Our president, Renata Wójcik, represented the Ktoś, nie coś Foundation at the 5th Animal Rights Congress in the Senate of the Republic of Poland. Below you can read her thoughts on one of the talks:
At last, the words many of us had waited years for were spoken.
In his talk “Why are animals worse (in language)?” Professor Michał Rusinek voiced a long-awaited truth about the language that shapes how we see animals.In Polish, the word „zdechł” — the verb for an animal dying — is a linguistic relic, outdated and hurtful, a leftover from an age of class divisions, when “lords” died (umierali), while “peasants” and animals merely “croaked” (zdychali).
That linguistic stigma has survived for centuries and to this day reinforces unequal views of sentient beings.Language reflects social norms. „Zdychanie” is a lesser kind of dying.The talk, broadcast from the plenary hall of the Polish Senate, resonated widely — and rightly so, because the world is changing and words matter.
We live in an age when artificial intelligence is entering every area of life, yet we still lack education and real empathy — in language and in law — towards the beings we share this world with.We can give animals dignity in words — and that is the first step towards social change.In his foreword to the Congress, Professor Rusinek quoted our Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska:“For our peace of mind, animals do not die, they croak — a shallower death, as it were — losing, we like to think, less feeling and less of the world, leaving, so it seems to us, a less tragic stage.”
