Sloths – Respecting The Sloth People

If I tell you that Sloths are people, how do you respond?

Likely, you think, “no, human beings are people. Animals are not people.”

That is how most humans are raised to think about all species other than their own, but naturalists like John Muir, who spent the majority of his life in the wilderness, came to feel differently about the class of creatures we refer to as ‘animals’. He came to think of his fellow beings as other tribes of people, with lifeways and heritages, with purposes and important places in the story of Earth.

Today, the majority of human problems come from human failure to recognize the humanity in members of their own species. Bigotry, greed, fear, deceitfulness and the hunger for power cause humans to turn against one another once the decision has been made that some other person is of less value than one’s own self, and can therefore be abused or disregarded.

Here in California, millions of humble families have been living under the threat of men who hold jobs with agencies who wish to spray pesticides on their fellows. Despite the fact that this will cause disease and death amongst their own species, the job-holders have managed to overlook the basic rights and value of their neighbors in pursuit of their own goals. If they were to recognize the inviolate worth of each living human, they would never do such a thing, for any offered prize.

It is little wonder, then, that if human men are unable to recognize the fragile humanity in one another, that they would be hard put to see the personhood in a being like the Sloth.

For just a moment, would you try with me to forget the conventions you have been taught about humans and animals, look at the picture below, and tell me if you can see a person in this picture:

Look at this face, these wise and tender eyes, holding secrets we humans have yet to share in because we do not know how to communicate verbally with the Sloth People.

Maybe, someday, human beings will evolve far enough to begin understanding the language spoken by some of the many other tribes who inhabit our planet, but for now, we can only look into the faces of these beings and see if we are un-prejudiced enough to recognize the bond of personhood that unites us.

In the United States, it is illegal to put people in zoos, circuses, theme parks or other entertainment venues. Most humans would be repulsed by the idea of putting toddlers or elders in displays from which they cannot escape so that others can look at them. Since the abolition of slavery, it became illegal to buy and sell other people, or to compel them to work without pay. It is likewise illegal to perform medical experiments on humans, and this is one of the things that families in Santa Cruz and Monterey used to try to defend themselves from corporations and government agencies who sprayed them with untested chemicals in 2007. They pleaded that their human rights be recognized, though they were unable to make their aggressors do so, just as I am pleading with you now to recognize the personal rights of groups like the Sloth People.

What Are Rights?
If I were to ask you to articulate what it means to have human rights, you might answer somewhat like this:

“It means I’m a person who has my own purposes for my life, and no one else has the right to act in ways that prevent me from pursuing my own purposes. That means no one has to right to possess me, control me, harm me, use me or destroy my home. It means I belong to ME.”

You’d be quite right, of course, and the authors of the U.S. constitution felt the same way. They also felt that these kinds of rights can’t be given or taken away. They are something that are inherent to persons, just because they have the gift of life in them. It’s when humans pretend such rights don’t exist that trouble happens.

And this trouble extends to human failure to recognize that our fellow tribes of species are likewise imbued with their own purposes, and their own rights to belong to themselves. No one wants to be accused of being a racist. But racism means classing others as somehow different and less than one’s self, and this is precisely how most American children are raised to think of the beings we have classed as ‘beasts’. We are, without ill-intent, burdened with the hand-me-down of bigotry.

Yesterday, I wrote an article about a Proposition that is trying to decide whether humans should recognize that farm animals have the right to be able to move their limbs, or whether it is perfectly reasonable to keep them in cages so small, they cannot move at all. This is the fruit of the bigotry hand-me-down: humans who are so far gone to the power of recognizing the rights of others that they believe they are authorized to immobilize beings for all of their days spent on Earth before slaughter. This is how unobservant our tribe has become about every other family of beings but our own.

Today, I want to tell you the little I know about the shy Sloth People, in hopes that you will ask yourself whether what this family of creatures does here on the planet should be up to you to dictate.

Facts We Have Learned About Sloths

• 6 different types of Sloths live in Central and South America
• They are leisurely, quiet creatures, living in societies in the treetops of the rainforest
• Each family of Sloths has different eating preferences. The children of each family grow up appreciating the kinds of foods their parents most enjoy. They then pass these gustatory preferences onto the next generations
• Sloths often make a single tree their home for several years at a time
• For sleeping, they seem to prefer coconut trees as they provide a good camouflage for these very furry people
• No humans have ever understood how closely 3-toed and 2-toed Sloths are related to one another. It may be that the Sloths may have legends amongst themselves on this subject, but we do not know what they are.
• They are powerful swimmers, but mainly, they prefer the quiet safety of their treetop villages
• Owing to human destruction of the rainforest, Sloths face the loss of their homes, their lifeways and their lives

Because no human being has ever been able to learn to speak to a Sloth, we remain ignorant of their cultural beliefs or their world views. We can only hope that we may some day be able to communicate with Sloths, who are very ancient beings, and that they might share some of their wisdom about the wonderful rainforest with us, but until that time, our main moral obligation to them is to ensure that our actions do not disrupt their culture or their personal needs.

Learning To Respect The Sloth People’s Rights
Just like your father, you brother, you aunt or your child, Sloths have individual needs. Living in an apartment may suit your sister but your cousin feels depressed living anywhere but the country. Each of your loved ones is free to make their choice of home and activities. Were someone to force one of your dear ones to live in a concrete cage, who would call such an arrangement fair or adequate?

It is a great evil to kidnap and imprison sentient beings like the Sloths. Holding them hostage, with no hope of ransom, in zoos, circuses or amusement parks is truly immoral because it takes away their freedom of choice. Until the day that we learn to communicate with Sloth tribes and they can volunteer to come and show themselves to us, we have no right to enforce them to be seen, either for our amusement or monetary gain. The Sloths have chosen the rainforest as their home, and if Americans would like to go visit them, they must make the long journey south. Perhaps, in such circumstances, a quiet and respectful human might be allowed to take some pictures of the Sloth families in their beautiful home, in order to celebrate the value of this race of beings and to share this with other humans back in their own chosen home.

The second photograph in this article was taken in a national preserve in Costa Rica, where the Sloth families move about freely and live their lives unobstructed. You have only to look at the image to see how right and perfect it is. Sadly, the first photograph was taken at the U.S. Dallas World Aquarium and Zoo, Dallas, Texas – the only U.S. institution which has so utterly failed to recognize the individual rights of this Sloth that they are keeping the being in captivity. Are you able to see, as I believe I can, a person who is homesick when you look at that picture? Imagine what it would mean to this small, furry person to be taken home again, to the green forests where all the family is waiting. Imagine.

The Very Best Thing You Can Do To Honor Sloths
If you could take just one action to assert that you believe in the rights of the Sloth People to go on living their lives in their own way, it would be this: stop eating beef. Grazing cattle is the number 1 cause of the destruction of the land where these people live – the irreplaceable rainforest. Simultaneously, the production of beef for human consumption is one of the key causes of global environmental pollution and world hunger. By refusing to purchase beef, you are making the most powerful statement you can regarding the inherent rights of the Sloth Tribe. No hamburger is worth the loss of so ancient and beautiful a culture.

Honoring All
When I look at the news, I am inundated with examples of humans having lost their ability to recognize the rights of others. Assaults, killings, robberies and deceptions are rife in our own society which appears to have lost its way. I believe that the most meaningful effort you can make to counteract this evil and dismaying force in our society is to extend your generous recognition of rights beyond your own species. Let go of prejudice and look deeper than the labels of ‘human’ and ‘animal’, just as all people of good faith do to get past labels like ‘black’ and ‘white’. Extending your love and care for all of the other peoples, the ones we cannot yet understand, can only result in an expansion of the human heart.

Perhaps, if we taught the young to seek out the value in our fellow species, they would become better able to see the worth in our own.