There’s a reason that people are listening to Joaquin Phoenix at this point and like it or not, a big part of it has to do with the fact that he just won an Oscar for his performance in Joker, which has thus far acted as an open doorway that has allowed him to not only speak his mind on certain issues that are near and dear to his heart, but also to act on one of those issues as well. Only a day after winning his Oscar he visited a slaughterhouse to liberate a cow and her calf after discussing his views with the CEO of the company. Obviously they didn’t agree on everything, and obviously they weren’t bound to go away with a complete understanding that they were wrong in some aspects of their thinking, but it was a civil meeting at the very least and Joaquin, to his credit, didn’t go nuts like so many activists and encourage people to gather in great numbers to storm the slaughterhouse. As Kevin Burwick of MovieWeb alludes to the meeting was quite cordial and ended on a good note, though there are plenty of people that are very divided about this gesture since that’s what it amounts to at the moment, a gesture, not a movement. How many cows is Joaquin going to save? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? Or just the two?
That might sound like a very naive and possibly derisive comment but the truth of the matter is that many upon many actors find cause to discover and then stand firm upon platforms that are quite impressive when one thinks about it, but don’t often do much more than write a check and get lauded for their generosity, which to many of them is a drop in the well when compared to their actual earnings. Unfortunately for Joaquin this gesture, despite being meaningful, is made slightly less by the fact that it had to be publicized to show him actually doing this, and because it’s two animals, not the millions that activists rant and rave about so often. Going vegan has become one of the growing trends in the world as it’s said to promote better health and less cruelty to animals, but what vegans tend to fail to notice at times, frustratingly so in some cases, is that the world around them, indeed the world around us all, will continue to push onward in the same fashion it’s been doing since before humans were so numerous, and as a result, it remains the ‘cruel’ and ‘inhumane’ place as it’s been for much longer than human memory can recall. Like it or not, human beings are predators and while the practices that continue today might not be entirely approved of, they’re often more humane than many would care to show since the whole practice of ‘exposing’ factory farming is to show that a vegan lifestyle is far less harmful and can grant animals their rights to a happy and fulfilling life.
There are seriously times when one has to wonder if vegans are getting enough nutrients to the brain, and then times when one just has to shake their head and remember that we live in a world where predators exist. We happen to be the top predators in this world, and the ‘do no harm’ idea is one that can unfortunately go flying out the window the moment someone wakes up in the morning. If one is going to be a purist and rail against the ‘rape of the natural world’ then the only real answer is to not exist, since it’s very true that human beings are the most actively destructive creatures on earth. But this gesture by Joaquin, while giving hope to many and good on him, is a pittance to a movement that has thus far not convinced a lot of people that continuing to eat meat is a bad thing. If anything it tends to strengthen the idea that vegans, however well-meaning many of them might be, would likely desire a utopia in which all the animals of the fields would run free and do as they wish rather than be butchered and fed to the masses. Unfortunately that’s not the world we live in, and attempting to create such a world would cause death on such a massive scale that to even insinuate that it wouldn’t indicates that those who would push for such a thing aren’t quite the humanitarians or even the pacifists that they say they are.
Joaquin definitely struck a blow, however minor, for his own beliefs, but despite his kindness towards a cow and her calf, it’s likely that sticking to acting would be his best bet as many would advise. The world will sort itself out one way or another, and to all those that continue to believe that we need not kill animals to survive, evolution might both agree and disagree with you.
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