Peace Corp reporting on voluteers after being back home for a time. I had forgotten about this page.
http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/467/2014818.html
Tuesday, September 2, 2025
The Book I Wish I Had Written
I’ve written and published four books with the same theme, the same message. Each time I hoped that readers would come away caring more about how we treat animals and having some concern about the system that normalizes the many bad things we do to them. I’ve hoped that my words would change their behavior at least a little. I’ve written hundreds of essays about these things. I’ve lectured and participated in televised and numerous public debates about these things. I’ve traveled coast-to-coast, protesting and leafleting, trying to call attention to the animals’ plight. I’ve worked for animal rights organizations, built websites for them, have edited other’s books for them. I’ve had numerous op/eds in the local newspapers about the treatment of animals. I’ve been arrested for protesting a few times – twice in one day. Nothing that I have done has had much, if any, lasting positive effect.
Almost nothing. I was involved in the successful (hopefully) permanent cancelation of a nearby town’s annual pig wrestling contest. A smallish thing, the pigs were still killed, but at least they weren’t, and so far, still aren’t as frightened and beat-up before being slaughtered.
The book I wish I had written would have been widely read. Its message would have been talked about and widely repeated. It would have motivated a mass movement for the animals. But I didn’t write that book. No one else has either.
Would Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s influence been less if it had been one among thousands of anti-slavery books? Maybe, but philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) “the question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” and Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (1975), though well known among animal advocates, don’t seem to have had much of an impact. Amazon reports over 30,000 results for "animal rights" in its book list.
None of them have had a measurable impact. A 2023 Gallop poll reported that in the U.S., 4% identify as vegetarian and 1% as vegan, ±4%. Yet, the American Veterinary Medical Association reports that in 2024, 45.5% of American households had dogs as pets, and 32.1% had cats. In 2023, the Pew Research Center reported that: “And nearly all U.S. pet owners (97%) say their pets are part of their family.”
I wish I had written a book or done something that moved the needle just a little toward kindness to the other animals. I haven’t, no one has. No one has. I suspect no one will. It’s a sad and bloody state of affairs.
Almost nothing. I was involved in the successful (hopefully) permanent cancelation of a nearby town’s annual pig wrestling contest. A smallish thing, the pigs were still killed, but at least they weren’t, and so far, still aren’t as frightened and beat-up before being slaughtered.
The book I wish I had written would have been widely read. Its message would have been talked about and widely repeated. It would have motivated a mass movement for the animals. But I didn’t write that book. No one else has either.
Would Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s influence been less if it had been one among thousands of anti-slavery books? Maybe, but philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) “the question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” and Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (1975), though well known among animal advocates, don’t seem to have had much of an impact. Amazon reports over 30,000 results for "animal rights" in its book list.
None of them have had a measurable impact. A 2023 Gallop poll reported that in the U.S., 4% identify as vegetarian and 1% as vegan, ±4%. Yet, the American Veterinary Medical Association reports that in 2024, 45.5% of American households had dogs as pets, and 32.1% had cats. In 2023, the Pew Research Center reported that: “And nearly all U.S. pet owners (97%) say their pets are part of their family.”
I wish I had written a book or done something that moved the needle just a little toward kindness to the other animals. I haven’t, no one has. No one has. I suspect no one will. It’s a sad and bloody state of affairs.
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