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Such long-held views about the role of other animals in human civilization
have been widely accepted as obvious and unassailable. However, as
Michael Parenti observes, “the most insidious oppressions are those that
so insinuate themselves into the fabric of our lives and into the recesses
of our minds that we don’t even realize they are acting upon us.†3 This
book offers a different point of view, one much neglected by academia. The
thesis of this book is that the practice of capturing and oppressing cows,
sheep, pigs, horses, goats, and similar large, sociable animals for human use did not, as Shaler put it, “set men well upon their upward way.†Rather,
it undermined the development of a just and peaceful world. The harms
that humans have done to other animals— especially that harm generated
by pastoralist and ranching practices that have culminated in contemporary
factory-farming practices —have been a precondition for and have engendered
large-scale violence against and injury to devalued humans, particularly
indigenous people around the world.
Over the past ten thousand years, human lives and those of other animals
have been shaped indelibly and tragically by the priorities and interests
of elite groups in their societies. Those customs and practices that
serve their interests include the much-touted process of “domesticationâ€
of other animals, from which human civilization and advancement allegedly
sprang. Cultural representations and even much scholarly discussion
long have mainly supported and preserved societal practices that serve
the interests of the most powerful—and the practice of exploiting other
animals is no exception.
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