Abortion, Euthanasia and Bullfighting
Norm is talking about bullfighting, and he says this:
I concentrate, therefore, on Fiske-Harrison’s dismissal of the idea that animals could have rights. He bases this on the argument that having rights must entail having duties. But this is true only on some accounts of what rights are, and not on others. If rights are based on the fundamental interests of the being that has them, then animals can have rights, because they have interests. It is also worth noting one of the consequences of insisting that only a responsible agent - that is, one capable of having and fulfilling duties - can have rights: this is that infants and very young children would have no rights, and neither would people suffering from senile dementia. It also doesn’t follow from thinking animals have rights that we are duty bound to make interventions of an impossible kind into the interactions between other species. We can only do what we can do.
We do seem to take our obligations in respect of animals seriously.
The reason we think it is wrong to torture animals, and why some people don’t eat them, is because we recognise that it is cruel. Ordinarily, therefore, we try to avoid begin cruel and think badly of those who are. As Norm puts it:
I find the idea that deliberate cruelty, in this case the infliction of avoidable suffering, might be justified by the consideration that it yields aesthetic pleasure particularly revolting.
Anybody who deplores cruelty to animals must recognise that animals have some interests. Specifically, the concept of cruelty involves appreciating that animals have an interest in not being harmed or killed.
You could argue the duties that we have to animals both arise from their interests, and therefore create rights of sorts. However, I do think it is notable that no legal system of which I’ve heard allow animals to enforce “their” rights. Instead, deal with the issues by criminalising or regulating the treatment of animals. The state, not the animal, enforces that law. Perhaps we are attempting to protect animal-torturers from moral self-harm. Perhaps the state acts as the guardian of the animal’s rights, which it is incapable of enforcing itself. Alternatively, it might be that animals bear moral-only rights only at present: but as our culture develops, these rights may achieve legal recognition, as the rights of higher apes may one day be.
Whatever the nature of our moral relationship to animals, the cultural context of it is often complex. If you’ll excuse a little cod anthropology, it is notable that so many cultures have developed rituals and a mythology around harming animals: be it the sanctity of Temple sacrifices, the ceremonial nature of bullfighting, or even the multitude of regulations which we have constructed around animal experimentation and slaughterhouses. Killing animals is an every day event: but we do then invest it with moral significance, at least some of the time. Notably, however, the killing of vermin in this society is relatively uncontroversial, unless people are having fun doing it.
Where does this leave infants and the senile. An infant or a foetus usually has an interest in not suffering, and also in his or her life to come: except perhaps if very handicapped and likely to live a life which on balance, will be utterly miserable. We might decide that because a foetus or perhaps even a very young child is not self-aware, it is less bad to kill it painlessly, in certain prescribed circumstances, then it would be to kill an older child. That might sound a shocking thing to say in relation to children in this country and this day and age: but many legal systems punish infanticide less harshly, or have extensively practiced “exposure”.
A senile person who is no longer self aware may have few interests; and certainly not an interest in his or her life to come: except in a mystical and religious sense. Euthanasia is widely practiced: although it is sometimes dressed up in legal and medical euphemism. We might talk about such a person having a right to a dignified death. However, after a certain point of degeneration, I don’t think that a human can meaningfully be said to have rights.
Comments
| 3 September 2008, 1:01 am |
Norm says:
I must say, I find the idea that deliberate cruelty, in this case the infliction of avoidable suffering, might be justified by the consideration that it yields aesthetic pleasure particularly revolting.
Given it isn’t necessary to do so, eating meat is an aesthetic pleasure that gives rise to avoidable suffering. Hitherto, I was unaware that Norm was a vegetarian. I am assuming he is, as this is the logic of his position. I disagree. I also disagree with what you’ve said here.
“Anybody who deplores cruelty to animals must recognise that animals have some interests.”
I’m sure usually people do think this but they must? That’s complete rubbish. They might just think that it’s wrong because of how it reflects on them. The whole idea that one should treat animals ‘humanely’ indicates that this is a matter of human conduct, of obligation. On the abortion issue which you touch on, I don’t even want to go there. Suffice to say I can’t take vegetarians who favour abortion seriously at all - and I’ve met a few.
I think the problem here is a lack of protein and iron combined with listening to Morrisey.
| 3 September 2008, 1:06 am |
We might decide that because a foetus or perhaps even a very young child is not self-aware, it is less bad to kill it painlessly, in certain prescribed circumstances, then it would be to kill an older child.
Awfully close to the utter garbage that Peter Singer spews. And awfully flawed. Precisly when does a child become “self Aware”? how does one objectively measure “self awareness”? Is it a develomental stage that all children reach at exactly the same time? Or in the case of certain Uck ‘U members, ever?
The suggestion that an individual that is able to breath on its own, and to survive with the benefit of sustenance indefinitely is somehow less valuable than a similar being smacks very closely of eugenics.
| 3 September 2008, 1:10 am |
Given it isn’t necessary to do so, eating meat is an aesthetic pleasure that gives rise to avoidable suffering.
Frankly, bullshit.
Biologically, we need to eat meat, or otherwise artificially supplement our diet. The killing of one animal in order to provide sustenance for another animal is part of Nature. Indeed all animal life requires the ingestion of some form of other life in order to mature and procreate, the only “meaningful” function of life.
I take that back, apparently Mayflies don’t eat. But the Mayflies life cycle is wake up, have sex, die.
| 3 September 2008, 1:12 am |
Suppose Norm and David arrive on a perfect, logically unassailale threorry of the rights of animals and human beings insufficiently self-aware (shudder). How do they impose it?
| 3 September 2008, 1:14 am |
As for morality, and animal suffering. Agreed that inflicting suffering for needless enjoyment is repugnant, but we should also recognize that there is a hierarchy of moral obligations. If killing an animal has the potential to result in a person not dieing, would anyone, other than Peter Singer, doubt if the animal should be killed/let die.
Our own survival and well being is clearly more fundamentally important than the those of animals, thus ethical ttreaatment of animals should be measured in the light of how their treatment affects humans, rather than the animals inate rights.
| 3 September 2008, 1:48 am |
“Specifically, the concept of cruelty involves appreciating that animals have an interest in not being harmed or killed.”
Muslims have similar interests, and that has never stopped your kind.
| 3 September 2008, 1:55 am |
Muslims have similar interests, and that has never stopped your kind.
What a strange comment, I wonder who “your kind” refers to?
| 3 September 2008, 1:55 am |
Law should be morally neutral or it is oppressive, right?
Then why is it illegal for me to sit here and smoke this joint?
| 3 September 2008, 1:55 am |
David T
Peter Singer’s mother developed dementia, and it turned out he wasn’t so keen on putting her down while declaring that a healthy dog being more sentient had a greater moral claim to life (I believe he said that his sister felt strongly about the issue too, hence he discovered something about humans he seemed to have missed growing up).
You say though
‘We might talk about such a person having a right to a dignified death. However, after a certain point of degeneration, I don’t think that a human can meaningfully be said to have rights.’
Well i think that a person can have an absolute right to life, that is incumbent upon society to uphold, it is not dependent upon the ability to assert ones rights.
This is the problem of talking allways of moral imperatives in an individual contractual sense of an individual with a right to have or demand certain things they wish.
This is why a right to death is rubbish when we are actually talking about medical killing,not euthanasia, which is what happens when a person cannot consent.
Mentally and physically competent people should never be denied the choice of their own manner and timing of their death, but that is suicide and generally modern states no longer have legal prohibitions on this.
The problem is, isn’t it, when someone who wishes to die needs assistance.
an assertion of a ‘right to die’ is problematic.
Who has a right to demand that someone else, least of all a Dr who society may legitimately demand is sworn to uphold life, should kill them?
Where do they get that right?
my Father has dementia.
I believe he has every right to life, I am quite sentimental about it, my mother is more of the ‘they shoot horses don’t they’ school.
Children with Downs Syndrome or very dizzy people without tongues who find it hard to concentrate have rights independent of their ability to assert them, or even be conscious of them.
In this sense rights can be seen as limiting upon what others are allowed to do to people or animals not entitlements or claims that people can make.
So the provision of basic rights for the Great Apes and the sentient cetaceans such as the freedom from arbitrary killing, detention or torture is then properly not seen as a slippery slope where soon Trout will be demanding free tertiary education and social housing, but as an ever widening sphere of moral concern for our fellow beings.
If Steak or Trout can be grown and harvested as tasty non-sentient tidbits that never needed a backbone let alone a cute face, then the justification for intentionally depriving a sentient creature of its life, becomes a totally different moral arguement.
Your observation about the moral strictures around the taking of animal life is interesting.
i have always thought that there is a very powerful humanist argument for non-human animal rights.
Few people are actually easily disposed to kill anything as young children, the capability is reinforced by socialisation in things that may be killed and things that must be killed.
It seems to be a cross cultural universal however that to kill another human being they , must be dehumanised, they are called animals and treated like animals so that they may be killed like them (the use of cattle trucks in the Holocaust was a symbolic choice psychologically intended).
Quite simply the harder society makes it to kill non-human animals the harder it becomes to kill each other.
I know someone is going to say Himmler liked bunnies and Hitler was a vegetarian but it is the creation of sub-human humans that is the crux of the matter not a Beatrix Potter, romanticism.
Peter Singer strips some people of their humanity because he reduces morality to a techno-environmental capacity or function, in doing so he strips us all of our humanity because our humanity, our moral worth is not the property of bipedal speaking hominims but of persons who are social beings and social beings get attached to even the most decrepit of people and will look after them, at least human beings will.
In the archeological record the indisputable mark of a recognised and shared humanity is when we find evidence of people who looked after people who could not have looked after themselves and then buried them with flowers or mortuary rituals.
People even nurse sick animals and bury pets we are funny that way.
| 3 September 2008, 2:00 am |
Hitler wasn’t a vegetarian. I’ve no idea about Himmler and bunnies.
| 3 September 2008, 2:08 am |
I certainly feel that other animals have rights. Not the same rights as humans, of course, but some. I also think it is a duty of humans to try their best to prevent unnecessary suffering. That means good animal husbandry, decent welfare standards etc., and an end to pointless and cruel bloodsports.
| 3 September 2008, 2:16 am |
That means good animal husbandry, decent welfare standards etc., and an end to pointless and cruel bloodsports.
Benjamin 3 September 2008, 2:08 am
Benjamin, I am trying to resist the obvious quip that I could repsond to you with…
trying…
trying..
Pointless and cruel bloodsports… yet you insist on inflicting yourself upon us.
Couldn’t resist.
| 3 September 2008, 2:18 am |
“Then why is it illegal for me to sit here and smoke this joint?”
I don’t know, but it explains a lot.
| 3 September 2008, 2:20 am |
I also think one way to judge the civility and decency of any society is the way it treats the powerless and/or the unfortunates. Other animals, being powerless compared to humans who participate in parliaments, government and communicate to improve their wellbeing, are certainly at the bottom rung of the ladder, necessarily. It is in treatment of these other animals, and the unfortunates of the human species, that the civility and decency of a society can be judged.
| 3 September 2008, 2:20 am |
Scientific studies (conducted by me) show that THC blocks the human brain’s delicate irony receptors.
| 3 September 2008, 2:25 am |
Metta said:
Mentally and physically competent people should never be denied the choice of their own manner and timing of their death, but that is suicide and generally modern states no longer have legal prohibitions on this.
I always thought of a physically competent (healthy) person who commits suicide as less than mentally competent. I certainly wouldn’t equate it with modernity.
| 3 September 2008, 2:28 am |
Increasingly animals are subject to the dangerous phenomena known as trial by internet.
I am against this.
| 3 September 2008, 2:31 am |
Scientific studies (conducted by me) show that THC blocks the human brain’s delicate irony receptors.
If anything, it has the reverse effect.
| 3 September 2008, 2:47 am |
the Mayflies life cycle is wake up, have sex, die.
Got the right idea them Mayflies.
| 3 September 2008, 7:28 am |
“If killing an animal has the potential to result in a person not dieing, would anyone, other than Peter Singer, doubt if the animal should be killed/let die.”
Only one way to find out: ‘To the pit with Peter Singer. Give him a gun. Now, release the tiger…‘
| 3 September 2008, 7:39 am |
Any animal’s - and I include humans as we are animals - ‘interest’ in avoiding suffering is proportional to its sentience. This is an intellectual minefield’. Is a new born infant’s sentience any deeper than that of an adult dolphin or chimpanzee? I’m not sure.
I have little doubt that the sentience of a 15 week human fetus is trumped by that of a pig destined to to slaughtered for bacon.
The argument that the human fetus has more potential is true, but so what…isn’t that pretty much the Catholic argument on contraception.
We do inflict avoidable suffering on animals all the time, we slaughter them for their bodies, some of us have been known to do this for fun. Where does one properly draw the line? Aren’t humanists ’specie-ists’ ?
Too much thought along these lines is enough to make one melt down the hunting rifle, go vegan, and become a Jain!
| 3 September 2008, 8:02 am |
Mtta wrote: Few people are actually easily disposed to kill anything as young children
Ever seen a 14 year old with an AK47?
No, this is just plain wrong, if anything the hunting instinct is innate in young boys, who are extremely highly ‘disposed to kill’, especially if they are not socialised properly. Too much Tescos and Bambie - the anthropomorphism of animals - pushes it to the aft of urbanite consciousness.
The hunting instinct is dormant or suppressed in suburbia. Which gives us the situation where we get folks who will then tuck a steak with relish and look distastefully askance at somebody who shoots antelope.
| 3 September 2008, 8:20 am |
Of course many of the issues raised in this article vanish if one holds to the view, ( which as it is very often held by religious folk is not all that fashionable) that human life has a sanctity, not found in any other life form.
If this is accepted, then people suffering dementia and also babies, who have no duties, do have what we now term rights. Simply because they are human beings, and their lives contain a sanctity, which we have an obligation to respect.
In the case of animals, the repugnance of animal cruelty, stems from the fact that animals feel pain and can suffer, and hence a human being who willingly causes an animal unnecessary suffering, diminishes and degrades his nature as a being who can empathise, and who can freely choose not to cause suffering.
| 3 September 2008, 8:50 am |
“Biologically, we need to eat meat, or otherwise artificially supplement our diet.”
Utter nonsense.
| 3 September 2008, 9:18 am |
There is clear scientific evidence of a correlation between vegetarianism and ridiculous facial hair.
| 3 September 2008, 9:23 am |
my brother has a cat with only 3 legs. the missing leg had been cut by a group of teenage boys who have fun torturing stray animals.
these are middle class boys.
sometime ago another group of teenagers beat a transsexual woman who had become homeless. they beat her until she lost conscience, then threw her to a well with water in. the woman drowned and died.
what is there in common with both cases?
sadism.
Belonging to a country where bullfighting is having a ‘renaissance’ I can only say that I hate that tradition and all that comes attached to it.
cruelty against animals is just a part of a wider way to behave, particularly when it is socially acceptable.
| 3 September 2008, 9:26 am |
The very concept of “animal rights” is grotesque. You cannot reconcile cats and mice both having rights…
| 3 September 2008, 9:29 am |
I’m probably one of the few here who has seen a bullfight. The problem is that it’s not just spectacularly cruel, it’s spectacular.
Just being honest.
| 3 September 2008, 9:36 am |
Why is it people have stickers with ‘baby on board’ in their cars, but never ‘child on board’ or ‘teenager on board’?
To my mind, the loss of a young child is far worse than the loss of a baby (although the loss of either is undoubtedly traumatic) because the former has reached an age where it has developed interests and goals, while the latter has not.
(As a sidenote I do notice that cars with ‘baby on board’ stickers are almost universally driven appallingly)
| 3 September 2008, 9:46 am |
I thought it was a sign to firefighters that there was a tiny baby in the back, that they might otherwise miss.
| 3 September 2008, 9:52 am |
“We might decide that because a foetus or perhaps even a very young child is not self-aware, it is less bad to kill it painlessly”
A foetus at the earlier stages of development is not only not self-aware, it doesn’t even have a functional nervous system.
I appreciate that infanticide is a complex social (and economic :-( ) phenomenon, but it is a separate issue from abortion.
| 3 September 2008, 9:56 am |
Most people with those baby on board things use that excuse David.
Then when the baby isnt on board do they take the sigh out?
Do they hell,thus putting emergency services lives at risk.
Bastards!
| 3 September 2008, 10:05 am |
From wikipedia I’ve learnt that the ‘baby on board’ signs were originally designed to deter tailgating.
Also that George Carlin thought that they were three most puke-inducing that man has yet thought of.
| 3 September 2008, 10:06 am |
*puke-inducing words
| 3 September 2008, 10:17 am |
They’ve been usurped in puke making potential by the three words “Princess on board”
The police should take this as an invitation to stop the car and check that everyone is wearing seatbelts.
| 3 September 2008, 10:24 am |
“Baby on board” sounds like a novel use for water torture. Maybe to make mothers talk?
Increasingly animals are subject to the dangerous phenomena known as trial by internet. The parodies of Benji are getting more deft, bravo!
And Mettaculture’s comment is better than anything Fiske-Harrison has written on the subject, I’m sure. Wonderful. Some arguments should have an emotional component. Ethics comes from empathy which comes not from reason or religion but from our social, animal nature. To talk about ethics without talking about compassion is like talking about sound without ever mentioning music.
| 3 September 2008, 10:25 am |
The police should take this as an invitation to stop the car and check that everyone is wearing seatbelts.
Hehe.
I’m seeing more of:
“How’s my driving? Call: 1-800-KISS MY ASS”
these days.
| 3 September 2008, 10:27 am |
“Baby on board” sounds like a novel use for water torture. Maybe to make mothers talk?
And the title of a song by Homer’s barber quartet.
| 3 September 2008, 10:31 am |
No, this is just plain wrong, if anything the hunting instinct is innate in young boys, who are extremely highly ‘disposed to kill’, especially if they are not socialised properly.
I have to agree. You grow out of pulling the legs from mayflies, blowing up toads and burning slugs with a magnifying glass; you don’t grow into it.
Hopefully.
| 3 September 2008, 10:50 am |
And the title of a song by Homer’s barber quartet.
Whoosh, one joke right over my head.
| 3 September 2008, 11:03 am |
I want to see a car sign which reads “Kids all grown up - ram away”.
| 3 September 2008, 11:25 am |
I was a good kid. The most I ever did was put salt on snails and watch them fizz.
It never occurred to me to feel sorry for a snail, but for everything else, yes. It even worried me that grass doesn’t want to be cut.
| 3 September 2008, 11:27 am |
I heard a comedian say, “It’s only when you look at ants through a magnifying glass on a hot, sunny day that you realise just how often they burst into flames”.
| 3 September 2008, 12:31 pm |
In the case of animals, the repugnance of animal cruelty, stems from the fact that animals feel pain and can suffer, and hence a human being who willingly causes an animal unnecessary suffering, diminishes and degrades his nature as a being who can empathise, and who can freely choose not to cause suffering.
Very well said.
| 3 September 2008, 12:49 pm |
I studied Singer at university and could never quite see in him the crazed eugenicist he is claimed to be. It is more that he does not see a moral difference between killing a chimpanzee and killing a newborn infant - they are both things one should generally avoid doing.
| 3 September 2008, 1:02 pm |
“Biologically, we need to eat meat, or otherwise artificially supplement our diet.”
Utter nonsense
Utter nonsense?
Then why do humans have BOTH the dentition AND the digestive systeme of an omnivore?
And vegans often DO supplement their diet with artificial protien and vitamin sources.
Human beings have a very elastic repetoire of food sources and are able to be completely vegan for periods of time, but the necessity of eating meat is undeniable and goes a long towards explaining why many vegans supplement their diets.
| 3 September 2008, 1:37 pm |
Sounds like yet another ‘let’s-give-fluffy-animals-rights’/'humans are a bit crap really’ argument to me.
Large chunks of animal rites [sic] nutters peddle this sort of thing, which suggests some strange urge to favour animals as a way of rejecting human kinship and society.
It’s a kind of madness, in other words.
| 3 September 2008, 3:26 pm |
Norms are norms. Round my part of the world women didn’t used to have the vote. Life used to be generally cheap if you were poor. We used to have capital punishment. Things have changed. Now humans across vast swathes of the planet eat animals, milk and eggs because they always have, rather than because they need them.
There’s mounting evidence that animals - big mammals that live out their lives on farms for example, feel more complex emotions than pain and fear. It wouldn’t do to set the hurdle too high as Victoria Coren does but there are strong indications that they feel and understand far more than we have been prepared to entertain.
This doesn’t in itself confer equal status or rights with humans - nobody serious says that. The questions are what can humans do which would cause an animal suffering and - assuming we want to - what do we have to do to prevent this?
Temple Grandin’s abbatoir design (getting rid of the blind corners that terrify animals so much, say - http://www.grandin.com/) is a concession - but me, I’m a well-fed vegan. There’s no way I could personally justify contributing to a market for an animal, or stuff from an animal, I thought might understand enough to, say, mourn or fear for its life. No way.
This is a big departure from the norm and it raises a million questions. What about subsistence farmers? What about people who are nutritionally vulnerable? What about the landscape? What about the friesian cow breed? What about boring meals? And so on. But this is my starting point - I consider that animals have the right not to be eaten by humans unless it is absolutely necessary.
| 3 September 2008, 3:28 pm |
I’ve no respect for the animal rights extremists who released american mink from fur farms. They’ve f-cked up the riverside ecosystem & condemned the native water vole to virtual extinction.
Nice work idiots.
| 3 September 2008, 3:32 pm |
what about this?
http://www.greatapeproject.org/news.php
“”"”June 25, 2008
“SPANISH CONGRESS ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR THE GREAT APE PROJECT AND GREAT APES”
Just in from our colleagues in Spain: Just hours ago, the Spanish Parliament announced its support for the Great Ape Project’s mission to attain legal rights for non-human great apes. “This is the first time in the History of Humanity that an important Parliament has announced its approval of rights for Great Primates” announced Dr. Pedro Y. Ynterian, Director of GAP Brazil and incoming GAP International President. This is the central issue the Great Ape Project has focused on for the last 14 years.
This is an important step towards future governmental support for great apes worldwide. Under most government structures, legal rights are the only way to insure that non-human great apes are free from torture, unnecessary death and capture. Simple “animal protection” laws are not enough. We congratulate the hard work and efforts of GAP Spain and its members as well at the political parties that introduced and supported the decision: The Front United Left and Catlunya Party. This is a tremendous accomplishment.”"”"”
| 3 September 2008, 3:38 pm |
| 3 September 2008, 3:56 pm |
The Great Apes project is really important - personally I’m very interested in animals which are currently kept in captivity for meat, eggs and milk.
Perhaps my last comment had too many links in - it isn’t showing. To be brief, animals feel and understand more than we have been prepared to admit. It’s becoming unreasonable to assume animals aren’t sentient. This doesn’t in itself confer equal rights with humans but my starting point (I am vegan) is that I have decided to treat them as if they had the right not to be detained, eaten or otherwise taken from unless it is necessary. Lots of questions I know. What about your dog? What about the landscape? What will we eat?
But still, that’s my starting point. I don’t set the bar as high as Victoria Coren and nothing would induce me to be part of a market for animals which I thought might be able to feel loss or fear for their lives.
| 3 September 2008, 4:08 pm |
John P, you don’t seem to understand the distinction between a vegan and a vegetarian.
| 3 September 2008, 4:34 pm |
Mark T,
Vegetarians eat “meat” (fish) and feotuses (eggs), and other products derived from the exploitation of animals.
Brett, you know not which side of your arse you are talking from. The fact is that today, with the benefit of industrilised and genetically modified farming, perhaps, and I mean perhaps, a person can survive without ingesting meat. But meat is the best source of energy and many sources of minerals that is not available sufficiently in a vegan only diet.
Without suppliment Vegans would be anemic and lacking in Vitamine K
| 3 September 2008, 4:36 pm |
John P, you don’t seem to understand the distinction between a vegan and a vegetarian.
I’d thought both terms synonymous.
I,ll just say that eating small amounts of meat ( both poultry and red) makes getting the necessesary vitamins and proteins much, much easier.
There’s mounting evidence that animals - big mammals that live out their lives on farms for example, feel more complex emotions than pain and fear.
Agreed.
Cows are amazing creatures, for example.
You can call them by name, they each have distinct ‘personalities’, and when it’s time to send them for slaughter the feeling of many small farmers is akin to mourning.
And yes, abattoirs are now constructed with an eye to animal welfare, if only to speed up production.
| 3 September 2008, 4:37 pm |
Nick SA
Brownie
I recognise that young children (and perhaps at greater frequency among boys) may torture or kill small animals.
There is a great deal of variability in this however and equally many show aversion.
Bigger, bloodier mammals are harder to kill (evolutionary psychology and its arguments for the evolution of emotions in mammals do not find this surprising).
I think this is seperate from an ‘instinct’ to hunt, where at least among the more complex mammals and birds predation is not the same as aggression.
Cats, Wolves, Hyenas etc, train their young in hunting through play (and we tend to see a similarity between the cruelty of cats and some young boys).
Nick SA you are right about socialisation but it works both ways. In societies that require hunting for boys as a male endeavor of high social worth, then even the more reluctant boys are socialised in the ‘necessity’ to hunt (though a few might escape into the Church or a ‘namby pamby’ profession with relatively minor dents to their ‘manhood”.
In my family, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, all the boys have been taught to shoot and hunt.
But all the men are pretty soppy animal lovers with large vets bills and some rather geriatric and peculiar beasts hanging around in smelly corners of our homes.
I think its a gun/skill thing not a cruelty thing and given a distinct social shift in sex roles; since discovering that they can no longer hand over a dead bird or rabbit to ‘the missus’ to gut and cook they tend not to come back with dead furry things.
I am actually the only one who has properly slaughtered and butchered animals and I am the homo, but I don’t think any of my brothers is likely to dump an Impala on me for Christmas, even though they probably suspect that I could make a nice casserole of it.
Brownie
I have been to a Bullfight. It was the twisted faces vicariously filling with hatred and fear and bloodlust that most disturbed me.
I felt sorry for the Bull it seemed quite frightened, before they worked it up into a ‘rage’.
Actually far worse in Spain is the ’snuff movie’ sports TV live action slow motion replays of the coup de grace you see just as you are biting into your meatballs.
Sickening and far worse than the view from the bullring.
| 3 September 2008, 4:49 pm |
Without suppliment Vegans would be anemic and lacking in Vitamine K
“Vitamin K is found chiefly in leafy green vegetables, particularly the dark green ones such as spinach and kale; Brassica (e.g. cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and brussels sprouts) are also high in Vitamin K as are some fruits such as avocado and kiwifruit.”
I think vegans are ok for Vitamin K.
| 3 September 2008, 5:08 pm |
Vegetarians eat “meat” (fish)
No they don’t. if they do, they’re not a vegetarian.
feotuses (eggs)
A poultry egg is not a foetus. Frankly I’m baffled as to how you think it is.
And what wardy said.
| 3 September 2008, 5:17 pm |
However vegetarians do eat other products, such as cheese, that are derived from the exploitation of animals. Some people don’t eat such products, and are called vegans. Both vegans and vegeatarians acquire protein from sources such as beans, pulses and nuts, instead of eating meat, and have greater longevity than regular meat eaters.
| 3 September 2008, 8:56 pm |
“He bases this on the argument that having rights must entail having duties”
Yes, one can instantly see that this is nonsense by considering a baby. Or perhaps the writer thinks that babies don’t have rights.
| 3 September 2008, 8:58 pm |
“Biologically, we need to eat meat, or otherwise artificially supplement our diet. The killing of one animal in order to provide sustenance for another animal is part of Nature.”
Yes, bullshit indeed. I have come across very few sheep, cows and horses that go hunting.
Eggs are necessarily foetuses? Yesss … whatever.
| 3 September 2008, 11:22 pm |
I don’t buy eggs anymore (they give me the runs), but I used to buy fertilized eggs on the theory that the birds were better treated and got to enjoy themselves a little.
So those eggs would have been “foetuses” for a day until they were collected and cooled right?
| 3 September 2008, 11:33 pm |
Well putting the dictionary aside I’ve met self described vegetarians who eat fish, chicken, pork sliced up really thin… Then others who obsess about beer that’s been clarified with isinglass or smoke from my beefburgers blowing over their veggie bbq.
| 3 September 2008, 11:45 pm |
Foetuses or not, anyone who bought eggs from a British supermarket as little as ten years would was almost certainly supporting an industry ritually abusing animals.
| 4 September 2008, 12:16 am |
Nearly Oxfordian, 3 September 2008, 8:58 pm
Read it a little more carefully.
| 4 September 2008, 12:20 pm |
the fact is, either we like it or not, our survival depends on the sacrifice of millions of animals.
those that are vegetarian, vega, etc (I really don’t know much about this), all of you had vaccins; all of you have taken medicines, antibiotics, painkillers, etc.
and for sure all of you give vaccins to your children, because it is mandatory, otherwise they cannot go to school; and if you fail to do it because of your individual conscience you are putting not only yours but also other people’s health at risk, something that would make your options an act of immoral selfishness.
that was made possible because animals were used to test those products.
I think that is precisely one of the reasons why humans would be committed to reduce all possible harm done on animals and the environment, our survival depends on them, shouldn’t we at least be thankful and give something back?
and what about millions of old people who have their pets as their only companions? (and in so many cases those pets survive their human friends and end up abandoned in the streets or in shelters because nobody wants a 15 year old cat or a sick dog)
not to mention the positive therapeutic effects that animals have on disabled people, depressed people, etc: hypotherapy, asinotherapy, etc…
or simply the fact that we find comfort on our cat sleeping on top of that report that we should be reading but don’t really feel like doing it and instead prefer to put comments in blogs, because we don’t want to disturb the peaceful sleep of our furry friend…
but I would advise caution when drawing any parallels between animals’ rights, abortion and euthanasia. and between humans and non human animals, because it doesn’t help advance the cause of fighting for harm reducing. it’s counterproductive and it can provide dangerous arguments to the enemies of free choice regarding how we dispose of our own bodies.
also the issue of duties and rights is tricky: the dogs that guide blind people were not asked to assume such duty, but they do have a duty that was imposed on them. so, conversely their owners have the duty to take well care of their dogs, feed them properly, take care that nobody will harm them, treat them when they are sick.
it is not a legal issue but an ethical one.
the legal part should focus on preventing cruelty against animals, because cruelty is something that degrades human dignity and societies.
it is not a coincidence that it is in the countries where human rights are most respected that animals too have a better treatment.
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This is above my pay grade.
Perhaps we are attempting to protect animal-torturers from moral self-harm.
That simply won’t do. Law should be morally neutral or it is oppressive, right?