If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
Okay, let's do it then.
Plants? Bacteria? Skin cells? Foetuses? Personally, I would say that we only have a moral obligation to that which can think, feel and is conscious. That's because I link morality with the infliction of suffering, and by definition, those things cannot suffer. Of course, I recognise that's slightly dangerous, because we only recently (in the grand scheme of things) discovered that animals can suffer, though I suppose the evidence was always there.
Yep. Any action a person takes that has potential risks means that person is assigning an ordinal value to thier own life. Any action that puts others at risk assigns an ordinal value on other peoples lives. Hence your list of what you consider important. To say you cannot put value on life is ridiculous; it would mean people act completely irrationally when facing risk.
I'm not sure how I've ended up aiming this at you actually - I'm pissed. I agree with some of what you say. I don't agree with you that eating animals is the same as chuckign them off a cliff however.
You have on the past stated that you think alllife is equal. I do not.
Which is why I find it a little sad that some people seem so passionate about the loss of a little puppy in iraq but seem less bothered about the constent human sufferring there.
If you want. I'm about to go out though. But it's not as if there's much the debate on this thread in general, so I don't see the problem with carrying it on here.
Well maybe. I wouldn't knbow until put in that situation but the jist of iut waas that you can put one life before another.,
You wouldn't put the soldier before the pup no?
Of course not. I merely poitning out your hyporcisy (once again) in taking pleasure in the though of doing horrible things to somebody who's done another horrible thing. Your plagued by hypocracy.
You are some sort of cunt arn't you. I'll keep bringing that up as long as you keep being a cunt. I've said some stupid thing on here, and I'm sure I will again, but nothing I'll ever post will come as close to idiotic as that.
Bors chooses to save a maiden rather than his brother Lionel
Decisions decisions...
You've answered my question. You htinkt eh life of a pup is worth more. I think that's wrong.
[QUOTE=MattLiverpool;2122186I've got a dog, i love him, to pieces. i've also got a bat next to my computer. If anyone hurt my dog, i'd crack it over their head, i wouldn't think twice about breaking their shins so they would never walk in their life again. That's not sarcasm either, my dog is a lovely little Yorkshire Terrier, he has feelings, he cries when he's in pain, he gets sad, he gets annoyed at me when i shout at him and he shows affection when he's happy. He's not "just a dog" so when i see another dog thrown off a cliff for no reason it's nearly as bad as someone throwing a human off a cliff, only my dog is totally innocent in the purest of forms.[/QUOTE]
I have one to, that 'I love pieces' but if some sort of sick choice had to be made between that of my dog and that of a stranger I know which I would choose. And with clear thought I wouldnb'twishing for the death of anybody who harmed hit either.
Yorkshire Terrier
You'd take pleasure in deathg of somebody who took pleasure in the death of this pup. That's hypocracy right there.
You can disagree with me all you life. Wouldn't life be mundane if we all tought the same, but keep acting like patronising prick and I will keep bring up your sick views on rape.
Nobody's defending him, but I don't really see that comments suggesting you'd take pleasure in his death are particulary well though out or helpful.
Damn right ironic actaully.
:chin:
Really all this bickering is a bit daft though isn't it?
I guess people can get quite emotive.
I'm very logical about this kind of thing with one exception, which was one guy who my ex was cheating on me with. I really would love to lop his balls off with a machete, or something.
But that's why we have an impartial judiciary system
In that case it's a useless theory isn't it? If you say in theory all lives are equal, but in real life you do something different, it's not very credible is it.
I agree with that. You also have to understand people vent their anger in different ways and most likely not one person that said he should die would be able watch or justify it when it came to the crunch
Underatndable if it's your own dog, if my dog was hurt by anyone my actions wouldn't be accounted for but this is a dog at the other side of the world that has no connection with you whatsoever. Meaning the same buttons aren't pressed when it doesn't actually belong to you
I guess ANYONE with a natural instinct would kill the dog before it mauled the kid, all only natural, but there is some sick cunts out there
You can hold the moral belief that all people are entitled to the same pursuit of interest, yet when we get to the real world, sometimes rights clash, sometimes things bugger up. For example, issues surrounding individual rights versus cultural rights. Nothing is straight forward. We have debates surrounding the practice of Islam and women, we have debates which question the cultural relativity of FGM, the case of Ashley X, we question abortion, we question and euthanasia... The list is huge.
Any moral view, from whatever spectrum is hard to put in to practice once whittled down to the core value. It does not discredit the view itself that society does not have an impact on how that idea is put in place, it is just that in the real world, there are several other factors to consider.
Which is something that can be irritating with studying philosophy, it is just people throwing ideas out and suggesting how they do/could work. It does not mean that they can be put in to practice and work perfectly, but there is still potential to live by one's own morals as best one can.
If we're talking about the sanctity of life of all sentient beings as being an end in itself and a universal good, it is impossible to live without hurting another creature. We can live as best we can, we can avoid killing for pleasure, we can boycott L'oreal, buy ethically traded goods, lobby governments.... But no human being is perfect.
Apparently all soldiers are moral super heroes, with the moral understanding of Hobbes, the philosophical underpinning of Locke and the strength of character of Martin Luther King.
Jesus.
What else do you expect of people who kill for cash?
They. Kill. Human. Beings. For. Money.
The solider threw the puppy over the cliff because he got some sort of pleasure out of it, be that in the form of having a laugh, thinking he looks big, whatever. People who eat meat do so because they get pleasure out of it.
You can't argue it is necessary in this day and age to eat meat, because it isn't. If it were, I would have been dead about 13 years ago. The reason people do eat it is because they want to, they enjoy it, and they don't really think about the reality of what they are doing. The minute an animal is shown being slaughtered on TV there will be a barrage of complaints about how "we don't need to see that and we don't need to be reminded where meat comes from". Well I think people DO need to be reminded, because if you personally couldn't go out and kill an animal, prepare it, cook it and eat it then obviously you feel there is something wrong with doing so. If you can, then fair enough, I have a lot more respect for people who do that rather than just buy it all in a nice packet from the supermarket then get the arse the minute they show a chicken having its neck broken on TV.
As for the issue of human versus animal life, you don't have to give them both equal moral weight to think there is something wrong with throwing puppies over cliffs or eating meat. Of COURSE I value human life above animal life, of course I would eat meat in a life or death situation. Some people might eat human flesh in a life or death situation, doesn't mean they don't value human life or think human life has moral significance.
I wasn't going to post on this thread 'cos I didn't want to derail it, but I actually found people's reactions to the video quite shocking. I don't understand why anyone would think it is ridiculous to compare this guy's actions with eating meat, apart from the fact that 1. puppies are cute and not something we in the West usually consider should be eaten, and 2. because the closest most people have come to seeing their dinner being slaughtered is something they cringingly turned away from on the TV.
The fact that soliders are out in countries seeing and doing what most of us would consider some truely atrocious things and yet people are getting more upset about a puppy also really astounds me.
It's all about what can be considered normal or expected behaviour vs. cruel behaviour. Killing an animal for pleasure is cruel. Killing an animal to eat is just the way things are. Your logic about people eating it exclusively because they enjoy it is wrong because you've jumped to conclusions without considering the wider story. It's not some random behavioural defect that causes unneccessary suffering, people eat meat because it's their instinct to do so.
I really don't like having to justify me eating meat though. It makes me feel sad that people would look at me eating a burger or whatever and rather than look at me as a person would see me as a horrid animal abuser. The difference with this soldier is he is directly abusing this animal for his own enjoyment. Can't you see the distinction?
The soldiers actions no more wrong than eating meat? Yeah, that's not going to alienate anyone.
I can see where you're coming from in the sense that it is part of our understanding of animals in our culture that we eat them. We do seem to have an inbuilt "double-think" when thinking about animals - we tell children not to hurt them, that they must always treat them kindly, we take them to zoos and encourage them to marvel at the wonder and beauty of animals, then we tell them to eat up their lamb chops and don't ask why. When I look at someone eating meat, I don't think - "urgh, you disgusting animal abuser". My family all eat meat, my friends do. It is something more than that.
To me, an animal is something that just should not be eaten in normal circumstances. I have a sense of animals as fellow creatures, subject to the same contingencies and mortality as I am. There is a sense animals have their own lives, as Matt was saying - he sees that his dog can be sad or happy, excited, lonely...I can't then turn a blind eye to that and eat one. Funnily enough, I don't even like animals. I've never had a pet, would never want one, and generally try to avoid them at all costs. But I still feel there is something more to them than just things that are there for me to eat. I can't view them in the same way I would a carrot.
And it doesn't matter that it is the way things are, or that it is socially acceptable, it doesn't make it any more right. It isn't like we are all going out hunting for our food as is perhaps the more "natural" way to do things. We in the West consume disgustingly vast quantites of meat while having little appreciation of where it comes from, and that is one of the things I have the biggest problem with. You have said it is natural to eat meat, it is an instinct, but the whole enterprise of meat-eating that we have is nothing even remotely resembling natural. I can go and pick a tomato off a plant in my garden, how many people could actually go and kill a rabbit?
If the solider had gone down to the bottom of the cliff, scooped up the remains of the puppy, skinned it and eaten it, would that somehow make it more acceptable? Do we know for sure that there aren't one or two individuals who work in slaughterhouses killing animals for our meat don't get some sick pleasure or have a laugh about what they are doing?
Did the puppy suffer any more being thrown off the cliff than it would have done had it been subject to the conventional methods of slaughter used in the UK today? For the animal, the end result is the same. If you knew that the person who had slaughtered your dinner really enjoyed their job, would you not eat the meat? Just curious.
I can accept that most people see a big difference between the two, but I genuinely don't get what the difference is. I'm not trying to be moralistic or superior but when I read the posts I honestly just don't get it.
The problem with the "it's just a dog" theory is that it truly takes a special kind of sick fuck to torture animals. What else he might be getting up to when not smiling for candid camera is a very valid question that can't be ignored regardless of your sensibilities. To draw a vague parallel, the US soldiers who tortured, humiliated and degraded human beings in Abu Ghraib made it clear they thought of those prisoners as dogs, posing for photographs with collared human beings on leads. Obviously not every soldier thinks like that - not even close - but if parallels can be drawn then I think it's well worth getting fired up about. Civilians in countries with US/UK army presence are so very, very often treated worse than those soldiers would treat a dog... so the fact that the representatives of our countries over there could maliciously lob a dog off a cliff speaks volumes to me about the way they may be treating the humans. Despicable acts of violence (against human or animal) are rarely isolated and NEVER justifiable. Never. They can be downplayed as much as anybody wants through comparisons and attempts to make people look like irrational idiots but the point still stands that anybody who can do that is capable of evil and should not be an ambassador for our country in places where human rights are non-existent or at best never upheld. Should not be involved with any vulnerable living creature.
I don't think comparisons to meat-eating are valid, speaking as someone who has been a vegetarian for many years now. There are issues relating to meat-eating but they are not blanket issues and they are not really relative to this behaviour in my opinion.
I didn't watch the video, I have no desire to see it. The world's ugly enough without seeing that on a Sunday morning...
I don't know. I'd imagine it wouldn't have been fully conscious at the time of death in a slaughterhouse had it been stunned.
Depends on the pleasure they get out of it. If it's a sadistic, knee trembling, lip licking pleasure, then I'd think they have to get out more, but it wouldn't stop me from eating it as their pleasure is detached and unknown to mine. Plus, as long as the animal was slaughtered in the usual way, it doesn't matter what the person thought to be honest, although I think your assumptions are a bit far fetched, I'd imagine most people working in the industry are more concerned about mundane day-to-day things!
Well, pleasure comes in different flavours. That's pretty much it.
But that's life. Species eating other species.
It's certainly not morally wrong to eat meat. Some farming practices are on dodgy ground but me eating a few chops that were once part of a happy lamb is not morally wrong.
It's not as though we're all goign out foraging for berries and digging up tubers either is it. Not all farming practices are bad.
And it's far from 'natural' to be a vegan or vegetarian that suppliment your diet with things so that you can avoid meat.
I agree that the packaged meat you get in supermarket make sit very easy for people to forget where it came from which is sad, and that if they doi have a problem with the source then maybe they shoudl think twice about eating it.
I for one have no problems in killing an animal for food, I used to go shooting a lot, and picking a bird out of the sky would be as easy for me as pickign a tomato out my garden.
That doesn't mean that the person who then goes on to eat those animals is as 'wrong' as them doies it?
I really fail to see how people can't grasp the difference. The end result is the same lfor the animal granted, but there is a clear difference in morals between somebody doing it for the sake of pain and suffering and somebody doing it for food.
It just seems like people don't care about the potential suffering of an animal or someone getting pleasure out of killing an animal as long as it goes on in the "detached and unknown" way in which you describe. As long as I don't know about it, it doesn't really matter if the animal suffered, or someone thought it was funny watching a chicken's throat get slit in the slaughterhouse, or whatever.
I guess I find it hard to understand 'cos in a way I think if it was the case that someone were throwing people over cliffs, or killing people quickly and then eating them, I would think both were equally hard to understanding and I couldn't draw much distinction between which was worse, but people do with animals, even people that seem to value their pets in the same way they value members of their own family. I guess it is this kind of dualistic thinking about animals that I am trying to get to the bottom of.
But yeah I also think the point someone made earlier about the fact that these people are getting paid to kill is very significant.