Well done RT, I know you could not resist if I typed long enough.
Bawahahaha
I’d kill Rachael from Card Member Services and tell the cops you said I could.
You hit on a pet peeve (sorry) of mine. Not only does the dog go, but each time I read a post stating otherwise, it gives me this “stop the world, I need to get out” feeling.
This kind of post appear sometimes (“I would rescue my pet rather than a stranger”, for instance) and without fail I get this feeling of doom for the human race and this major irritation, before ranking the poster somewhere in between child rapists and mass murderers.
Fortunately, my two other pet peeves on this board are related to more grevious issues.
OK, I’ll bite. W. T. F. Yes, thousands of people die every day, but you have no say in that matter. In this half-cocked OP, you at least have some faculty in regards to whether a human dies or an animal dies. Call me specie-ist if you will, but I just can’t wrap my mind around how anyone could choose their pet over any human, especially with such a blase attitude.
Think of it this way. If the animal dies, you will be very sad. Something you cherished will be gone. If an average person dies, there will be many people very sad. Something that had the capacity to make a difference in the world is gone. Don’t get me wrong, animals have a capacity to make a difference in the world too. I’ve seen Balto.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s the monkey-sphere in action! You don’t know these so-called people, but you know your pet, so you are willing to let a human die to satisfy your own emotional needs. If our pet dies, it’s mega-bummer saddy time. If a thousand people die in Fucksville, it’s barely a blip. That’s the way the world works, but that doesn’t make it right.
Shit, I’m not doing a very good job arguing my point. I blame the alcohol. Let me wrap up by just saying that I’m partially with clairobscur in the sense that the decision to save a pet over a human makes me wonder if we should all be nuked from orbit, just to be sure.
With that said, love y’all as posters. (Is that weird to say now?)
P.S. If I could change the OP to kill the poster for not including an actual poll, it’d be mighty tempting.
I wonder how many of the people who are outraged that anyone would pick an animal they love over a person they don’t are similarly outraged over donations to animal shelters while there are people in Africa dying of vaccine preventable illnesses as we speak.
How intimately involved do you have to be in the senseless death of a stranger before it’s unconscionable? In the same city? The same building? The same room?
Being magically thrusted into a setting where I have a concrete decision to kill a person or an animal sounds just about right to me.
I was thinking Flo, from the Progressive Auto Ins. commercials.
Well, I wouldn’t say I’m outraged - but I certainly give my charity dollars to helping humans rather than pets. I figure once we get some of the major human suffering under control, then we can start on the animals that humans cause to suffer.
I am absolutely sure that there are many people who do the opposite - so it all comes out in the wash.
And I completely respect that point of view. To be honest, I donate money locally, rather than to “save a child in Africa” campaigns, because I figure once we get some of the suffering under control in my neighborhood, then we can start on the rest of the world. We all have our rubrics for choosing where to spend our money, and not one single person on this message board has decided to cut their internet bill entirely, pawn their laptop and donate all their worldly possessions to charity, so we all have some lines drawn when it comes to preventing human deaths. I think this OP, were it more coherent, is actually an interesting exploration of that, and the favorite pet thing a bit of a distractor.
And, I admit, my answer yesterday was a bit of Hypothetical Internet Bravado, I’m sure. I would bet that were I really faced with such a scenario, I wouldn’t even think about it at all, I’d run to save the person. Were I being logical, Spanner would romp among us again, but I admit I’m not wired to be logical when faced with a human death I can personally and immediately prevent.
Sorry. Take away my stones.
Sorry to all the people who feel otherwise, but the life of a 28 year old, right-handed Han Chinese man who works as a bureaucrat in Shanghai just doesn’t mean very much to me. My monkey-sphere is very localized.
I don’t know. I just had two coffees at the nearest cafe for €3. And bought a pack of cigarettes for €6. By sending those €9 to a charity, they probably could have fed some kid somewhere for several days.
But when, like in the OP, I’m indeed “in the same room” and my action is going to directly result in someone death, I can’t possibly conceive of not saving the human. In fact, it’s not even merely not saving him, it’s directly killing him in this hypothetical. If I say “I’m not a murderer” would that be a sufficient answer for you?
I do the opposite. I figure that poor people in my neighborhood still have it better than people starving or diseased in third world countries because they can rely on various welfare or healthcare programs, so I figure that when we have solved the most critical issues like starvation, we can start on with people with less grevious problems.
Look, I can see what you are doing here, but wishing death on another poster is expressly disallowed.
And while we’re on the subject of knowing what you’re doing: if you have a problem with Gusnspot, take it to the BBQ Pit.
That goes for EVERYONE.
Ellen