You’ve done it. Yes, at some point, you made a conscious decision to end a life, and followed through on it (or hired someone to do your dirty work). Odds are, it wasn’t Fred or Fido or Fluffy, but a life nonetheless. How can we scream, “oh, the sanctity of life!”, but then mutter into our lapels, “but not that one”? How many anti-bacterial products are in your cabinets? How many flies, mosquitoes, bees, roaches, spiders, ants, etc have you sent to Bug Heaven? Rats, mice, snakes? (You’ll notice I left out things that are generally considered food by Americans.)
But, skeeters and rats transmit diseases, you shout. So do people and pets. You can’t whack someone because they have the flu.
But flies and mice are nuisances, you bleat. Yeah, so are neighbors and in-laws, but you can’t pop a cap in their asses, and not expect dire consequences.
If a pitbull bites somebody, it gets put down. Marv Albert and Mike Tyson get a (relative) slap on the wrist for the same offense.
So, how did we get to the point where we can kill some things for completely selfish reasons, and hardly anyone bats an eye, but killing other things for the same reasons is taboo? (And, yes, I’ve heard about the “cuteness” factor. ;))
Because there’s a reason “insect” has become slang for “insignificant”.
You see, the amount of blood and guts something leaves behind after being squished is proportional to how important its’ existence is. Unles you travel back in time, in which case, the farther back you go, the more significant things become.
Another topic to think about… how come people don’t whine about the atoms that get obliterated when we detonate an H-bomb? All we hear about is fallout, nuclear (nucular :D) winter, and millions of people dying. How come we don’t hear about the poor little hydrogen atoms?!?
Death is a part of the natural order of things. We are part of nature. We can no more go through life without killing something than we can go through life without breathing. But as humans we also have the intelligence to recognize when another animal is suffering due to our actions, and a duty (IMHO) to reduce that suffering whenever possible. I guess the issue then becomes “At what point does another creature’s suffering bother you enough that you want to do something about it?”
Personally, I eat meat, but I try to avoid products like shaving cream and whatnot that have been tested on animals because I don’t think human vanity is sufficient justification for the suffering of animals. Am I a hypocrite? Maybe. But if you raise the ethical bar high enough, I think we all become hypocrites. The distinctions we draw are somewhat arbitrary, but so what? The alternative, IMHO, is to draw no distinctions and treat animals as simply another resource to be exploited, which I think is wrong.
Interesting rationale. So, if an elephant tramples a bunch of people, it’s no biggie, because, when squished, a person makes less of a mess than an elephant. An elephant’s mass makes it clearly more important than a human. Man, I have got to put on some more weight.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Regardless of where the ethical bar is, we are hypocrites, and hate to admit it (myself included). I find it odd that breathing and killing are analogous to you. You scare me. I’m breathing without any thought, but killing is a decision. It’s the arbitrary nature of the distinctions that puzzle me, hence, the title.
“So what?” you ask. I think my neighbors would disagree if someone started to arbitrarily kill their cats. But hey, so what, they’re small.
We kill animals for the same reason that self-defense is a justifiable reason for murder in a court of law. When I’m confronted with a situation where it’s kill or be killed, I’m gonna pick the former every single time and it will continue to be that way until the latter wins out.
This philosophy is as much true for the lion that’s ready to pounce as it is for the rat carrying the bubonic plague or the little strains of E coli that do nothing else but destroy your system. If you don’t feel justified in pasteurizing your milk because of all the things you’ll kill in the process that’s fine with me. But those little critters don’t really care what they do to me and I’ll microwave them off the face of the planet myself if I have to.
Why not kill your next door neighbor whose kids always seem to come down with the flu? First, because their flu won’t kill me. Secondly, they can appreciate the fact that their diseases might hurt me and stay away. Many animals don’t have the capacity. Third, if they can’t appreciate that fact, I make sure they stay away from me.
Would you feel justified in killing Typhoid Mary if she tried to shove a steak down your throat?
So, any ant that you’ve ever stepped on has been out to kill you? <Jimbo>WATCH OUT! HE’S COMIN RIGHT FOR US!</Jimbo>;)
Seriously, though, the reason that we differentiate between killing a bug and killing a human is because humans and humans are members of the same species (Never saw that one coming, eh?) As a general rule, in nature, animals do not kill within their own species, unless there’s a damn good reason. Likewise with humans. This is why a psychotic serial killer will be punished heavily for the random killing of 12 people, while killing deadly strains of bacteria goes unnoticed, and even encouraged.
I realize that some of your response was tongue in cheek, Jester, but I think any type of killing is justified under the right circumstances. I specifically limited my answer to the kill or be killed scenario because that, I believe, is the most justifiable. We certainly have the right to kill an ant if we so desire. There are no laws against it and if the ants want to survive they should learn to defend against it…or produce enough ants that one or two of them being killed doesn’t matter so much. But ultimately one can argue that random killing is wrong no matter who or what the target is. If something is trying to kill me, though, whether it be an axe wielding maniac or a tiger that thinks I wandered too close to their territory, or a group of crazed monkies after watching a planet of the apes marathon, I’m gonna defend myself.
And your belief that animals don’t kill their own is incorrect. There are many many many animals that kill their own for reasons ranging from thinning their numbers to getting the munchies during sex.
I have respect for life, but I don’t have equal respect for all forms of life. Cinnamon Life, for example, is better than Regular.
As for why I would have greater qualms about killing a human being than a cat or dog, and greater qualms about killing a cat or dog than a mosquito or bacterium or dandelion, I suppose it’s a combination of religious reasons, sentimentality, blatant speciesism (and how closely related or connected I feel to the potential “murder” victim"), and “common sense.”
Humans have a great deal of respect for life forms that defend themselves and put up a fight. Sure, we still kill ‘em, but there is more thought involved. It’s much less of a mental effort for us to swat houseflies than to swat wasps. Neither one requires much effort on our part, but there is a big difference in the two actions. This also applies to higher forms of life. We have a great deal of respect for bears, but kill cows without much thought. Though we justify this by saying that the bears are limited in number or the nature of their existence is beautiful and therefore merits preservation, the truth is that we understand that the bears would win in a fair fight. The fact that an animal could have a fighting chance inspires respect.
We also have respect for animals that can comfortably ignore us. Think of elephants or whales. Why should we respect them? I think the fact that they happily go about their business, often completely ignoring our presence and influence causes us to view them with certain awe. We are able to recognize that their life is very different than ours, their existence is completely separate and, therefore, we have no real right to interfere with them.
At the same time, we are very aggressive in or efforts to wipe out those organisms that, while they possess the ability to kill us, we still view as inferior. Specifically, I’m thinking of viruses. They do not defend themselves, but attack us aggressively. They do not ignore us, but are rather dependent upon us for their survival. They feed on us and, in that way, exert dominance while our sense of biological superiority demands that they be subject to our more complicated biology.
The ultimate taboo is the killing of our own kind. Is this because we know on a very basic level that we are hurting our chance for success as a species, or is it just that we recognize each other to be our own most formidable adversaries?
Let me clarify something. When I said “we”, that’s what I meant. Myself included. I eat meat, and I’ll kill a bug in a second.
I’m not arguing the “kill or be killed” angle. That’s obviously a very real, visceral reaction.
The overall theme of the responses so far seem to be, “we can kill whatever we want, as long as we (this particular society) agree on what it is”. And, I guess that’s the answer to my question. Within a given society, killing one thing or another is not right or wrong, it just is.
1)We don’t have the “right”. We can just get away with it.
2)It’s unlikely the flu will kill you now, but in [,5716,2549+1+2537,00.html?kw=influenza%20epidemic%20of%20191819"] 1918-19](http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0[/url) it killed over 30 million people worldwide.
HIV/AIDS will kill you (or, more accurately, get you killed). Does that make a difference?
[lateral step]
Interestingly, this kind of question brings to mind the last vial of small pox left in the world, out there on Long Island (you lucky dogs). Do we destroy it? Is it a good idea? Have we learned all we can from this nasty little thing? Does it have any rights as a life form? Are rights simply those which are granted by humans in power to grant rights?
[/lateral step]
It ain’t just because of human vanity that we test products on animals. It’s to make sure they’re completely safe for humans to use, and if not, to figure out the proper caution labels to put on them. Those labels that say “avoid getting shampoo in eyes; if this happens, rinse eyes with water” were put there because delibarately putting the shampoo in rabbits’ eyes irritated them if they weren’t flushed with water.
Animal experiments also enabled us to isolate HIV, and to do preliminary testing on new, promising drugs.
I’m not against all animal experimentation. I recognize that many advances in the biomedical arena would not have been possible without it. I just don’t think that there are any more unexplored frontiers in the field of shampoo research. And if there are, I don’t think it justifies clamping a rabbit’s eye open and pouring caustic chemicals into it, especially given the existence of alternative methods. Even Proctor & Gamble, the object of so much vilification by groups like PETA, funds research into alternative methodologies for testing drugs and consumer products. Banning all animal testing would be ridiculous, but it would be equally ridiculous, IMHO, to continue invasive and painful tests on animals if effective substitutes exist.
Obviously you’ve never smelled my breath when I wake up in the morning. I’m told it could not only kill, but wake the dead and curdle cottage cheese.
And I said “So what?” (somewhat flippantly, I admit) because I thought you were waiting for someone to come up with a quote from the Big Book of Universal Truth that would explain why we kill some animals and not others. I was trying to say that there is no universal truth, and no real logic to why we kill animals; we kill in self-defense, sure, but we also kill because certain animals simply bother us. Farmers and ranchers exterminated hundreds of millions of animals in the process of subduing the American West. Wolves, prairie dogs, buffalo, you name it. This wasn’t done out of a survival instinct, it was done because they considered these animals to be pests or sources of profit. It all seems like a terrible shame now, but I don’t think it is wise to call those people idiots or murderers or whatever; they were products of the time that they lived in. Like you said in your second post, killing one thing or another is not right or wrong (in a universal sense), it just is.
I’m with you, headshok. I’ve come to the same conclusion (that it’s an arbitrary matter). Some people try to put a spin on it, to try to make it sound reasonable or justifiable, but it doesn’t work. I can stomp on a spider without worry of consequences. I cannot do the same to a kitten.
The bottom line is, in the cosmic scheme of things, neither of those lives is more or less important than the other.
Seattime, regarding your last post. You are absolutely right. Just posting this cause it’s such a refreshing change to see someone address this issue WITHOUT getting emotional. I haven’t seen a reasonable attack on the intellectual merit of your argument.
“The bottom line is, in the cosmic scheme of things, neither of those lives is more or less important than the other.”