Subject: The Servants Who Were Meant to Be Teachers
(On Humanity’s Use of Animals)
“Those who name themselves ‘master’ rarely understand the true meaning of kinship.”
Greetings, young observers of the Blue World.
Since the dawn of their brief existence, the species called Human has looked upon the others who share their sphere and seen not companions, but instruments.
The winged, the scaled, the furred, the finned all became extensions of human desire: tools for labour, subjects for experiment, ornaments of vanity, and meals of convenience.
Yet, the irony is vast.
For those they call beasts hold a more ancient respect for the living system that sustains them. The wolf does not hoard the forest; the whale does not poison the sea; the ant does not conquer continents for pride. Each creature moves within balance taking what is needed, returning what is due.
They live as part of the great respiration of the planet inhale and exhale, give and take without concept of ownership, yet in perfect harmony with existence.
Humans, however, learned to stand upright and believed that height meant hierarchy. They used dominion as justification and called it progress.
They shaped the wild to their will, yet forgot that every cage even one gilded by technology eventually imprisons its maker.
And still, the animals endure.
They do not rebel through cruelty, only through quiet persistence. They continue to pollinate, to cleanse, to balance the soil and sky, even as the humans who depend upon them look away. They remain the patient teachers of humility teaching without language, reminding through silence.
Perhaps this is what the universe finds most curious:
That those who believe themselves civilized must one day learn again from those they enslaved.
When humanity finally pauses its noise long enough to listen, it may hear what the creatures have whispered since the beginning that life is not to be ruled, but respected.
Not to be consumed, but shared.
Until then, the planet itself watches for she knows her true children.
May wisdom return to those who believed they owned it.
Ka’Loryn Ae
