The Foreign Office said, very recently: "The Foreign Secretary (Boris Johnson) was expressing a personal view that he respects this Spanish tradition." This was, of course, in response to his remarks that the banning of bullfighting is 'political correctness gone mad'. He's not alone, of course. Cruelty in pursuit of 'tradition' is one of the most common excuses an animal welfare campaigner hears. And yet it's one of the weakest and ill-conceived arguments against the perpetuation of brutality.
Thinly veiled as something that's 'ok because our forefathers did it', it immediately demonstrates a lack of emotional and compassionate evolution. As humans, we took part in a number of fairly nasty things in the past. Pain and torture became prevalent to punish and dissuade. Few campaigned against burning heretics or drowning witches; even fewer troubled themselves with badger tossing, cock throwing, goose pulling, octopus wrestling, bear-baiting, dog fighting or monkey-baiting. Why? Because lives were hard, people had less, possessions were scarce and competition for survival was high. Also, science was in its infancy, so humans had little or no idea about the sentience of any species other than themselves. Animals were a resource to fulfill the needs of survival, sport and entertainment for a human population that often struggled to co-exist under the weight of poverty, extreme religion, monarchy or governmental dictatorship. When hands were cut from the arms as punishment for stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving family, the ethics of pig-tossing were unsurprisingly low on the agenda. The moral zeitgeist of history was dictated to by a series of factors we can barely comprehend today.
So, anyone one in 2017 leaning on 'tradition' as a reason to continue a barbarous act such as bullfighting, deliberately ignores the huge strides made by civilization becoming more compassionate and aware of suffering - both animal and human. Society today is more comfortable and secure than any that preceded it. Furthermore, technology has enabled us a greater understanding of the effects of animal mistreatment. And with longer, healthier lives, more free time and a mesmerising wealth of entertainment available, any act of 'fun' that involves cruelty to animals is no longer justifiable; we live better, we know better...so we should be doing better.
To excuse anything that causes harm and suffering through the eyes of tradition is to root
21st Century sensibilities in a past paradigm that is no longer relevant. It strikes a blow to everything that's been learned over the centuries that's improved the welfare standards for every living thing on this planet. And it's downright hypocritical too. Take the human freak show. Are people voyeuristic curiosities in these pain-riddled and dehumanising freak shows anymore? No. Because we know better, so we do better. This old-fashioned yet popular hive of family entertainment no longer meets our strict moral code of conduct, so it's left in a past where we held ourselves to a lower standard. But oddly, this is ignored when it comes to bullfighting. The cruelty, torture and death are kept alive by people who pick and choose what inhumanity should be assigned to the past (beatings, blinding with light, boiling, bone breaking, branding, castration, strangling, crushing, denailing, drowning, flaying, foot roasting, foot whipping, hamstringing, kneecapping, pitchcapping, rat torture, sawing, scalping, starvation, tarring and feathering, thumbscrew, tooth extraction, walling) and what inhumanity shouldn't i.e. bullfighting. They provide countless spurious reasons why torturing a bull in the 21st Century is somehow exempt from the SAME ethical awakenings that means we no longer flay people in the village square.
Tradition is what clothes to wear. What flag to fly. What song to sing or dance to dance. It's a way to bring people together and celebrate only the very best of our history. Tradition is NOT, and will never be, a handy and socially acceptable excuse for a lack of compassion. Because if that were the case, it will become a word that could sanction all manner of old-world cruelty. And as we approach 2018, we know better than that. So, we must DO better than that.