Why do people say that a society’s attitude toward animals can show how civilized it is? Because how it treats the weak—more than how it treats the strong—reveals a society’s true underlying structure. Animals have no voting rights, no wealth, cannot resist, and cannot speak up for themselves. If this society is still willing to create rules for these “lives that cannot repay themselves,” restrain its desires, and limit violence, it actually says one thing: it is beginning to move from a logic of strength to a logic of civilization. Because barbarism is the simplest. The strong bullying the weak is always the lowest-cost thing to do. The real difficulty is this: I can hurt you, but I choose not to. That is civilization.