Skip to main content

Verified by Psychology Today

Animal Behavior

Cruelty can't stand the spotlight: Ending animal abuse is merely a click away so let's make it a New Year's resolution

It's easy to include ending animal abuse among your New Year's resolutions

Animal abuse remains rampant in a wide variety of places. I'm always surprised by what I read about how we treat nonhuman animal beings in situations where abuse seems unimaginable. But, it's incredibly easy to contribute to ending it. So many of us spend a lot of time at our computer so when you take a break I suggest doing a web-search for something like "petitions to end animal abuse" and find some examples that might even be in your home community that really irk you and offer your opinion. Another good place to look is at change.org. Even if each of us has different interests and opinions about what constitutes animal abuse, it's easy to find something about which you're passionately against and register your vote by a few simple clicks of your mouse. Even if you only do this a few times a week innumerable animals will be grateful for our collective efforts. Even helping one individual makes a difference. There's nothing fluffy or sentimental about caring about animals and being passionate about ending it. Think about companion animals such as dogs and cats and ask yourself would you ever do to them, or allow others to treat them, in the utterly inhumane ways in which billions of other animals are routinely mistreated? I expect the answer would be "no". Cruelty can't stand the spotlight and indifference is deadly. Please do something now. We all feel good about adding compassion to our troubled world and it's really so easy to do.

advertisement
More from Marc Bekoff Ph.D.
More from Psychology Today