You’re kidding Kiwi? We have the ability to give an animal a painless end to it’s suffering, but you think it’s selfish not to make it suffer until it’s very last breath? You call making Granny rot in agony until her body finally gives out “respect”?
Colour me surprised. I’d heard a lot of the “making an animal suffer is selfish and cruel” school of thought, but until just now I’d never heard the “killing a dying animal to bring a speedy end to it’s pain is selfish and cruel” line.
No I don’t think it is selfish to put an animal down, just hypocrtical. We do it because the animal is suffering with no hope of recovery. So Voila a nice neat trip to the vet and we don’t have to see the suffering anymore.
We just don’t have the same humanity to humans.
I sat in a cage at the vets for 2 hours with my best canine mate. She wasn’t going to get better we all knew that but her eyes never left mine, lots and lots of cuddles and (me) talking the whole time and she died when it was her time (and I stayed there for another half hour)…just like Grandma.
If I may quote a hero of mine, David Hume:
There seems to be a tacit agreement amongst many here – particularly those arguing that it is morally bankrupt to rescue a dog before a person – that there is an inherent moral code that dictates one’s universal behaviours. I’d just like to point out that such a rationalist viewpoint is purely faith-driven. There is no way of demonstrating that it is so.
If my dog affords me pleasure (and will continue to do so for the next decade), it could be that my personal utility is served much more readily by ensuring its survival than the survival of a random stranger. In such a situation, it is not possible to show that it is unreasonable for me to act in my self-interest.
To put it onto a more direct level: there are people starving now in all areas of the world that you could help, if you wanted to enough. You choose not to. The reason you choose this is because you are not willing to entail the personal self-sacrifice necessary. This demonstrates the point that the duality of “saving people” and “personal happiness” as a continuum. Just because you draw your line in one place, doesn’t mean that others aren’t correct to draw their line elsewhere.
pan
My last post probably didn’t say what I wanted. I believe we need to be able to euthanise people. To me it seems cruel that we can put kitty out of her misery but not mum/dad/granny etc.
I adore animals but I believe if we can’t treat humans decently then animals have no chance.
We are a selfish species. “Putting animals to sleep” highlights this. We hate to see pain.
If I have the choice to euthanise it will be on a loved one in pain. Till then my pets will die when their time is up…just like people or animals in the wild, I won’t kill them early to ease my own mind.
I agree that we should be able to legally euthanise those who want their pain ended. Granny shouldn’t have to go on if she doesn’t want to and isn’t going to get better. I just don’t understand withholding that same humane death from a dog or cat. To each his own.
It isn’t witholding the same humane end though. The “humane” end is only allowed for animals. I love my animals enough to let them go when it’s their time…they get no more love then Grandma does. I won’t kill them so I don’t have to see them suffer.
I’m not sure if you counted my post (#51) but if so I would like to make my point in a more forceful way. No one is required to go into a burning building at all. It is a dangerous, life-threatening act. Choosing not to act is not consigning anyone to death. Whoever chooses to act does so for his own reasons. This is not a case of simply deciding who will live or die, but who (or what) will I risk my life for, and no one can tell me that. Now in my post I said that there were some humans whom I would not save. By no means would I say that **most **humans are less worth saving than my dogs. The choice remains mine, however.
kabbes, you misrepresent Hume with your quote. His point is only that immorality is not irrational. He is no relativist and does recognize the difference between moral and immoral actions, he merely doesn’t believe you can derive moral rules from reason, which is correct, but irrelevant to the present discussion.
Further there is a bit more at stake than merely personal preference. On most continental European countries there is a civil and criminal legal, as well as a moral, obligation for ‘easy rescue’ of strangers. That a person doesn’t care about strangers doesn’t detract from his obligation to rescue them. I know anglosaxon law is different in that respect, but that isn’t generally considered to be a positive state of affairs (see the debate among legal scholars on that issue).
Who said it does? However, it unequivocably demonstrates you to be a moron if you do so, and yes, I dislike morons in general.
Who here declared that to be their biggest concern? It’s rather low on my list.
And still, the only reasoning you’ve shown to support your point is that dogs and people are different. I was aware of that; your claim that this proves your point is incorrect. You have said nothing to support your case that dogs are incapable of love and your point becomes less and less meaningful the more you avoid addressing it.
I think people who get worked up over sports and spend hundreds of dollars on tickets or paraphenalia to be morons. I’m not going to dislike them for it, though. It’s their money.
I wish I could find a link to this, but I remember reading an article a few years back about pets who had been locked inside with basically friendless people who passed away. The article stated that it took a few days before a cat would start nibbling on the corpse, but a dog would typically take over a week or two and be on the verge of starvation before it would start to chew on the corpse. I think you misrepresent matters when you insinuate that a dog will immediately start chowing down on a “recently” deceased owner. I think in most situations, that is distinctly not the case.
And as many have already stated, when people are put in a do or die situation, many have been known to eat human flesh as a last resort to cling onto life.
I don’t think this particular sentence really proves anything as far as a dog “loving” or not “loving” its family.
If you beat your dog consistently, it would start to become reluctant to come to you. It would begin to hide from you. And it some cases it would snap at you.
But you are right in that a typical dog will forgive an occassional ass whipping.
Here’s a (no doubt annoying to you) quote to think about. This is a board about fighting ignorance after all.
Quote[I’m sometimes asked “Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?” I answer: “I am working at the roots.” -George T. Angell, reformer (1823-1909)]Quote
Those people you rant and rave about, dear Guest, the rapists, murderers, abusers, etc.; where, precisely, do you think they get their start? Yeah, animals. Not always, but often. It’s well documented, but I’m not doing your research for you. Look it up yourself if you have the conviction to back up your argument. Your concern, it seems, is that human suffering trumps animal suffering. The two are tightly intertwined. There is good animal husbandry and bad. Humans, IMHO, have an obligation to treat animals, including food animals, in a reasonably humane manner. You don’t need to buy gold water dishes; you DO need to supply water. Understand? I’m not some PETA freak; I believe militant activists actually do more harm than good, because they marginalize and sideline their agenda by virtue of their acts, but that’s another thread. Perhaps, if society intervened with animal torturers and abusers, we might be able to “work at the roots”, so to speak? And perhaps prevent those horrid human abusers, rapists, etc. from evolving in the first place? Don’t count on it 
. The human condition seems to me, sometimes, to be set on auto-destruct. :smack: But hey, if you still think charcoaling dogs is no big deal, fuck you, asshole. :wally
Hey, when did I say barbecuing the dog wasn’t wrong? Not once.
Part of what set me off was that when the tv station I was with teased the story, we were inundated with calls about why we shouldn’t air the story. I answered my fair share and 97% of them were people who just couldn’t bear the idea of a burnt puppy. Daily news includes murders every day, kidnappings every day. I wrote plenty of teases for stories covering those issues. No one complained about that. Not once.
I’m well aware that animal abuse in children is a major warning sign of future violent, psychotic behavior. People should be outraged about what the kids did. I just don’t think what kind of animal it was is a valid factor in that outrage. Those kids exhibited red-flag anti-social behavior. They probably won’t get the kind of help they need as poor as they are. That is what outrages me the most.
I still believe firmly that if it had been a middle class white guy burned, there would have been far less public outcry. People probably would have been disappointed at the lack of pictures. I guess I’m a fucking asshole and a putz because I want to see a fucked-up kid get help but I’m not sad a puppy got burnt.
Actually, I agree with you entirely except for the fact that it is irrelevant to the discussion. I obviously didn’t make my point very well. I shall do so in a less verbose fashion.
Boiled down, my point is that there are many in this thread who are attempting to use reason to argue a moral case – namely that morally you should rescue a person before a dog. We have seen axioms such as “a person is more important than a dog” put forward as proofs of this with no recognition than they are no more proof than “A=A”. I want people to stop doing this and recognise that one can have a moral code that says “help thyself first” and it would be no less subject to reason than any other.
On your other point: I’ll merely say that rescuing someone from a burning building hardly qualifies as ‘easy rescue’ of strangers!
pan
We hear stories all the time about abused spouses and kids for whom this is also true.
Except your dog is much less likely to one day decide to bludgeon you or set fire to you in your sleep.
Now, crustaceans as pets - I’m willing to concede that they don’t love their owners, not as we conceive of the emotion. And it’s hell getting a lobster to come when called. (“Water’s boiling!”).