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strglve- no one can disagree with you- animals are not human (not a chicken,cowpigdogcatwhaleetc.,etc.). but humans ARE animals. this is a fact. debate all you want, but this lies in the realm of undisputable fact. we are animals. and there are animals like dolphins and primates (like us) that display self recognition and cognitive problem solving skills, which implies concousness and possiblity of compassion and empathy.

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I've never dissagreed with that, and in fact I have said that I also hold a similar opinion. I've already said that higher primates, and a very few other species should have a higher level of respect because they display higher levels of intelligence.

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cows may not be concious cognitive animals (they're actually pretty dumb- hell we breed them that way, just like most domestic animals) but they are still alive...

...i relate to the little ant crawling over the pebbles because we both are alive. do i care if if LIKES it's job, or gets frustrated with it's spouse from time to time. would it make it any more or less alive. if i picked it's leg off would it cry out in pain, or feel it. i don't know if any human could tell me or you. it's enough to know that it lives and has a place in the world. we DO have emotions and compassion and empathy(most of the time); we should use them more often. humbleness and humility are actually revered in some places.

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And here is that basic, core, philosophical dissagreement I mentioned earlier. You think (correct me if I'm wrong) that because something is alive, we should do everything in our power to preserve that life.

I think that we, having the tools of advanced evolution, can utilize and take advantage of that life. I don't see any evil in killing animals (which for the purposes of this discussion should be defined as non-humans/higher primates/dolphins/etc ) as long as it's got a purpose.

It's going to be very hard to crack that dissagreement because neither is really based on solid fact, but instead opinion. For now I'm out of time, untill next time.

strglve- no one can disagree with you- animals are not human (not a chicken,cowpigdogcatwhaleetc.,etc.). but humans ARE animals. this is a fact. debate all you want, but this lies in the realm of undisputable fact. we are animals. and there are animals like dolphins and primates (like us) that display self recognition and cognitive problem solving skills, which implies concousness and possiblity of compassion and empathy. cows may not be concious cognitive animals (they're actually pretty dumb- hell we breed them that way, just like most domestic animals) but they are still alive.

as for sentient beings- how could you get proof? i relate to humans cause i am one. i relate to the little ant crawling over the pebbles because we both are alive. do i care if if LIKES it's job, or gets frustrated with it's spouse from time to time. would it make it any more or less alive. if i picked it's leg off would it cry out in pain, or feel it. i don't know if any human could tell me or you. it's enough to know that it lives and has a place in the world. we DO have emotions and compassion and empathy(most of the time); we should use them more often. humbleness and humility are actually revered in some places.

Xavi- There's a difference between protective instinct, and human-level emotion. Your assuming that this is "proof of emotion" because it fits some parts of human behavior. It fits some parts of human behavior because they're the parts that are heavily influenced by the uncounsious, primitive mind.

And as for emotional anguish, the situation you describe sounds a lot more like learned behavior than mental disturbance. And in the end, any mental anguish caused by factory farming don't matter. Because these animals aren't sentient, you've said they are but offer no proof, it doesn't really matter what they feel like because in the end they are slaughtered and eaten.

Infact, tehy shouldn't be used and advocated like that anyhow! Maybe its just me, but I personaly dont care for that kind of 'entertainment'

Do we have the right to inflict unecessary suffering on animals for 'entertainment' purposes; like circuses, rodeos, greyhound racing etc.?

Xavi--- I know what you mean because I also believe that animals have feelings, but your dog, Misty, what happened to her is just instince. Anywho, thought I'd point that out.

thanks Gramp! u really hit home this time. at least to me. in fact now that you mention this, my family and I went on vacation and my neighbor kept our little dog Dazzle. When we returned, we found out that dazzle hadnt eaten anything, and was depressed. Coincidence?

-later

Well, kiddies, sit down and Let Grandpa tell you a story.

When I was a year old, we got a Yellow lba and golden retriever mix. We named her Misty, and I basically grew up with her around me.

Several years passed, and she had a single litter fo puppies. My parents couldn't afford to keep these puppies, so they gave them out to good homes. Afterwards, we took Misty to the Vet, and had her tubes tied, so she could no longer birth puppies.

With nothing to care for, She began to look after me and my brothers. I dont mean barking anytime a stranger came by, or a car rode by. I mean letting us tie her tail in a knot, and she wouldn't look at us side ways. If any one raised their voice at us, she would begin to snarl and bark viciously. It didn't matter if it was my dad, or one of my best friends, she would defend me and my brothers.


Tell me that doesn't prove love in atleast dogs. Sadly, Misty got a tumor in her leg, we couldn't afford the surgery, so we put her to sleep, 6 years ago.


Now for another story about a dog. This one was more recent.

About 3 years ago, we got a little dog by the name of Jake. He was a Pug and Chihuahua mix, and so ugly he was cute.

The people we got him from told us that he ahd been left in a room with several, larger dogs, for about a year. Because fo this, he had a eating dissorder, wasn't trusting, skittish, and developed a howl that made him sound like a wounded chicken.

Soon after we got Jake, my brother recieved from his girlfriend a cute little Kitten by the Name of Ishtar. She was about the coolest pet I ever had, but taht is beside the point.

We gave them each seperate food. Jake wouldn't touch the food in his bowl. Instead, you had to feed him by hand, or else he would steal food from Ishtar. We wouldn't keep the food down that long, because he ran off under the table and proceeded to throw it back up.


Tell me that doesn't prove emotionally abused?

alright, i see what ur getting at.

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THEY HAVE NO LOVE, NO HATE, NO JEALOUSY.

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but, do we know exactly how an animal feels? do we know how they react in every situation? ah, no. just because scientists have spent countless hours studing them, doesnt mean we see how they will react everyday in life. every encounter to them is different, so that sofisticated you speak of, flaws some of your arguements, for we can not be certain. As someone said before, animals dont speak, they use garbled squeaks and grunts; so how do we know what they are feeling? they cant tell us, can they?

-later

I've noticed that there has been a trend of complete denial that animals have a capacity to feel. When I, BruceLee, and others say that animals are sentient, we mean that all animals with a central nervous system and nerve endings
(the essentials to sentience, and feelings) have the capacity to feel physical pain, and emotional pain. When an animal is being physically abused, they may not express their pain the exact way us humans do. They may wimper, jump, twitch or begin abnormal, self-destructive behavior. For instance: Due to the appalling and dangerous environment of factory farms( hens forced to live in their own waste- which, of course makes them proned to a titanic amount of diseases and disorders), hens tend to develop cannibalistic behaviors(extremely abnormal in chickens). So the poultry industry's solution to this problem is to cut their beaks off, so that they can't cannibalize the other living commodities( chickens). Emotional abuse is often hard to detect in human victims, so naturally, it would be hard for someone to find evidence of mental abuse in non-human animals. However, sentient animals do fall victim to emotional abuse, whether it be inflicted by themselves, their peers, or humans.

Your quote:

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"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

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Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948) Indian philosopher


knightinshiningarmor

I think I'm pretty good at accepting other people's opinions, morals, and values, but you are just plain misinformed, ignorant, and otherwise WRONG when you say that tofu is "nasty-tasting crap." When prepared by a half-decent cook, tofu can be mouth-watering, earth-shatteringly delicious. (Just so you know...)


Love, Jenny

Humans built this world eh?

Well, I guess we, piece by piece:
-built the DNA structure for each and every living thing.
-Carved and shaped the mountains to exact specifications to allow changes in the air currents and temperature, not to mention humidity and oxygen content.
-Atomically fused each and every atom together to form every microleter of water/air/soil/sand/etc. That exists on this planet.
-This entire planet into motion around the sun and throught he universe.


Im sorry if that was too complicated for your wee-little brain, but no one species created this world, thank you very much.

i seriously found your story very insightful and heartbreaking, and i think that you did the right thing. you ended the deers suffering; you related to it and understood that it did suffer, and you stopped it because that would be what you would want. i applaud. it's not like you superimposed it on the deer like a hunter or something. that shows a great deal of respect and courage.

i to have killed an animal. my brother actually shot a goose with a bee bee gun (stop me if you've heard this before) and broke it's neck. it layed on the bank of the creek, head violently trashing the mud and under the water while its body hoplessly dragged itself on to the land. honking. i'll never forget. than my brother laughed and dropped the gun. i told him he knew what he had to do, but he said he couldn't (laughing still). i hopped over the creek with the gun, pumped it a bunch of times and shot it in the head. i remember the blood running down from the other side. i must have shot him about four or five times before i knew he was dead. (honking; pain; death;) for what? i cried sometime after that; it was traumatic.

the dali lama has been excavated from his home, had his land taken over, beliefs stompped on and his people killed. Yet he will always be the cheerful, compassionate, peacfull buddhist monk he always has been; leader and shining example to so many!!!!; yet he knows that he has the moral high ground. FREE TIBET!!!!!!! there's somethings you can't take from someone.... that's where the important s*** is. (read the art of happiness- its his latest, amazing interpretation of world issues).

marine. are you speaking? i could have sworn you were? well i'll just reply this; i bet if you could lick yourself (and you probably have tried), you would to. certain animals adapted all the advantages!!!!!!!it's just not fair now is it!!!!

veganism is along road off; but in the end people are xenophobic and are not easily swayed. maybe it'll find a place in our culture SOMEDAY.

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and in my opinion a huge bridge in human evolution would be crossed if the socially conformed way was to NOT eat animals or exploit them; showing a respect for all living creatures shows that people can be compassionate toward not only other beings but even more so toward other humans; peacefull people live less complicated lives because they are at peace with all and themselves

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The problem with that is that cultures don't evolve the same way genes do. That means reletively uniformly and gradually. This brings up the problem that the "peaceful" culture will most likely be eventually destroyed or overwhelmed by the agressive one. Human history has shown this. Untill our genes change signifigantly, I don't see your vision happening any time soon. After all, look what happened to the major Buddhist coutnries, China turned communist/atheist and then invaded the Dahli Lama's home coutnry Tibet.

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but i wish that you could look into the eyes of gasping, shaking, terrified, bleeting(and bleeding) cow as the life force SLOWLY is drained till all that is left is his entrails on the crimson assembly line floor and say that, "it didn't feel it or it's only a cow not a person, whats the big deal";

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Actually, I've gone through a similar situation. One night about three years ago (ironically it was Christmas Day, coming home from my grandparents) my mother hit two deer. One of them (the buck) got up and apparrently wasn't injured and ran away. The doe however had a compound fracture in it's leg, and apparenlty it's insides weren't together because the skin was broken and a few inches of intestine was exposed (bear with me here). We didn't have a cell phone and the nearest police/animal control station was at least fifteen minutes away. So we decided the best course of action was to put it down, unfortunately the only weapon I had to do this with was my pocket knife. I commenced to cutting it's throat, which I did as quickly as possible and let it bleed out. It took only thirty or fourty seconds. And to top it off the doe's fawn walked out of the woods about halfway through. If you can think of a more sentimentally damaging situation, then you've got a good imagination. However I don't regret my actions. It was for the best in the end. This again, is an experiance that I have had that you have not. And I had it before I was tainted with any other experiances that gave me a bais to think it was cruel.

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kntinshngarmr you should check out a jane goodal book (REASON FOR HOPE was an insightful one). you'll learn that gorillas (who are animals just as we are animals) have highly complicated social interactions and behaviors; they have politics involved in the groups that are based on mental tactics, intelligence, and the ability to manipulate other gorillas and situations. she observed highly complicated behavior in the "families". almost human like....... primitive huh?

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This is one of the reasons I think we should treat higher primates with more respect. They have shown that they are highly intelligent and may even have hints of consciousness.

Sinope: I'll check out that book, just to see if I can relate to your point of view. I, being a country boy, live on a ranch. We sometimes have to shoot cattle who have broken legs, bad illnesses, etc, but never kill them for the fun of it. You can't expect the whole world to go vegan, sinope. As a matter of fact, some people are allergic to tofu and all that nasty-tasting crap. I DO appreciate your love for animals, I love them, to, but your goals are set too high.

"and in my opinion a huge bridge in human evolution would be crossed if the socially conformed way was to NOT eat animals or exploit them"

You are right sinope, then we can all live in heards, scavange for plants, clean our selves with our tongues, abandon our entire idea of civilization. We should also consider letting deer serve on the house of representatives. Get over your self.

Last time I checked, humans built this world.

i agree with sinope.

i feel like a hypocrite; i work at a restaurant, and cook dead animal flesh for people so i can go to school to become a veteranarian. ironic, no? couldn't education be free and i wouldn't have to compromise my "morals".(kind of off subject-just a thought i had at work)

strglve; your right. i said it before; it IS a matter of ethics; and in my opinion a huge bridge in human evolution would be crossed if the socially conformed way was to NOT eat animals or exploit them; showing a respect for all living creatures shows that people can be compassionate toward not only other beings but even more so toward other humans; peacefull people live less complicated lives because they are at peace with all and themselves ,not at war with living creatures and the rest of the world (buddhist monks have the most interconnected, beautiful attitude toward sentient beings)..... you will never convince me that an earthworm has no place in the universe and deserves to be taken advantage. are people really that primitive......i guess so though huh

knitshngarmr.
And how can YOU say that animals don't feel or have emotions....... do you????? how do i know??? i'm not you!!!!!! i kind of have an idea that you do because your a human..... you are also a living breathing procreating life form\ so i get the impression that just might be a universal experience. put yourself in another creatures "hoofs" for once. it's called empathy. look it up.

the pictures on that site are disturbing; but i wish that you could look into the eyes of gasping, shaking, terrified, bleeting(and bleeding) cow as the life force SLOWLY is drained till all that is left is his entrails on the crimson assembly line floor and say that, "it didn't feel it or it's only a cow not a person, whats the big deal"; now i'm not comparing it to the holocaust or anything like that- wait i am in way- the attitude is similar (WE ARE SUPERIOR, AND TAKING ADVANTAGE OF ANOTHER "LIFE" IS JUSTIFIED). i know most won't agree, but y0u couldn't convince me other wise.

kntinshngarmr you should check out a jane goodal book (REASON FOR HOPE was an insightful one). you'll learn that gorillas (who are animals just as we are animals) have highly complicated social interactions and behaviors; they have politics involved in the groups that are based on mental tactics, intelligence, and the ability to manipulate other gorillas and situations. she observed highly complicated behavior in the "families". almost human like....... primitive huh? how does an ant communicate; or does it? yes it does; maybe not the hoky poky or anything that sophisticated but maybe animals have evolved different ways toooo communicate.
if they'ed evolved similarly to us, they would probably be us, or "us" like, right; they must have done something right though. why rob them of this.

i was just trying to give you a veiw of what its like being an animal. although i wouldnt know specifically. i am trying to put things into perspective. we are much to sophisticated to be taken over by animals, i agree, but nobody can predict the future. but i didnt make myself clear in my last post (i apoligize) but, the way you might see something is not the only way to see things; there are others.

-later

The fact of the matter is that animals will never take over the planet. We are far too sophisticated and advanced to let that happen. Animals have no human feelings, no love or compassion. A perfect example of this are the wild herds of horses. The Alpha male of the herd has no feelings towards the mares, only the instinct to impregnate them. THEY HAVE NO LOVE, NO HATE, NO JEALOUSY.