GAM (The Kilted One) wrote:Imagine what the vegetables go through! SUFFER THE LITTLE CARROTS!!! (Yes, I'm kidding).
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alright, lets see here. first off, you posted this in the war forum. that indicates that probability of a lively debate. gentle ribbing aside (tofu comment) i have not resorted to name calling or other lower forms of "argument" and instead have presented my ideas in a logical fashion in a point-counterpoint structure. dont like that? ehh...not my problem
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secondly (and i usually hate this type of arguing as i feel it IS the dumb type that should be avoided especially over the internet, but for the hell of it i'll play along...) if you were to get so upset that i called you terms of endearment such as "honey" or referred to you by your gender "woman" and you were to hit me...? woman or not, i'd knock you the @!#$ out. that goes for anyone, man or woman, any ethnicity, religion, etc. you hit, you get hit back. exceptions might be made for children or mentally handicapped. beyond that, you'll get as well as you give. period.
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further more, ive always felt that "raising awareness" and doing nothing else is a cop out. its a convenient way for you to feel good about yourself. take that as you will...
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again, do you not see the hypocrisy in your own statements? you say the EXACT SAME THING about your fellow man....but when you ASSUME that i feel that way about animals suddenly its a horrible crime? please.
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yeah people are greedy, selfish, cruel @!#$. so what? you think the animal kingdom is all peaches and rainbows? cause in the real world a pig, meerkat, and a lion dont sing songs and dance their way across the plains of africa. they eat each other. they steal each other's food, shelter, water, etc. we do the same thing on a larger scale. the only difference is we have a conscious and can look back and say "oh noes! people are mean!" whereas animals are oblivious to this.
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and i am well aware that death is the end for us all. who cares? am i supposed to be scared of that? i dont recall asking to be born either. but so what? we're here.....deal with it.
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first off, you decided to end my quote early. clever little bugger! had you not misquoted me perhaps you would have noticed that i said "but i think its dumb as hell to care about animals--creatures without the ability to think, reason, or even love--more than people who do have these abilities, even if they choose to ignore them." there's a big difference between what i said and what you decided to quote. i suppose it could have been an honest mistake, but i seriously doubt it.
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secondly, i dont need to use an animal for loyalty or love or anything else. talk about selfish...! at least with a human they have the ability to reason and respond. if you feed a dog, he'll keep coming back and will be in a good mood because he is getting for free what he would otherwise have to work for. but if you were to treat that dog like @!#$, do you think they would act the same? hell no! its nothing more than pavlovian training.
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now, treat a person well and they may or may not love you back. treat a person badly and they may or may not love you back. but its that duality that actually shows or expresses love. it isnt some learned behavior....there is something more to it than that. animals are incapable of complex emotions like that. animals have feelings--meaning nerve endings--but they are completely devoid of actual emotions like humans are. they have the basics provided by the hypothalamus--the primitive brain--and nothing more.
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CIWF
The most basic way of experiencing the world is through feeling or sensation. ‘Sentience’ is defined as the ability to have perceptions and sensations. A ‘sentient animal’ is an animal that is aware of his/her surroundings and of what happens to him/her and is capable of feeling pain and pleasure, at the least. The current scientific consensus is that all vertebrate animals, at least, are capable of feeling pain and experiencing distress. (For this reason anti-cruelty laws exist in many countries.)
But many of the animals we interact with turn out to have more complex mental and emotional lives than people have understood in the past, and new scientific research is constantly revealing new evidence of animals’ cognitive abilities and their emotions.
Throughout history people have known that animals do very ‘clever’ and impressive things – such as a bird building an intricate nest or a mother animal teaching her young. Folk stories all over the word attribute intelligence and cunning to animals.
But for much of the 20th century scientists believed that all animal behaviour could be explained either as innate behaviour patterns in response to internal or external stimuli or as conditioned learning in response to stimuli.
Emotion or problem-solving on the part of the animal were not considered necessary to explain its behaviour and it was considered impossible to study these aspects at all. What is exciting about the present time is that scientists are once again interested in studying animals’ emotions and mental processes and that huge progress in understanding animals is being made.
The facts and theories of animal sentience are still hotly debated among scientists and philosophers. But most people have over history assumed that many animals feel pain, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, fear, anger and other basic emotions, because we have everyday evidence that they do.
Why use a whip or stick on a horse unless it feels unpleasant enough to make the horse move faster? If a dog, horse or cow is limping, most people would naturally assume that the animal is in pain. Most people would also assume that the pain is distressing to the animal and, if they could, they would try to do something to alleviate it.
However, throughout history humans have also treated animals in ways that caused great suffering to the animals, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Today there is increasing concern about the welfare of animals, whether these are wild animals or those used by people for food, work, companionship, entertainment, sport or scientific research.
When Elephants Weep
What are the implications of finding that animals lead emotional lives? Must we change our relationships with them? Have we obligations to them? Is testing products for humans on animals defensible? Is experimentation on animals ethical? Can we confine them for our edification? Kill them to cover, sustain, and adorn ourselves? Should we cease eating animals who have complex social lives, are capable of passionate relations with one another and desperately love their children?
Humans often behave as if something like us were more worthy of respect than something not like us. Racism can partly be described, if not explained, in this way. Men treat other men better than they treat women, based, in part, on their view that women are not like them. Many of these so-called differences are disguises for whatever a dominant power can impose.
The basic idea seems to be that if something does not feel pain in the way a human being feels pain, it is permissible to hurt it. Even though this is not necessarily true, the illusion of differences is maintained out of fear that seeing similarity will create an obligation to accord respect and perhaps even equality. This appears to be the case especially when it comes to suffering, pain, sorrow, sadness. We do not want to cause these things in others because we know what it feels like to experience them ourselves. No one defends suffering as such. But animal experimentation? The arguments revolve around utility, pitting the greater good against the lesser suffering. Implicit, is the greater importance of those who stand to gain (for example, the scientists employed by cosmetic or pharmaceutical companies to do experiments on rabbits) compared with the lesser importance of those who are sacrificed to their benefit.
An animal experimenter will almost inevitably deny that animals suffer in the same way humans do. Otherwise he would implicitly admit to cruelty. Experimental suffering is not randomly imposed without consent on human beings and defended as ethical on the grounds that it would bestow enormous benefit to others. (At least not any longer.) Animals suffer. Can we, should we, measure their suffering, compare it to our own? If it is like ours, how can vivisection continue? Moreover, why should the suffering have to be like ours to be unjustifiable to inflict? It has been argued that humans experience pain more acutely because we remember and anticipate it. Yet it is not apparent that animals cannot do both. But even if they cannot remember or anticipate pain, there is no reason to suppose that they suffer any less than humans do—they are “sensible”—while there is some reason to suppose some may suffer more. British philosopher Brigid Brophy, for example, points out that “pain is likely to fill the sheep’s whole capacity for experience in a way it seldom does in us, whose imagination can create breaks for us in the immediacy of our sensations.” But isn’t the fact that they suffer at all enough?
Speaking of the connection between suffering and selfless love in animals, Darwin wrote: “In the agony of death, a dog has been known to caress his master, and every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man is close enough to hear the anguished cries of the animals. Was it right to send an animal to slaughter who so desperately wished to live? Do they feel the same way? If resistance is to be respected, does lack of resistance confer a right to kill? We do know what the cow wants: the cow wants to live. The cow does not wish to sacrifice itself for any reason. That a cow will willingly offer itself as food is a fable.”
When humans refuse to inflict pain on other humans, surely it is because they assume they feel. It is not because another person can think, nor because they can reason, nor even because they can speak that we respect their physical boundaries, but because they feel. They feel pain, humiliation, sorrow, and other emotions, perhaps even some we do not yet recognize. We do not want to cause suffering. If, as I believe, animals feel pain and sorrow and all the other emotions, these feelings cannot be ignored in our behavior toward them. A bear is not going to compose Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but then neither is our next door neighbor. We do not for this reason conclude that we have the freedom to experiment upon him, hunt him for sport, or eat him for food.
Modern philosophers seem somewhat more willing than biologists to consider animal emotions, and they have also become engaged in issues of animal rights. Philosophers like Mary Midgley and Brigid Brophy in England, Peter Singer in Australia, and Tom Regan and Bernard Rollin in the United States, all take a strong position that animals are capable of complex emotions. In an influential passage, Jeremy Bentham—in 1789—connected sentient feelings with rights this way:
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withheld from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized that the number of the legs, or the villosity of the skin are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should cross the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Peter Singer, in his book Animal Liberation, explicitly based on Bentham’s nineteenth-century utilitarianism, argues that creatures who feel pain deserve to be shielded from that pain, especially from scientific experimentation and hurtful farming methods. The argument is that sentience — the capacity to have conscious experiences — demands equal consideration to the interests of all creatures. However, although this provides one moral ground, this position does not explicitly accord animals rights. Tom Regan in The Case for Animal Rights goes further, arguing explicitly for protecting the rights of animals who are “capable of being the subject of a life.” Every animal used in every experiment in every laboratory has its own life story. It has felt strong emotions, loved and hated and been devoted to others of its own kind.
It is a subject, and is therefore violated by being treated as an object. Have we the right to tear this being away from its fellows and all that gives its life meaning and put it in a sterile, hostile, aseptic environment to be tortured, maimed, and ultimately destroyed in the name of anything, far less of service to our species? Or lacking the right, do we only have the power?
It may be hard to imagine the sensual universe of another species, but it is not impossible. Our dog’s intense sniffing suggests she is picking up and responding to something beyond our senses. Her ability to take in information hidden from us is impressive; the resulting sudden shifts of mood are honored. We know we are in the presence of something different from us but worthy of our respect.
It is clear that animals form lasting friendships, are frightened of being hunted, have a horror of dismemberment, wish they were back in the safety of their den, despair for their mates, look out for and protect their children whom they love. As Tom Regan would say, they are the subject of lives, as we are. Though animals do not write autobiographies, their biographies can be written. They are individuals and members of groups, with elaborate histories that take place in a concrete world, and involve a large number of complex emotional states. They feel throughout their lives, just as we do.
We owe animals something. Freedom from exploitation and abuse by humankind should be the inalienable right of every living being. Animals are not there for us to drill holes into, clamp down, dissect, pull apart, render helpless, and subject to agonizing experiments. Animals are, like us, endangered species on an endangered planet, and we are the ones who are endangering them, it, and ourselves. They are innocent sufferers in a hell of our making. We owe them, at the very least, to refrain from harming them further. If no more, we could leave them be.
When animals are no longer colonized and appropriated by us, we can reach out to our evolutionary cousins. Perhaps then the ancient hope for a deeper emotional connection across the species barrier, for closeness and participation in a realm of feelings now beyond our imagination, will be realized.
SiZZy wrote:
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further more, ive always felt that "raising awareness" and doing nothing else is a cop out. its a convenient way for you to feel good about yourself. take that as you will...
But you don't know what I do so that sentence right there = nothing valid. Your the one preaching about human kind, WTF do you do for people other than yourself? Who do you think you are to call me out? I'm assuming you don't do @!#$ other than go to work, eat, @!#$, sleep and jerk off. (not necessarily in that order)
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Well according to Knoxfire who knows me better than I know me, I hate people. Which is funny cause I'm quite the people person and I make friends where ever I go. What I don't like are @!#$s who abuse animals (or other people for that matter) because they can, for no other reasons than that. It makes them feel powerful, people like that can eat @!#$ and die. Theres no hypocrisy. It's one thing to defend yourself or stand up for yourself it's another thing to abuse just to get off. When I say "I hate people" I mean those people not people in general. Hope that clarifies things enough cause I'm not going to sit here and defend myself against such ridiculous statements made by people who wouldn't know me if I passed them on the street. You can't sum a persons character up by a paragraph on the internet. I call you (Tabs) an @!#$ because I think your being one in this thread but for all I know you could be a really nice fella. This isn't personal. So yeah. @!#$ you on that one Knoxfire you honey suckle sugar cube you.
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yeah people are greedy, selfish, cruel @!#$. so what? you think the animal kingdom is all peaches and rainbows? cause in the real world a pig, meerkat, and a lion dont sing songs and dance their way across the plains of africa. they eat each other. they steal each other's food, shelter, water, etc. we do the same thing on a larger scale. the only difference is we have a conscious and can look back and say "oh noes! people are mean!" whereas animals are oblivious to this.
Why are you acting like such a dumb @!#$? Seriously. Of course it's dog-eat-dog in the animal kingdom. That has nothing to do with livestock animals, domesticated animals, circus animals, animals being killed for their furs or fats, or people abusing animals. A lion and a lion can have combat just like a man and a man can beat the @!#$ out of each other -- thats all gravy. A lion can go out and hunt a zebra and kill it, thats all gravy. Whats not all gravy is the issue I've brought to the table in the first place - CRUELTY THAT HUMANS INFLICT ON ANIMALS. Theres no justifying that, so stop trying you sound ridiculous the way you're dancing around the subject. If a lion comes and attacks you whats going to happen to that lion? It's going to eat a bullet -- if a man comes and attacks you whats going to happen to that man? An assault charge? It all depends on the degree of violence. If a man attacks a lion (or any animal just sticking with the lion theme) that man should eat a bullet. Thats what I'm saying. Equal rights for animals, it's their world to and it was their world FIRST, and they deserve better.
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first off, you decided to end my quote early. clever little bugger! had you not misquoted me perhaps you would have noticed that i said "but i think its dumb as hell to care about animals--creatures without the ability to think, reason, or even love--more than people who do have these abilities, even if they choose to ignore them." there's a big difference between what i said and what you decided to quote. i suppose it could have been an honest mistake, but i seriously doubt it.
You're right, I'm really sorry I misquoted you because it makes a real big effing difference and this is TIME magazine and all. Your statement is still bull@!#$. To say these "creatures" can't think, reason or love more than humans are capable of is false. You don't even own a pet dude, you don't know what an animal loving you feels like, you can't even speak from experience your just being obnoxious.
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secondly, i dont need to use an animal for loyalty or love or anything else. talk about selfish...! at least with a human they have the ability to reason and respond. if you feed a dog, he'll keep coming back and will be in a good mood because he is getting for free what he would otherwise have to work for. but if you were to treat that dog like @!#$, do you think they would act the same? hell no! its nothing more than pavlovian training.
now, treat a person well and they may or may not love you back. treat a person badly and they may or may not love you back. but its that duality that actually shows or expresses love. it isnt some learned behavior....there is something more to it than that. animals are incapable of complex emotions like that. animals have feelings--meaning nerve endings--but they are completely devoid of actual emotions like humans are. they have the basics provided by the hypothalamus--the primitive brain--and nothing more.
My animals give me love and I love them back, whats selfish about that? I provide a good life for my pets just as I would a child. If you feed a child it's going to keep coming back to the kitchen, if you abuse a child it's not going to act the same as a happy child now is it? Again, all bull@!#$. Seriously your boring me.
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I think the heart of my message was taken out of context
Continuing to argue with you or anyone opposing is pointless because we aren't going to see eye-to-eye
I made a point and that point is Animal Cruelty in any way shape or form done by man kind is wrong and it needs to stop.
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Hitler used propaganda almost as much as the Animal Rights lobby does.