What drives people to be cruel to animals

[Catherine]

Quote:These sick ways of looking at animal cruelty are passed down through the generations. Changing these attitudes is a long-term business, sadly.

This is it exactly. I am sure if we searched cultures around the world we would find numerous animal cruelty situations that are not only allowed, children are exposed to them.  Gadhimai and the various dog eating festivals  come to mind.  Everywhere children are exposed to cruelty to animals. They grow up damaged. They lack empathy towards others. It shouldn't  surprise us that there is so much animal cruelty and so much violence towards vulnerable people. Children are being taught not to feel for others. That is why animal cruelty happens all around us every day.

I think we need to look at our attitude towards animals and  find the acts of cruelty that we accept as normal.
People think nothing of killing mice and rats in cruel ways because we have labeled them as pests. If we would not leave food garbage around and seal our houses to keep mice and rats  out we would not have them around. Because we let them get in we feel we have the right to kill them in cruel ways.  People who are cruel to mice do not think they are guilty of cruelty because they have decided mice don't matter. Once we decide one species doesn't matter, it is easy to dismiss cruelty towards other species. It is a line we should never cross. 

The big acts of cruelty like bull fighting and the Faroe Islands whale killing are so much worse. Much more harm is done. Harm is still done when it is a little act of cruelty. Humans have decided to live with a certain level of cruelty. We need to find all acts of cruelty unacceptable and work from there to stop the big acts of cruelty. It is not surprising that there are so many serial killers. It looks like we have created them. They are a product of the cruelty to animals that we allow.