Day 517: Chickens

The chicken roam free around our feet as we look for a place to sit. They are unafraid, protected by Hawaii’s state law. We spot a hen guarding her tiny chicks, holding them close underneath her wing. Several passersby comment on how cute this all is and stop to take pictures.

A kid’s voice pierces the air to cut through to his mom, who is about to order at a nearby food truck: “I want the chicken salad!”

The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

- Jeremy Bentham (1789)