I thought that was what ‘Bambi syndrome’ meant, but googling indicates that that’s more a general term for romanticizing nature, or possibly eschewing cruel and harsh reality for a fairy-tale version/view of it. It still seems broadly applicable, at least.
It’s not jealousy. If you do actually believe what the OP says, you are dangerous. Luckily, most people who make those claims do not actually believe what they say. I seriously doubt, for example, that anyone the OP mentions actually feels that way, and I hope no Doper does.
They just put a little more value on the lives of animals than the OP does, and are likely more sensitive in general. (I’m a pretty sensitive guy, but not being able to stand the death of animals in fiction is pretty bad, and makes me wonder if there’s some traumatic experience in the past causing the problem, or if the people involved are clinically depressed, as that initially presents with an overabundance of this type of emotion.)
Final addendum to the above: I definitely think that people who can’t watch animals in fiction do have a problem, not in the sense that I am judging them, but that they cannot avoid this at all, let alone without severe impact on their lives. Again, I’m pretty sensitive to sensitivity, but there are some things that you do have to learn to deal with, and the existence of animals onscreen or their harm in fiction is something that you will have to deal with.
It’s the same reason a phobia of water may not have to be dealt with, but one of cars does (in most of the country). It’s not a judging thing. A way of thinking that severely and negatively impacts your own life is one of the definitions of a mental disorder. The distress these people feel does in fact harm them.
Excellent OP and one I’ve been wondering myself for a while now, but never bothered posting because, well, look at the all the responses here making out you’re the weird one when you aren’t.*
I like animals and I certainly do not wish harm upon domestic or harmless animals, but I’m perplexed by people who treat animals generally as little furry (or feather, or leather-skinned) babies who are just like us, except for the fact they’re not, and get all sad and outraged whenever anything slightly bad happens to an animal anywhere on the planet.
Personally, I think Disney movies, social media and the increasing female-oriented focus of the Western media have a lot to do with all this, as unpopular a view as that may be.
Let me reiterate: It is not cool to hurt domestic cats, dogs, cows, sheep, etc etc. People who do so (and humanely hunting/culling them for food or feral pest control does not count as “hurting them” for the purposes of this argument) need professional help - but comparing them to horrible monsters who should only be mentioned in the same context as Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao is, IMHO, a chronic over-reaction.
Ultimately, I believe people are more important than animals - but it’s important for people and animals to live side by side (or not, depending how dangerous/endangered the animal is) since we do need each other too.
*Martini’s Law, folks!
Have you met/interacted with other peoples’ children? Cause I have Hummel figurines I value over the lives of certain specific examples of other peoples’ kids. And the thing is, I hate Hummel figurines.
And to me (who tends to relate better to animals than people) this post makes me INCREDIBLY sad. And angry, a bit. To wall yourself off from loving anything but humans, to deliberately not care and to teach your children to not care is… warped, somehow. My animals have brought me joy and love in ways most of the humans in my life have not, and cannot. They are and have been my base of stability, my teachers in ways that no school could teach, my dear friends and yes, family.
They are NOT my children, but they are as close as I’m ever going to get to having children. I didn’t want kids (which many people find bizarre, but I can’t help it, it’s the way I’m wired), I’ve always wanted to be around animals. I seriously need them in my life in a visceral way.
I DO care about human suffering too though. I think I react less to tales of adult human tragedies than to things that happen to animals or children because kids and animals do not understand explanations, they can’t be told what’s going on and what will happen. All they know is the pain or fear of the moment, and that’s hard for me to watch.
FW little IW, I don’t like movies where animals die (except Seabiscuit sort of things) and I also don’t like the shoot’em up movies with blazing guns and explosions and people being blown away. The world is too full of that already, I don’t need to see it as entertainment.
On an individual level sure, but on a grand scale, it does make sense.
It’s a horrible numbers game, but if somehow the governments of the world were forced to choose between killing 15 million people versus wiping out the mountain gorillas (880 estimated left in the wild), killing the 15 million wouldn’t really make a dent in much of anything since there are 6+ billion people (assuming they were randomly chosen, or not in critical occupations) , but the gorillas would be gone forever.
Dogs are people too, y’know.
Before you scoff, read it. It’s actually really interesting research.
Moderator Action
While this thread started out as a factual question, it has since strayed pretty far into opinion territory.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
If there is, maybe it could also apply to that strange tendency to stop caring about the fate of kids after they reach puberty.
Disappeared eleven year old = Nationwide search parties.
Disappeared seventeen year old = Shrug. Probably is up to no good somewhere.
Exploited and maybe killed 10 year old = Outrage.
Exploited and maybe killed 19 year olds = Fuck 'em, I want my new sneakers on the cheap and my soldiers athletic, young and enthusiastic.
Since this thread seems to have left GQ territory some time ago, let’s move it to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Wasn’t that already done?
The thing is, it’s hard to argue that there is some intrinsic moral value to the survival of a species—after all, species have always died out, and necessarily so, as they failed to adapt to changing circumstances (circumstances which, in this case, include the presence of humans). But killing people is morally bad.
The trouble is that you can’t enter with animals into the same kind of moral relationship you can enter into with humans, because these relationships are based on a reciprocity animals are incapable of. I can trust you to follow certain moral guidelines because you understand their necessity; animals, by and large, don’t—they are guided by instinct, not reason. Morality is a transaction between individuals, or individuals and society; but animals can’t partake in these transactions. They can’t be awarded the same moral rights as people, because they can’t be saddled with the same moral responsibilities. A sufficiently hungry lion, unless somehow restrained, will kill and eat me; but of a person, I can justifiably expect to respect my right to live, and in turn, I will respect theirs.
That’s of course not an argument towards causing harm towards animals (although I suppose there’ll be some taking it about as well as if I’d just invited everybody along on my baby-seal-clubbing tour). It’s perfectly consistent to have ingrained in our societal morals a principle of causing no undue harm, or something similar. It’s just a plea to not go about this too naively, causing more animosity than necessary. Animals aren’t just people too, because we can’t form a mutual society (in contrast, we could do so with, e.g., intelligent aliens, with the morals of this society dictating the behaviours between aliens and humans). So there’s a clear difference regarding morality between humans and animals.
You seem to be making rather a leap of an assumption. I’m not arguing the opposite, I don’t know nearly enough about it, but simply stating that animals are amoral just 'cuz won’t do the trick.
Here is a professor of philosophy arguing the other end. You could also look into Frans de Waal and Mark Bekoff.
I haven’t argued that animals are amoral, I argued that they can’t reason in the same way humans can.
We humans seem to reason ourselves into “moral” stances that are frankly flabbergasting. I think that unreasoning and probably instinctual compassion (or even aggression) in animals is often easier to understand and deal with.
Oh, ok. Thought that was what you meant by
That would make them amoral, no?
Nevertheless, I’m not sure arguing that animals and humans differ because of their capacity to reason gets you very far either. There are plenty of examples to the contrary, on both sides of the spectrum, and they are often cited in discussions in of what it is that makes us human.
Well, it depends on what you intend ‘morality’ to mean. Acting in a way that one would typically think of as ‘nice’ is something animals are definitely capable of; but acting that way for an informed reason, as opposed due to instinctual behavior, then no. And yes, there will always be borderline cases that can be used for endless backs and forths, but it’s enough for all of this to hold in typical cases; requiring a one-size-fits-all set of criteria for what’s moral and what isn’t is both practically useless and impossible in principle.
I’m not sure why you dismiss it out of hand. There was the pet pig whose owner was hurt indoors, and he went out in the road, lay down in the middle until he finally attracted attention and brought people to his hurt owner. There is the story of a dog who repeatedly dipped a tea-towel in his water bowl to bring to his wounded owner to suck, so he didn’t become dehydrated.
Combined with what we know of animals who build tools, and do all sorts of things just like we do, why insist on it being somehow different when animals do it?
It seems more logical to me to accept that we are just the same as animals in most ways. Endlessly searching for what distinguishes as, as the evidence for it is swiftly dissipating before our eyes, seems not just useless but also a little arrogant on our behalf. And dismissing the evidence we keep finding as nothing but borderline cases or exceptions doesn’t really do anything about the fact that we would still be reasoning from the assumption of our own exceptional position, rather than from observation.
Have you read the article I linked to? I know it’s quite long, but I really think it’s worth the read and it’s a nice and easy read, too!
With this, I can heartily agree. Frankly, I don’t really hold with discussions of ethics anyway! 
I love this question as I have pondered it forever. I believe I know the answer (imho) to “what is the psychiatric term for concern for animals over humans” as I have always suffered from it. I have spent many years trying to figure it out in myself. I have an advanced degree in adult education and a thesis related to this question. I have retired from decades teaching teens in a public high school and am now teaching dogs in an off leash daily pack for clients. In other words I have always been working on the issue in myself, and obsessed with how annoying it is in others, too! I address here Animal Rescue and the phenomenon of animal rescuers, the ones who work outside the purvues of official Municipal pounds and humane societies, but you can see that the example of these unofficial rescue organizations is rife with those you are pondering.
Here is what I stumbled upon years ago, in case you were mystified reading the title of my post. Read first about codependence. Best way to describe it is the example of Patty Hearst. Someone has kidnapped you or held your family and yourself hostage. Within that locus of control a heightened fear becomes normal. Rescue is the meta-fantasy that governs you and makes normal what healthy people would consider abnormal, i.e., Patty holding a gun on a bank clerk and doing time for many years, for example… By agreeing to rob a bank she was rescuing herself from murder and further rapes by the SLA that held her captive in a closet for months. (Normally, with no need for rescue, other meta-fantasies, many of them healthier, and less full of tension and fear, can reign in your head.) But you have to be already caught in a siege perception of human behaviour to be codependent.
Ok. If rescue of the helpless, the non-verbal, is possible at all, it will feed a desire to do so. Human victims are often complicit in their captivity as they have the intelligence to fake cooperation, at least, to avoid worst case scenario death. Makes them trickier objects of rescue. Animals: much more straight-forward victims, and less complicated, being more limited, mentally, than humans.
Behind the rescue meta story, however, is the self-imposed injunction to rescue, at all costs. Whether or not it is wise to do so. Whether or not you are the correct person to do so. Whether or not you have the resources or background to do so. Regardless of consequences. With no attempt at self-education on the subject.
With no attempt to seek the advice of others. In fact, lack of courage, in a Messiah Complexed person, is seen as the only obstruction to doing a rescue. The research period is relatively short and unreflective. Does this remind you of something? In what other field but animal rescue, and possibly environmental rescue, are you surrounded by this kind of True Believership? Religion! Cults! Hyperbolic fanaticism asks you to lay down your life for religion. This is the source of the title “Messiah Complex.”
I know one dog walker who looked at the t.v. screen and believed Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer, meant her when he said “Go out and rescue dogs!” as in “Go forth and multiply,” an almost religious preaching as interpreted by this woman. So with no further ado, no apprenticeship in a proper rescue organization, no self analysing about her willingness to persevere in previous impulsive projects, and with no reflection on whether her motives were correct, whether or not she had the time to devote, or the experience or training, and no paperwork at all, she “rescued” a dog that was in a not too bad situation and placed the dog in a much worse one! Never did a home visit, never learned the truth about the home she placed the dog in, till it was too late, never asked mutual friends for help brainstorming the proper way to become a rescuer. I know this because in her circle I was a person she knew well, whom she saw daily, but whom she didn’t know knew the dog’s new improbable owner very well. But she never asked around so how could I even know this was in the offing?
Rescuing at all costs, therefore, because of its catastrophic possibilities, as in the case I just provided, is not simply due to limited education, and an impulsive personality, imho, but is an example of abnormal behaviour falling into those of the DSM, i.e. a psychiatric disorder. Who knows whether it is a personality disorder? If so please do inform me. However, I feel the armchair psychologist’s term “Messiah Complex” applies. The difference between a helpful rescuer, well trained, self-reflective, brave, and effective and an overly emotional, inappropriate rescuer is arrogance.
Arrogance occurs when someone self-authorizes activities beyond her/his jurisdiction as a citizen equal to other citizens, resulting in the imposition upon the needs or preferences or rights of others. The “reasonable man/woman” hypothetical used in courtrooms would be the normal “equal” assigned by non Messiahs. A Messiah allows him/herself jurisdiction to act in other people’s domains by virtue of self-appointment, absent of objective qualifications.
People who rescue animals lay upon the animal an often appropriate assumption of needing rescue, but more importantly, an assertion that the proper authorities need not be informed. Proper authorities are deemed as not worthy of notifying or pressuring…or simply don’t need to know cos they, the neighbourhood Jesuses, or vigilantes, as some call them, know better. By way of example: Rescue organizations pay ransoms for dogs imprisoned in puppy mills making babies for four years to the puppy mill owner. No questions asked. Three hundred dollars per member of breeding pair is the going bribe. In exchange no cops are called, and the puppy mill owner just takes the money from the rescue organization (who pass it on to the adopter) and buys another pair to imprison in a cage for four years as breeding dogs, never exercised. The police are never involved by Rescue Organizations. Go ahead and contact them! Ask! I have!
The difference between a Messiah-Complexed rescuer of animals, or simply a really kind, good, and brave person going beyond the call of duty lies in the amount of time you spend being a “Reflective Practictioner” as we called it in the 80’s and early 90’s…back when being reflective was not a crime of laziness and an obvious mark of ineffectiveness in a corporate, bottom-line era. Of course, you don’t need much reflection in obvious situations where you see an animal in distress or being hurt, etc, like the mothers who lift cars off kids. But if you are a Messiah Complexed animal lover, you clothe your sentiment in opposition to other philanthropies, such as those dedicated to saving women and children, etc. You have a calling, and you are an indispensable Messiah. Nobody, especially the proper authorities in Animal Control (every municipality has one) can do what the Messiah Rescuer do. Uniqueness justifies your childhood of suffering.
Why? IMHO your childhood was spent under siege, rescue becomes something you haven’t chosen to do, but something you, whether tired, overworked or not, are compelled to do. Were you reflective, you would understand that you are making external a very very internal wound inside you. You are unconsciously attempting to rescue yourself as that child who, in that chaotic childhood, needed rescue. You are healing your childhood. We awake in the morning from dreams of animals, injured and frightened, locked in the garage of our childhood homes. Without a psychiatrist, however, to guide our understanding of the dreams that guide us, we believe it is the animals that need rescue instead of us. The animal represents the unhealed part of us still hurting from our codependent childhoods.