At the root of 'unlimited compassion for animals' lies a 'fundamental' need of man-the desire to be loved unconditionally. "I would rather keep loving only my dog because he doesn't expect anything from me, he loves me for what I am"-declares a woman in her 20s, self-righteously. "Animals are better that humans because they don't know hate", says a boy studying in the 9th Standard! It is almost an universally accepted fact that one has to necessarily feel love for animals and care for them.
But is such, the nature of human love?
Love is one form of an expression of evalutation of an individual's worth, the highest form to be more specific. There is no such thing as unconditional love. Love for another person comes from an understanding on own's worth first because love is the confession that "you are my friend because you are worth me" .
The opposite of love is hate, a profound disliking of a person for his ideas and therefore for his values and morals. Hate is also an expression of evaluation-a negative one.
Love has to be earned, to be fought for, love has to be gained by a demonstration of merit.
But what do these animal rights activists long to achieve? They want to feel love without earning it. They want to enjoy the fruits of labour without labour. They are, in other words, trying to dissociate cause from effect; they want to experience the love of their fellow-men without standing up to any of their expectations. What they fail to understand is that such a love is an impossibility.
It is in the face of such facts that 'alienation' sets in. Their ideas of earning 'undeserved love' clash with the ideals of those who want to like people for their worth. To such people, love from deserving sources seem spurious because they are against the very concept of such a love. And undeservingly given love also doesn't appease them because an such a love is at best- a poorly disguised counterfiet currency note, similar to the real one at first sight, revealing its uselenesses later.
It is in search for a cure for such alienation that these people come across animals. And since animals neither evaulate nor question (and thus can neither love anybody nor hate anyone), they are perfect targets for the fulfillment of the emotional needs of such people. And this is what makes them proclaim the things that I have mentioned above.
Note also that I am not denouncing animals as pets. What is disagreeable (and distasteful) is statements like, "Animal love is better that human love". People who utter such statements have never experienced true human love and therefore know little about its nature. For such people, animals are just scapegoats in the bargain, objects of proof that show that their 'idea' of love exists.
Animals as pets are a form of indulgence to man, a form of pure joy and pleasure. They can be loved and cared for, but not in sense that the 'man-haters' seem to proclaim.