NewTime wrote:
Are animals people?
That's a fascinating question - ie. yeah we're animals, would we be okay with giving rabbits, raccoons, and squirrels social security numbers, government representation, and turning into Jain vegans as not to become murderers?
To some extent, particularly when it comes to humans abusing animals - especially those we're fond of or close to, we take a dim enough view to do everything we can to throw the person in jail. Someone called 9/11 and said that a dog was thrown over a ledge into a river, oh wait, it's okay it's getting back up out, wait....oh no! It's being thrown back in!.... and it wasn't seen again - assumed dead. The news story sparked a significant social outrage and people agreed the guy was a monster and should be in jail. To a certain extent though I have to have some sympathies for people who criticize animal testing for being something like a Nazi Germany for animals. With PETA and Holocaust on a Plate it might go too far if, say, we have a contract with conscience to treat the animal well, give it a good life that it wouldn't have had otherwise, and end that life humanely for consumption. Part of that though, in my case, triggers a certain kind of horror when people play practical jokes with meat - ie. a sentient being gave up it's life so we could eat it between slices of bread and wash it down with a beer, and that's fine, to throw its remains on your girlfriend while she's putting on make-up and then throwing it in the trash - in it's own way that's a bit like blowing coke off the dog tag of a soldier who died protecting your freedom.
So while I don't know that most of them will have the type of cognition to be keen critics and participants in republican democracy any time soon, nor active participants in our economic and educational institutions, it seems evident that people increasingly see our responsibility to be good to sentient life and increasingly fewer people count everything from bacteria and plant life to bacteria as being as soulless and unconscious as a rock.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin