Violence begins long before the knife or the slaughterhouse—it begins with the ego, the one that draws boundaries, seeks justification, and decides who deserves compassion. Laws and reforms may reduce suffering, but they cannot end violence while the ego remains intact. When the ego dissolves, exploitation ends naturally, and compassion no longer depends on regulation or moral boundaries.
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Originally published in The Pioneer on 1 August '26
Where does the violence actually lie? This summer in London, I discussed the genesis of violence with Professor Jonathan Birch at the London School of Economics, with Mimi Bekhechi and Poorva Joshipura of PETA, and with Psychologist Dr Melanie Joy.
On the twenty-sixth of June, I spoke at the London School of Economics, in conversation with Professor Jonathan Birch, as part of London Climate Action Week. The city outside was in the middle of a heat wave that Londoners kept apologising to me for, as though the weather were a lapse in hospitality.
Professor Birch directs the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE. In 2021 he led the review of the evidence for sentience in invertebrates that shaped the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act, and octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, crabs, lobsters and shrimps are recognised in British law today because of his work. His report on octopus farming contributed to a ban in California. He was among those behind the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, which set out that there is strong scientific support for conscious experience in mammals and birds and a realistic possibility of it across a much wider range of animals, insects included. Creatures that were being dropped alive into boiling water are now, in one country at least, legally saved from that.
