Many people find it cruel to allow a chimp to smoke and drink. If someone was shipping Johnny Walker and Marlboros into the wild and selling them to the chimps, I’d agree. But when a captive ape takes up smoking and drinking, I cheer it on. Sending said ape to rehab is cruel.
A caged life is a miserable life. If a chimp has found some way to numb itself, some way to pass the pointless hours of another pointless day, I’m not going to sit in judgement. It’s wrong to imprison an intelligent creature like Zhora and doubly wrong to get all sanctimonious about his habits. It’s not like he committed a crime other than not being human.
And now that he becomes a little more human, we decide to send him to rehab. To what purpose? Just to steal away what little joy and purpose remains in his life? For his health? Zhora is twenty six years old. Just how long do we want him for our prisoner?
Humans are chimpanzees. You probably enjoy a drink and maybe a smoke. If you were in Zhora’s shoes, you might really enjoy one.
Zhora, as a former performer, an artist and father of seven, has probably done better in his cage than you have in yours. Let him have a drink and enjoy a smoke.
Zhora has earned it. I doubt you have.
