We're all mad here

Sea turtles eat plastic bags and die.  What are we
doing? Would it kill us not to kills others?
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/03/planet_earth_is_rubbish.php

I have three small red-eared sliders, Sonia, Francisco, and Gabriel.  Mind you, these are the only three beings I think I will ever call my children.  I assume they were bred and not caught in the wild because they were so small when I bought them.  Regardless, their natural home is not a glass tank but rather a pond, a lake, or a stream.  I used to think that releasing them into a larger body of water would free them of suffering, of feeling limited and imprisoned.  But after reading Jordan’s story from the virtual perspective of a sea turtle, I don’t know anymore. Perhaps Sonia would learn of the pollution in the ocean and say:  “I thought that this kind of disaster was the worst we would endure when it comes to those humans up above the surface, but Reggie said that they do even worse things.” (441, Jordan) Yes, Sonia, (and Reggie), we do worse things.  Unconscionable things.  To humans, to animals, and to the earth.  

“I am the Alpha and the Homer/ I was made to experience this world/ it was created for me—I was meant to move across it.” (420) In the spirit of using human language to convey non-human sentiments, I want to address the Alpha’s, Homer’s, Reggie’s, and Sonia’s of the world directly.  This world was created for you.  Forget the bible and how animals are supposed to exist for the benefit of mankind.  In the book of Genesis (1:26-28), we hear that “From creation man was given dominion over all animals.”  For one, a human said this.  And last time I checked, Dolphins, Bears, Lions, Orangutans, and Dogs (just some examples) don’t define their existence as such.  If this were the case, Jesus, then why would they have a consciousness like us.  Why would they feel?  Why would we feel when they hurt? Why?  So many horrors in this world have been backed by religion--whether treating Africans like animals or treating animals as if they were not living, breathing, sentient beings.  Does this justify polluting the oceans and endangering the aquatic lives?  Does this make it ok to use cruel and unusual punishment to degrade other humans and animals?  Killing animals to eat them is one thing, but harvesting them like crops just to subject them to a most cruel torture—and death—is insane.  We must not be sane.  (This is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn.) And why should we expect anything loving from our human race now that we have plummeted into an emotionless and selfish and hellish level of existence.  (Morbidity aside, I have to agree with Bengal; why should we expect unconditional love when we show no mercy or compassion in return?)

You have a choice.  We all do.  Take the blue pill or the
red pill?
http://sexualityinart.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/star-wars-and-the
-matrix-unlearning-what-you-have-learned-safe-search-is-off/

I am a sucker for any allusions to The Matrix as many have likely already guessed.  But I have to say that what machines were doing to humans in the "real world" is really no different from what we humans are doing to everybody else (other humans included) in our "real world."   I don't know what it is going to take to have a Matrix Revolution or to challenge a culture of slavery that we create and live in today.  But now that we are "unplugged" we have two choices: we can either take the blue pill and slip back into a dreamy wonderland of denial and bliss or take the rocky road that is the reality of the red pill.