This is Cruel

This photo which was probably taken at Kasai Occidental, the Democratic Republic of Congo - might seem fun and interesting to some, but it shows how merciless, cruel and indifferent We can be to our fellow creatures.

All leading religions are against cruelty to animals. Much has been said about our relation to other creatures here on Earth and our treatment of them, by many thinkers, philosophers and writers:

"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them, that's the essence of inhumanity." - George Bernard Shaw, Irish Playwright and Essayist

"We have enslaved the rest of animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form." - William Ralph Inge, British Author

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." - Thomas Edison, American Inventor and Scientist

"Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man." - Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher

"I could not have slept tonight if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground." (Reply to friends who chided him for delaying them by stopping to return a fledgling to its nest.) - Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States

"Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life." - Elizabeth Goudge, author of The Joy of the Snow

"If man is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." - Immanuel Kant, German Philosopher

"Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices of low and base minds. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness; a mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendor, and nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning nor true civility." - William Jones, English Philologist and Jurist

"They say he's a sociopath because they don't know what else to call him. He has some of the characteristics of what they call a sociopath. He has no remorse or guilt at all. And he had the first and worst sign - sadism to animals as a child." - Thomas Harris, Author of Red Dragon (other related books by Harris are The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal)

And yet: does Man learn? To the contrary - with time, we continue to mercilessly and indifferently deplete natural resources and destroy wildlife and the environment. Only Man can be so cruel that we fish for sharks, cut off their fins and then throw them back, still alive but dying, in to the waters; only Man would indiscriminately and brutally slaughter seal pups by the thousands, just for their skins; only Man can be as cruel as those who mercilessly poach and sell wild creatures to their fellow other mankind with similar warped up minds; only Man can hunt other creatures not out of need, but for sports; only Man has the short sightedness and cruelty, of continuously chopping and destroying plants and trees - for no necessity or need at all, rather than to serve a selfish urge; and only Man can carry a goat so indifferently and with no second thoughts at how the animal feels, as in the photo here.