The Culture of Cruelty and the Science of Hope
Conference presentation
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
Robert Swan
In Pakistan, cruelty towards animals is so ordinary that it is rarely seen as cruelty at all. Most of us have grown up around it, and have stopped noticing. This presentation asks how we became so desensitised, and how we might become sensitive again.
It examines the human–animal relationship in Pakistan through several lenses: the language we use for animals, the ways religion has been understood and misread, the lessons of childhood, learned behaviour and empathy, and the politics of our streets and cities, where questions of power decide who is allowed to belong. Together, these show how indifference is built, and how it might be taken apart.
At the centre of the talk is an attempt to reposition our community animals: to see them as more than “strays” or faltoo, and as part of the places we share.
There is a wide gap between us and the animals we live alongside. Drawing on ten years of work at Faltoo Sey Paltoo, Pakistan’s only rescue centre for special-needs and senior animals, and on a background in art, design and education, this presentation looks at how creative practice can narrow that gap: by questioning what we have accepted as normal, by showing us what we have stopped seeing, and by reminding us that no one else is coming to do this for us.