Of Mice and Men

I killed a rat. No. Worse. I did mortal damage to it. Dealt it a slow painful death. I panicked seeing the rat and kicked a door which it was behind. And it was killed. And am i not supposed to feel bad? Some call the rat a pest. A vermin. Something that the world shall not miss. Something i should perhaps not feel bad about.

But i do. terribly. Like Atheist to Religious terribly. I have no idea why i turned to scriptures all of a sudden but yeah, it just felt like the right thing to do then. I can't even totally believe in heaven and co. but somehow i just felt from that moment until now that, heaven is definitely in existence. Nirvana is definitely in existence. Karma. Buddha. Jesus. Allah. Odin. Thor. Achilles. Hector. Loki. Lao Tze. Seeing the rat suffer was just too much for my mortal mind. Knowing that i caused it was even harder to bear.

Mankind does these things too much for us to feel anything. We are dulled not by the killing of animals but by the killing of man himself. The Wars on terror. Terrorism. Homicide. The Death Penalty. So much that the animals become insignificant. Why argue on whether the cow should be killed when we need to make a decision on whether to pull the troops from Iraq. Who cares about the killing of young foals and calves when swine flu is going around.

I mean. I am no vegan. I love steaks and have a fetish for leather. But somehow when i eat my lamb chops or don my leather jacket, those thoughts of death and brutality doesn't come to my mind. Its an intricate ability we were granted at creation. The ability to be unfeeling and indifferent to all those that are not directly in connection to us. The ability to use a piece of foie gras to outweigh to pain dealt to a lower lifeform, a 'souless' shell for some, less important to others. To place the owning of a leopard fur scarf as having more importance than the life of an endangered species. The ability to think of ourselves as 'creatures capable of higher thought and understanding', as a class of our own when the Linnaean classification place us under the same genus as the common chimp. And i'm guilty as charged. And there's no way about it. No excuses for the horrors mankind has done but selfishness and arrogance. And some would say we have earned it. Our society they will say, look at the skyscapers, the great wall, have we not earned the right to rule? Are we not superior? Yet Man did not survive atlantis, fishes did. Man did not survive Hiroshima, cockroaches did. Eruptions, Tsunamis, Earthquakes. Gods did not choose man to run the programme to find the ultimate question to life, the universe and everything, they picked the mice.*

And the best thing? Man is determined. A strong race destined to suceed. By tomorrow i would have forgotten all about the above. Save maybe a little tinge of guilt and sadness. But even that will disappear with a bite of colonel's best chicken or when i see a new pair of tigers. Or when a group of ants decide to feast on a sandwich left in my bag, or a cockroach deciding to take up residence in my room.

And so before i forget. Before all this goes away. Let me ask for forgiveness. And say a little prayer.

Sorry.

Till next time.

*even in this depressed state i couldn't resist a small reference to The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.Pardon me.