Animal Abuse and Domestic Violence

[Funka Genocide]

I'd say that worth is based on potential for contribution to society. There are even distinctions between different persons, not every human being is worth as much as the next guy. Perhaps this may be perceived as callous, but I believe it's the way the system works.

The more you contribute to society, in the form of action, idea and product, the more worth you have and thusly the more protection/respect/whatever you are accorded.

The potential exists (however small) for any human being to make a large contribution to society. This is due to imagination and mental capability mainly. However fond we are of our pets, they will never perform a great service to mankind.

This is off topic however.

To coincide (however tangentially) with the topic of abuse, I'd like to point out that many people are treated worse than many pets. I would seriously consider elevating the postion of the vast majority of the human populace before I put any effort into increasing the rights of pets. But this is somewhat idealistic on my part, as I'm sure less effort would be required to increase penalties for animal abuse than would be required to expunge famine and injustice from the world.

[I_Like_Swordchucks]

Originally Posted by Funka Genocide

I'd say that worth is based on potential for contribution to society.

What about mentally handicapped people? Somebody with severe Down syndrome? Somebody who is a vegetable? Often they have less potential contribution than a pet (possibly even negative contribution since they absorb time and resources that could be used toward furthering society), so does that make them worth less than an animal?

[Funka Genocide]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Swordchucks

What about mentally handicapped people? Somebody with severe Down syndrome? Somebody who is a vegetable? Often they have less potential contribution than a pet (possibly even negative contribution since they absorb time and resources that could be used toward furthering society), so does that make them worth less than an animal?

Patently, yes.

However, in order to maintain the state of human superiority within the collective consciousness we must accord useless people a higher status than more useful pets. Their usefulness is in enforcing this ideal.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Funka Genocide

Patently, yes.

However, in order to maintain the state of human superiority within the collective consciousness we must accord useless people a higher status than more useful pets. Their usefulness is in enforcing this ideal.

So on the one hand we run a meritocracy which determines the value of a "being" (mostly made up of humans, but I suppose many animals are protected under this as well...poorly), and on the other hand the status of "useless" humans are arbitrarily raised because humans > everything else.

Your counterpoint is nice and verbose but all it really tells me is we put an emphasis on humans for no other reason than "go team human!" and it greatly weakens the argument of a meritocracy, which suddenly seems illogical if it is a meritocracy only within our species.

The addition of "save everybody else before other animals" is an argument which you weakened in the next sentence. However, I imagine there are many parallels between the treatment of poorly treated humans and poorly treated animals in the world. They're either "not there" or thought of as lesser beings, arbitrarily.

[Doppler12]

Originally Posted by Azisien

...
Your counterpoint is nice and verbose but all it really tells me is we put an emphasis on humans for no other reason than "go team human!" and it greatly weakens the argument of a meritocracy, which suddenly seems illogical if it is a meritocracy only within our species.
...

There is a very clear and logical reason for rooting for "team human" as you put it. People act like we've been civilized for so long that instincts and what it took for us to evolve to the point in which we are have been erased, and they clearly haven't. For our species to survive we had to hold ourselves and our species as the most important thing on earth, and nothing could tell us otherwise, if it could, odds are we wouldn't exist. Domesticated animals have be trained and bred to hold us as thier everything, because we provide the food, and those that don't and attack people (and only sometimes for no reason) are killed/put down. Holding us up as top species is part of thier learned/forced instincts and thier pack instints, which is why if a dog is abused or pushed too far, it will lose its learned/forced instincts, and will hold itsself as number one.

Everything is centered around survival and what it takes to survive, and now that we have everything we really need to survive, save the extremely poor, in the "industrialized" nations we have begun to focus on what other species need because focusing on ourselves is no longer a completely nessicary instinct and its/we're(as humans) searching for something to give instinct value. What seems to be the point of our whole discussion is the fact we can't decide wether or not to hold other animals up as important as humans due to our internal conflict, and looking at it so logically that circumvents humans being number one, seems like an atrocity to most if not all of us.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Doppler12

There is a very clear and logical reason for rooting for "team human" as you put it. People act like we've been civilized for so long that instincts and what it took for us to evolve to the point in which we are have been erased, and they clearly haven't. For our species to survive we had to hold ourselves and our species as the most important thing on earth, and nothing could tell us otherwise, if it could, odds are we wouldn't exist. Domesticated animals have be trained and bred to hold us as thier everything, because we provide the food, and those that don't and attack people (and only sometimes for no reason) are killed/put down. Holding us up as top species is part of thier learned/forced instincts and thier pack instints, which is why if a dog is abused or pushed too far, it will lose its learned/forced instincts, and will hold itsself as number one.

Good points, and I'm aware of that. And I don't think domesticated animals, yeah let's just stick to that, should be elevated to the equal status of humans. But they fall far, far below, and I consider it rather unjust. I do disagree with your interpretation of canine behaviour, but maybe that's way too off-topic.

[guyy]

...Wow.

I tried to write something about this, but I think it probably would have gotten me banned.

But I will say that it's things like this that convince me to put humans below, not above, most other animals. Not to say that humans are worthless, it's just...a lot of them seem to have too much creativity and not enough morality.

The fact that there's 6 billion of us doesn't help, either. Things like this couldn't happen in smaller, less distantly-connected groups; someone would notice.

I guess this makes me sound like a hippie or something, but there you go.

[Funka Genocide]

Doppler said pretty much anything I could have on the subject, probably more affably too, heh.

I think this merits a new topic however, I'd invite Azisien to create it if they're up to it. We've seriously derailed the main point of the thread.

(As an aside, I like animals, and I hold them personally at an esteem level similar to Azisien, honestly. I don't own pets, I think the practice is self aggrandising. I treat animals with the same respect they treat me with, which is to say that I leave them alone and they leave me alone. Not out of mutual fear I'd like to say, but as one organism to another just trying to make ends meet. Honestly, I don't even kill spiders and bugs if I don't absolutely have to to protect myself from a nasty bite or disease. I'd much rather have a world where we produce delicious meat products artificially and leave all the other creatures to their own devices, as I believe in the old Spiderman Addage that with great power comes great responsibility. We as the preeminent species on this planet should be more responsible and less destructive. My arguments in this thread are firmly grounded in what I consider to be a utilitarian philsophy however. This is how I see the world working today, and how it will continue for the most part until I am dead.)