„Anything that can be misunderstood will also be misunderstood“, should be another axiom of communication or at least be given as a warning, because you can actually turn everything that has a little content in such a way that the content is deliberately devalued or vice versa becomes. This is also the case with the sentence by PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk „A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy“. Quite apart from the fact that this is a highly condensed statement about the nature of the living, probably a little striking, but completely insightful in the basic essence, if you want to have an insight. Now, however, it is quite common to boycott the sentences of those who see themselves as lawyers for our non-human fellow creatures.

It would not be otherwise to deduce from this sentence the situation in which the above-mentioned creatures are on the balcony on the second floor, while the rest of the house is burning and the question is linked to which of these creatures would be saved first. It is a trap, because when you say as a person that you save the boy first, you admit that the sentence is incorrect. However, if you choose another creature, the moral outrage is great, you can’t let a boy die. But this sentence is not about moral-philosophical ingenuity, but about normal everyday life, about the answer to the question of how one has to structure the coexistence of creatures on earth so that it is morally integrity and only this sentence can do that be the answer.

Each of these living beings, like every other, has a life plan, its own. The rat, like the pig, like the dog and even the boy, are entitled to respect this and enable it to be carried out. It could be debated to what extent we human children still admit life plans, in a world as we find them in Central Europe, thoroughly organized and perfected to the last day, without considering the high level of individuality that is propagated everywhere. But that’s just the second step. The first is the freedom to choose basic life plans, the banality of which we no longer perceive. Banal in the sense of bearing. Where to live, with whom and the right to start a family, regardless of everyone else. Every animal seeks its place in this world, but we deny all these animals and many others the most basic life rights. Even more. We decide over them where they have to live, how they have to spend it and with whom. We treat them as our property, which we are free to do as we see fit. Even more after our bad deed. It almost feels like you are in a bad computer game with the shifter of some ignorant, empathetic dictator who freely decides over billions of fates. It is shameful, however, that 90% of mankind simply plays along and that also means good. Maybe with the good feeling that you were lucky to have been born on the right side. “Bad luck”, it says and you continue with abuse and murder. It is therefore necessary that there are people who can no longer be put off by this and who are committed to ensuring that every living being is given these basic rights, that it really makes no difference whether you are a rat or a pig or was born as a dog or a boy, but only care is taken to ensure that these creatures have different needs and can also meet these needs in terms of lifestyle, so that we create a world in which everyone understands and nods in agreement when is said, „A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.“