In the past few days, my bro has sent me two emails with links to news about a scandal in the US involving an NFL football player (Michael Vick) who was involved with dog fighting. I haven’t seen any press coverage of this in the Europe, but apparently, everyone and the mothers in the US are up in arms over this news.
What’s bothering my bro is that people get so outraged by dog fighting, and yet are so passive about the really important issues that affect the country. Torturing animals is a scandal, but I suppose torturing humans is more acceptable? Where are the people protesting things like Guantanamo or Abru Ghraib, poverty, or human rights? So why do people have their priorities so askewed from reality?
I remember an old man once telling me to never trust anyone who loved animals more than humans, for they would always turn out to be the most brutal and evil of them all. He also told me told that an immaculately clean car was the sign of a truly perverted mind.
Grave Error 
Eric,
Very well put, better than I have been arguing it the past week. I would add that I am not saying that M. Vick’s alleged actions should be ignored, but the gov’t is already aggressively investigating and even prosecuting this case. Anyway.
Animals have nervous systems and suffer pain, agony and death the same as we do.
Thanks to the reptilian mind still being present and highly active in all mammals, fear is, and ever will be, ubiquitous.
Are you seriously asking this question? Hmmm. The animals are kept at a disadvantage, starved into crippling weakness, tortured and then executed.
Life is life, and no animal is capable of “evil” or “sin”, therefore by rational default: innocent. They simply exist.
In the case of the canine, they have been habituated into socialisation with hominids, due to our inherent lack and weakness which causes us to seek affection from everythiing/anything. Existentially, they would be a psychologically extension of our family units. Empirically, we have conditioned them into pack units with hominids.
As far as taking care of humans ~ we have destroyed natural selection, socially effeminized genetic domination out of society for all but the smallest percentage, proliferated aberration and dysfunction with our interferences creating greater burden on those of social and genetic fitness ~ then whine that some aren’t doing enough to help “those in need” …
There are too many hominids, a few less is of little concern. There is nothing more brutal, savage and barbaric than the uomini rozzi of mankind. Their numbers are plethoric. I believe, and I say this in all honesty, Dennis Miller made the case best: Sometimes there’s just too many evil mother f*****s, and you have to thin out the herd.
On the CK side, what would you expect from American society? Paris Hilton goes to jail, (reasonably, under the law), and it takes three weeks out of the entire country’s lives. We even had two days worth of hearing about her demeanor and wardrobe after her release … you can’t really be surprised by this … can you?
Which do you think is more important to the greatest numbers of American citizens: American Idol or the Science Channel?
I know where I’m placing my bet. Show me da money baby!!!!
Actually, I am not sure that animals suffer pain the same way we do. Yes, they have a nervous system, but that doesn’t mean that they have the capability to reflect upon the pain as humans do.
As a matter of fact, if you follow the same logic that they have no ability to reflect upoon their suffering, then your statement that they cannot sin is also correct. One cannot sin if one does not have the mental ability to sin (you need a mens rea accompanying an actus reus and that’s why we don’t convict the insane). Personally, though, I rejec the entire assumption that sins even exist — a sin in and of itself is an irrational Judeo-Christian fabrication.
Having said all that, the debate isn’t whether making animals suffer is right or wrong, the question is why Americans are so much more concerned with Vick and dogfighting and are completely indifferent to their own government’s torture of humans. Nietzsche argued that once man began to love God more than humanity, he killed God. It was the ultimate death of morality. It simply appears that Americans are losing their humanity through their obsession with the likes of dogfighting and Paris Hilton.
and I add again- Vick is already being investigated and prosecuted to the full extent by the gov’t. It is not as if I am arguing that they should let him go, but let the man be found guilty before you crucify him. So it should be clear that I am NOT for animal torture, dogfighting or anything of that nature. I am totally against it, but the accused should be found guilty first before he is hung in the public square.
Actually cugino, your assertion is easily falsifiable.
Pain is a biochemical reaction, and humans do not have any ability to reflect on the actual sensation of pain. They reflect on the cognitive/emotive association that our hyper-active cerebrum places on pain.
Pain itself is not even memorable. Ergo, there is no difference in the pain to a hominid, or any other mammal.
Also, it should be noted that many mammals of the higher order have equal/greater emotive capacities than hominids, including pachyderms, delphinidae, and the greater cetacean group. There is little to no study into the effects of habituated socialisation on canines either, which is likely to have affected their awareness capabilities, (they obviously have a degree of “self-aware” as they acknowledge being named, and show possessiveness of items to which they attach value/significance.)
Nonetheless, your anthropocentric perspective is duly noted.
Sin is not derived solely from the Judeo-Christian realm, that is positively erroneous, and historically inaccurate.
PtahHotep, (circa 3400 hundred years ago), wrote a rather lengthy discertation on parenting, societal values, and filial piety. Seeing as he was Egyptian, and characterised his own writings as his own reinterpretation of of the words and ideas of “the Great Fathers”, your assertion fails under scrutiny.
Morality/virtue ethics/metaethics are all constructs of the hominid mind attempting to deal with fundamental principles of the actions of a non-emotive Universe, where chaos, (macro or discrete), and entropy, are the kings of Laws.
Well, I would agree to the extent that the memory of pain is not very powerful. But, I would imagine that a certain degree of memory does exist. Remember Pavlov’s dogs? If it weren’t for the memory of the shock (or at least the memory of a disagreeable experience, then the experiment wouldn’t work.
I am a bit confused about your metaphysics here, though. What is the difference at the end of the day between the cognitive/emotive and sherely physiological? Sometimes I think you are saying that everything is completely material (emotions and feeling are all part of our bodies’ natural survival instinct) and then other times you seem to be arguing for a more dualistic approach that there is in fact a distinction between body and soul (emotions and the body as a motor).
I think, though, that there is another much more interesting question that arises from all of this. You seem fairly keen on showing a similarity between humans and animals’ experience of pain and their abilities to reflect upon them. My question is what distinguishes a human from an animal that enables a human with the ability to sin, where as an animal is incabale of sinning (as you have said).
Well, I would agree to the extent that the memory of pain is not very powerful. But, I would imagine that a certain degree of memory does exist. Remember Pavlov’s dogs? If it weren’t for the memory of the shock (or at least the memory of a disagreeable experience, then the experiment wouldn’t work.
Precisely, an emotive response to a negative consequence. The memory associated with the “shocking” is powerful because of the inherent fear instinct as predicated upon the drive for survival. The canines in Pavlov’s experiment do not remember pain, as in to actually recreate the pain, and reinvent the nervous/biochemical reaction. The memory is of the sensations of fear created by an action of a posteriori negative consequence.
I am a bit confused about your metaphysics here, though. What is the difference at the end of the day between the cognitive/emotive and sherely physiological? Sometimes I think you are saying that everything is completely material (emotions and feeling are all part of our bodies’ natural survival instinct) and then other times you seem to be arguing for a more dualistic approach that there is in fact a distinction between body and soul (emotions and the body as a motor).
I have no metaphysics. Futility of thought, and emotional energies wasted, to engage metaphysics. (Usually given by me as, “watching monkeys trying to hump a greased football.”)
The problem as perceived by you is not a problem at all, rather it is a matter of the proper information.
The hominid mind has in the frontal lobes an area assigned for self-recognition, self-awareness. This creates a duality, that is as of yet, inescapable. Because of the evolutionary process causing the development of such an intense sense of awareness, the creation of the “observer of the observer” has taken place. Effectually creating “I”, what we recognise as “me, myself”, and “I, my brain”, the observation and data collecting physiological device. It goes further and the parameters are broad, and this medium is far too restrictive for that entire scenario. (Part of which is the principles of quantum gravitational thought and quantum entanglement.)
I think, though, that there is another much more interesting question that arises from all of this. You seem fairly keen on showing a similarity between humans and animals’ experience of pain and their abilities to reflect upon them. My question is what distinguishes a human from an animal that enables a human with the ability to sin, where as an animal is incapable of sinning (as you have said).
I believe I covered this in the previous posting. There is no morality, there is reaction, either positive or negative, to a non-emotive Universe in process. Only the hominid believes that morality exists, and no empirical evidence towards that fallacious property has ever been found outside our minds. The statement of innocence was addressing your perspective that hominids are somehow “superior” or “of greater importance” as a life form, and outside of metaphysics, there is no evidentiary support for that proposition.
Take a canine corpse and a hominid corpse, watch them both rot. You’ll find there is no difference, and death, (non-existence), doesn’t seem to show any concern for the type of being.