A Dissection on Humanity

Man, as he is, is not a genuine article. He is an imitation of something, and a very bad imitation. ~Peter Ouspensky

There was a great commotion going on in the classroom. The subjects were three white mice, ready to be dissected. A number of excited students were standing around the poor creatures, giggling devillishly at the sight of their drenched victims without the slightest tinge of remorse. Donning aprons made out of newspapers and masks – a fitting outfit for the barbarous murderers – they carried on with their condemnable work which would guarantee them eternal damnation.

If you’re still wondering what’s the brouhaha about a simple biology dissection, let me tell you that the mice were drowned in a pail of water.

Of course, such ruthlessness are not to be expected from these people who aspire to be doctors. Which patient could trust a doctor who operates on him akin to a butcher on a pig?

The truth is they could not get chloroform from the lab to put the mice to sleep and therefore, some psycho came up with the “brilliant” but barbaric idea of drowning them in a pail of water relatively warmer than the blood running in their veins.

Murderer: Oops, bad news! It seems that we do not have chloroform!

A brainstorming session ensued.

Accomplice A: I suggest dropping them from the fourth floor.

Accomplice B: Why don’t we just choke them to death.

Murderer: Ah, I say we drown them!

The murderers started with a silent prayer and then, with a heart of steel, the they pressed the mice into the water.

No doubt, the mice struggled for their lives. No doubt, they were aware of their doom. But, I doubt there were flashes of memories through their mind. Perhaps those sinister looks on their murderers face were the last images they had. Perhaps, they were wondering what was it that they had done which made them deserve such an ending. Not only were they denied of their right to live but they had to made a painful exit, nilly willy.

I’m not particularly an animal lover. However, I can proudly proclaim that I still have a part of humanity left in me, at least the one that sets us apart from the “animals”, as we so arrogantly call them. In the animal kingdom, even the most ferocious kill to sustain their lives; they don’t hunt for pleasure, unlike man who gleefully butchers other creatures and not to say their fellow mates, just to fulfill their atavistic bloodlust.

Some may argue that animals do not have self-consciousness and we are therefore free to take away their lives whenever we feel like it. Never mind about the reason. But think again: does that warrant us the power to kill?

Curiosity is man’s strength and simultaneously his weakest point. The human nature to probe into the unknown has brought us thus far into the era of science but when it comes to killing merely to quench our insatiable curiosity is totally out of the question. No, I just can’t tolerate such injustice which depreciates the value of humanity.