Volition

We live in a culture of animal cruelty and I, for one, blame the parents of our children for the endless cycle of violence.

They say that old habits are hard to break. The oldest habits we form are those learnt when we are a small child - things taught or picked up from our parents. Now it is true we live in a society where consuming animal products is the norm. Around the age of 8 to 9 months, parents usually wean their infant children off nutritious plant-based foods (usually in some form puree) and onto unhealthy meat products, loaded with animal hormones, industrial-grade antibiotics, fats, proteins and other unhealthy elements. This certainly a contributing factor towards our unparalleled levels of violence against animals, but by no means the worst.

What is the main factor, then? The answer will surprise you: Squeaky rubber animal toys. Anyone who has seen a young child interact with a domestic animal should instantly realise why rubber duckies are the bane of living animals all over western society. Let a child near a cat or dog and it will invariably run up to it and attempt to squeeze the life out of the poor, defenceless animal.

This behaviour is branded into the mind of a young child through Pavlovian conditioning; the child sqeezes a rubber duckie and is rewarded with an entertaining "quack!". Thus the child learns to associate positive rewards with violence against animals. Latter in the child's life, this association becomes more generalised as memories of the rubber duckie become more distant and removed. The now-adult person continues the violence in other ways (eating animal-based products, caging birds, kicking cats, engaging in erotic acts with bound hamsters and so on), every time eliciting a reward for it.

Clearly, parents who give their children rubber animal toys must shoulder the vast majority or the blame for this behaviour. I call on parents to give their children rubber animal toys that elicit a negative response upon being squeezed - an electric shock, a flash of extreme light or heat, or perhaps playing an interval of music from a commercial radio station. For toddlers that are already conditioned, farms should be refitted to allow these children to experience appropriate levels of negative stimuli. Bulls would be acceptable provided toddlers dressed in red, otherwise animals would need to be imported. Most wild animals would suffice.

Next time you see a parent giving their child a rubby ducky, ask them to please, please, think of the animals.