy little mass produced stickers. Also, I have destroyed numerous trotlines in the lakes around my beloved east Tennessee and have released crabs from crab traps in the Gulf Coast. I have released animals from various situations and ambushed hunters' blinds deep in the mountains. I found myself wanting to do considerably more but lacked the fortitude. While the few items of small action I have undertaken were extraordinarily gratifying, I feel the students and people I have met with and helped educate about animal rights has done far more for the cause. I feel activists must remain positive forces in this overwhelming negative world. We must use our optimism, our social standing, our intelligence and strength to convince people that everyone should be an animal activist, and that everyone should work to end cruelty. I am convinced everyone knows being kind to animals is the right thing to do, regardless if they ignore this truth.

It is my heart felt hope that one day humans will be the compassionate caretakers of planet Earth and all its creatures. I have done the research and seen the blood and hatred. I have seen the films that disgust and enrage me and fill me with a hollow, seeping, all encompassing violence. The Christian God says vengeance is his, but when I see these meat industry workers carrying out their wet work with manic glee, I want vengeance to be mine, all mine, sharp and white hot. It seems inconceivable a human could de-evolve to the point they could torture chickens for ten dollars an hour, hold those tiny feathered heads while the beak is snapped off, skin minks and foxes alive, stand on their heads and necks until they bite their tongues off and suffocate. These scenes many of us have seen are some of the reasons I am a humanities professor who is ashamed of being human, ashamed of what we have become, ashamed of what our court system lets happen, and ashamed of what we teach our children. Animals are not machines, and all of us are animals. Animals are not ours; they belong to the Earth, as do we. But alas, I remain an optimist. I believe we will evolve. I believe the cause will take roots deep in the festering and guilt ridden subconscious of humanity. I believe one day animal suffering will be a thing of the past. Studying and teaching the mythology of the Homeric Greeks, I believe humanity has monstrous potential for good and evil, and I believe one day we will choose the former. I believe vivisection, factory farms, and the fur industry will one day be vanquished and wiped from the face of our Earth. One day the meat industry will dwindle and vanish due to the simple law of supply and demand. For me, I have to believe these things because it is only this hope and belief that keeps my rage and anger and violence under control, keeps me from exploding. Without this belief, without this hope, I would become something I would not want to be, something ancient, saurian, and wrathful: I would become legion.

So now I head back to the university and world of academia to attempt to get students to think about what they do. Trying to get them to think about all animals, not just the cute and furry ones, I will fight in my community to raise awareness. Also, I'll continue to attempt to convince academics and scholars to take closer looks at the world of animal rights. I will continue to be made fun of and encounter sheer apathy, and I need hope to buoy me. And I need to know you are out there doing your best as well. Activists: please keep up the work you are doing. Help us educate the masses and lead humanity to a braver newer world, a world that seems to never have existed in the days of modern man: a world of compassion and freedom for all creatures who live on Earth.