Topic: The Human Animal (another of Boon's essays)
Boon
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The Human Animal
What are "rights?" Do all humans have the same, equal rights? Do animals have the same rights simply because they are alive? Does a cockroach have the same rights as a dog? Does my houseplant have those same rights? Who decides which animals have rights and which do not? I, personally, can only answer those questions for myself. I believe human beings should not view any species, including humans, as having special rights. I believe that every species of life, including homo sapiens, is naturally and sensibly designed to increase its population by any means at its disposal.
Animal rights activist Tom Regan wrote in his essay, “The Case for Animal Rights,” “All who have inherent value have it equally, whether they be human animals or not. …(Our society) allows these animals to be viewed and treated as lacking independent value, as resources for us - as, indeed, a renewable resource.” Are animals a renewable resource for humans? Yes; we pen or cage, breed, raise, slaughter, and eat them. We hunt, fish, and trap them. We use them to advance our own gene pool. To say that an animal’s “feelings” are more important than the survival of our own species is ridiculous. Animals do not lack “independent value.” They are very valuable to us as a source of protein, labor, experimental subjects, and companions.
Humans are a highly evolved species. Most of us are extremely intelligent, able to think in abstract terms, reason, and rationalize. Our civilization has advanced beyond that of any other animal. We have the ability to make and use tools and the means to share knowledge. We have learned how to cultivate food crops, allowing us the time and energy necessary to experiment with technology. Our advancements, the only things that truly separate us from the rest of the animals on the planet, have given us the advantage. Despite our physical inferiority, we have become the strongest, most powerful species on Earth.
We, as a human society, expect our fellow humans to act a certain way. When they do not, we treat them like the animals they have become, taking away from them the same freedoms we take for granted. We deny criminals the power to move freely, to reproduce, to eat what they want, and to live their days as they see fit; sometimes, if they have committed a particularly appalling offense, we deny them the right to continue to live. We lock inmates in cages, force them to follow a schedule we set for them, control who they see, and make hundreds of decisions for them. How can it be cruel to treat animals other than humans this way when we see no cruelty inflicting this treatment on members of our own species?
Some humans think that we have no responsibilities immediately to animals, that we are not obligated to them, that we can not do anything that harms them. It is not wrong to use animals and plants to advance our species; however, it is wrong to torture or abuse any animal. We are an advanced society; we have evolved to the point where we can afford morals. Animals do feel pain; they do have emotions. Our society, as a whole, has decided that causing the suffering of any inferior being is wrong. Just as it is wrong to deny an infant human food, it is wrong to keep an animal in captivity and refuse to feed it.
No longer a culture of “survival of the fittest,” our advancements have made hunting and fishing unnecessary. We can walk into any supermarket in the United States and find a stunning array of beef, pork, poultry, and fish. Why, then, do people find it necessary to hunt or fish? Very few hunters hunt because they can not afford to buy meat in the supermarket. Most of them hunt because the acts of hunting and killing their own meat are traditions passed down through the millennia by their ancestors; I can see no inherent evil in this. A few hunters hunt for the sport, or to have a nice trophy to hang on the wall. This, in my opinion, is wrong; I only hunt the animals I will eat, and I eat every animal I take. To do less is wasteful.
Similarly, research and experimentation on animals is not wrong, provided those scientific endeavors in some way advance our species. How else would we know certain chemicals were poisonous? How else would we know about most of the medical breakthroughs of the last hundred years? Some sacrifices are necessary for the “greater good.” I would rather our society experiment on animals than to have new drugs or procedures tested on my family. I would not want my species, my genes, my DNA legacy to be affected if an experiment were flawed.
Humans should not, and do not, have rights separate from other animals. All animals have the right to propagate, to continue their species through reproduction. Every type of animal has the right to prey upon and use other kinds of animals to further its own species. Is the practice of raising beef cattle fundamentally different than growing and harvesting corn? Is it wrong that the strongest species should dominate the others? I think not.
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"Is it wrong that the strongest species should dominate the others? I think not."
So says the strongest species. Ten bucks says you'd feel differently locked in a room with a hungry lion. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Katharina started a thread the other day about the principle of fairness being in an inverse relationship with power. At least, I think that is what came out of it.
I was thinking in the hunting portion that if the herds aren't thinned, the animals starve because we have removed the predators.
So in addition to animals which actually are superior to us with respect to raw survival, there are those whose existence seems to revolve around harming others, which could include us.
Actually, I guess we trap wolves because sheep are so useful. They are an ideal example because they can serve us without being harmed. But trapping the wolves puts the deer in danger of overpopulating. So we have to hunt the deer.
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Or accept that the cost of protecting or losing some sheep is the cost of business.
The problem arises when the ethical default is that society must protect the meanest interests of the laziest and/or greediest human above all non-human life.
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Life is life and is precious. But intelligent life is MORE precious and must be preserved. Human life and the survival of our race is all-important. Not only do we have a right to place our survival highest, because we are Human, but also we are the only known sentient species. We OWE it to the Universe to survive. We are the Universe made manifest into little self-aware pockets.
I am a Humanist. And because I am a Humanist I am also an environmentalist. Why? Because Humanity cannot survive without this biosphere...so it's preservation will be the preservation of Mankind.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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And what about plants? They have just as much a right to live as we do. Long live trees! And I'm serious. To claim that there is no difference between a Human and a cow is to saw there is no difference between a cow and a dandelion.
To say that animals have more rights than plants or even microscopic life is to make a distinction between living things... thus supporting the idea that Humans have more rights (as we should).
Something that ticked me off a while ago was a news report from California. Love the state, but they are wacko sometimes. They basically were trying, or did change, the legal distinction from being a "pet owner" to a "pet guardian". What a load of crap, imho. To say that you no longer own your pet or cow or chicken and that they own you. Pha!
Don't get me wrong...I am against animal cruelty. There is no reason to torture life when it could be killed quickly. But to give a cow or a pig or a cat the same rights as your child?? Ridiculous.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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What you said brings up a question in my mind. And I don't want to sound picky, but I will anyway.
quote:I am a Humanist. And because I am a Humanist I am also an environmentalist. Why? Because Humanity cannot survive without this biosphere...so it's preservation will be the preservation of Mankind.
Would your view change if humanity developed technologically to the point where we could survive without the biosphere? Would we then have the freedom to screw with the environment? Maybe this is a question to me because, well, intelligent life developed on our planet once, who's to say it won't happen again? I think all sorts of things would have to happen for that (not the least of which is humanity's departure from the planet), but, hypothetically speaking.
My brain just leapt to the conclusion that we now owe it to the universe to get off this rock so the planet can evolve another sentient species. Curious.
Posts: 609 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Well... if we could develope a way to survive offworld, then I say we should protect the Earth because it is our birthworld...and life of all forms are the children of the Universe and worth preserving. (It's just that we are more worth preserving.)
And while our absence might allow for another sentient spieces to develope, that is not at issue. The Earth may fail to support life. Either through pole shifting, meterorite impact, war, pollusion, supernova... We have all our eggs in one basket. We are using up/have almost used up all the resources the planet. Another example: the key to building a future quantum computer came from a microb that is endangered. If that died out and we had a social-economic collapse and lost all our past knowledge (it's happened before) we could not rediscover that (or it would take much much longer to find out). If we have a second Dark Age we will never recover.
[ May 17, 2004, 03:39 PM: Message edited by: Telperion the Silver ]
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I don't know if I personally would survive another dark age, but I don't see why humanity wouldn't.
So is there a difference between a human that feels some stewardship for other forms of life and one who is fairly self invested? Are some humans varelse?
It's interesting that while I respect other species, I also am very close minded about them having language. The prejudices of the linguistics field at the time I got my degree and whatnot. I'm even loathe to grant that computers have "true" language.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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The trouble with another dark age isn't survival (though it would certainly be possible to die out if things got bad enough). It's climbing back out. All the "easy" sources of energy are either difficult to drive high technology with (figure out how to run a car on a primitive water mill) or the very nonrenewable resources that are nearly used up.
I agree that we should value sapient life regardless of form, but I wouldn't say that it makes us varelse to ignore the welfare of animals or plants. I don't consider myself a cruel person, but I have no problems with, for instance, medical experimentation with a clear purpose, or eating meat.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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