Earthlings (An Animal Rights film) (Page 1 of 3)

I fucking hate animal rights movement. It's atrocious that people spend money/energy on this shit when there're billions of human beings still suffering from lack of basic rights all over the world.

With the above sentiment taken out of the equation, I still disagree with the doctrine of these people. They can't compare our treatment to animals to racism or sexism. An animal isn't equal to me, why should I treat it equally? And why should I treat animals differently from plants and other life forms? Should we treat all life forms equally then? Almost all species live on the exploitation of lower life forms, we're just higher up on the chain, and we should be god damn glad of it instead of being depressed.

I couldn't watch the documentary for more than 5 minutes before I had to turn it off. It's sickening to me how it tries to humanize the animals and equate the acts of animal cruelty to the holocaust just to induce sympathy in viewers. I hope these people get lost in the amazon jungle some day and sympathize with some hungry jaguars.

Pain is also not black and white. Species that have less complex nervous systems might not feel pain the same way we do. Besides, if a lower species' suffering can provide a great deal of entertainment to the higher species (humans), then I don't even think it's bad.

So I guess I am a speciesist, despite how grotesque that term sounds.

Wow. So what your saying is if you thought it was funny to set a neighbors dog on fire or do any of a million other cruel "jokes" then, even though you are causing that animal extreme pain and suffering and killing it in a horrible way, It wouldn't be bad just because it provided you entertainment?

"lower species suffering" doesn't exactly narrow it down to whipping horses, consequently, i'll wait till i hear what adam really meant and just badly phrased before i decide if he's as self-centered as he sounds.

To be honest, I couldn't be bothered watching the entire film - I'd still like to comment, though:

Wholly idealistically, I'd say we should strive to give animals the same sort of rights that human beings have. There is little doubt that by far most species on Earth have the same basic mental structure of pleasure and pain, and bringing sentience in as a qualifier of whether a species deserves to be protected is only valid because we, as humans, have an invariably humanocentric view on things. Keep in mind that humans who've lost their higher cognitive abilities, or never had any, for that matter, are still protected and supported in much the same frame of mind as a thinking person. It's far easier to put down a horse that broke its leg than it is to pull the plug on a comatose vegetable of a human.

Practically, however, Errrrrrr's viewpoint of human dominance already suffuses existence on Earth - and the vast majority of humans are fine with that. The reason humanity is so succesful is because we've strong-armed other species, animals and plants alike, to suit our needs, to the point that they've evolved into radically different forms that would not be able to survive without human care. I'll be the first to admit that I don't feel any particular guilt about it, though, despite the fact that my idealistic side probably ought to. I'll go so far as to say that I take a certain satisfaction in symbolically exerting the dominance of my species whenever I chomp down on a hamburger. That's probably just another side of me - maybe the one that always makes me pick humans in interstellar wargames and such...

For this general trend to change, I think humanity as a whole needs to encounter another sentient species with a radically different form - maybe like a cat, or a fungus. The other species on Earth are simply too different from humans for there to be the sort of empathy that some people would like. The whole cutesy paternal instinct that applies to pets isn't really cutting it - we still think of the poor creatures as inferior, and we wouldn't go half as far to save their lives as we would with any human. That's just how we're brought up, and unlike other negative, traditional influences of that sort (religious tendencies, for example), there's nothing in the whole of the, arguably diverse, human culture that challenges that. I think it's quite valid to compare racism and speciesism, but since we don't have dogs saying "I have a dream", people are quite willing to let animals suffer to uphold the luxurious dominance of humanity.

i think that humans are dominate and that it is not such a bad thing that we have shaped other species to provide some function for us. But, i believe that we can still have compassion for those life-forms lower on the food chain than us. Yes i love to eat hamburger but i don't believe that its ok for that cow to spend its life in pit of cow shit from which its then taken to a slaughter house that pushes its people to move cattle so fast down the line that they are often not correctly stunned or stunned at all which leads to the cow to be consious while strung up from its back legs, which often are pulled out of the socket by the cows own weight, on the way to a man who will gut that cow while its alive and conscious because he has no choice and has to do his job exactly the way he's told.

The roles that we have crafted animals to fill don't require their pain. I can eat meat from animals that where humanely raised and killed. I can provide a loving home for a pet that will entertain me. I can watch a dog or horse race that doesn't involve drugs, starvation and pain to goad the animals.

I was asked a question once : "If you could, by only minimally inconvienencing yourself and minimally changing your day to day life, somehow allieviate the total suffering of life on earth, Would you?" My answer to this question is yes.

And it is the same reason i always give all my change to the people collecting change for the poor, the same reason i donate all my old clothes to the salvation army or give a stuffed bear to the local firemen who give them to children who have just lost every toy they own, everything they own. Is the reason why i try my best to eat local or naturally grown beef, why i've decided not to eat anymore fast food, why i donate to animal shelters, and why i report strays and injured uncared for animals to the local no-kill shelter.

I think the whole debate is pretty silly.

If I perceive an animal to be suffering and I feel bad, and it's within my power to do something about it, then I will. Otherwise I will just feel bad.

If I don't feel bad, then I won't do anything to stop it and I won't feel bad.

That's how the animal kingdom works. That's the yardstick by which other animals treat us, why should we endeavor to apply inalienable rights to the other species of animals on the planet when they would not do the same to us? If you say that it is our responsibility because the difference between us and them is that we can differentiate justice from injustice, then you contradict yourself in the underlying assumption that animals can feel grief and suffering on a level equal to that of intelligent beings.

Everyone and everything suffers at some time or another, the difference between an intelligent being suffering and an unintelligent being suffering is that the unintelligent one cannot perceive the justice or lack thereof in it.

I'm not condoning the full exploitation of animals or the efforts of the animal rights movement, because they're both wrong.

You might want to watch out with this, there is a lot of evidence that locally grown food can be much less efficiently produced and you actually increase the "carbon footprint" by locally growing it. Unless of course you have some other reason, but those still have to address the efficiency issue.

As for why animals are inferior, I think that is a pretty silly question. Anyone is aware of the basic response to this (civilization, books, architecture, art, technology, etc) it's just whether they accept that answer or not. I don't necessarily understand how anyone could disagree, but I don't understand a lot of things that people do.

I don't think the core of the question is whether animals are actually inferior - as you say, humanity has pretty much established supreme, undeniable dominance. What's really interesting in the context of this topic is this: Does that inferiority mean they don't deserve respect?

When dealing with people, the whole concept of "might makes right" is abhorrent in a lot of contexts, but nobody has a problem with it when dealing with animals. As the video points out, a lot of people see animals as mere objects - which may be a valid viewpoint, but I think each person needs to think upon what constitutes suffering, and whether creatures with inferior mental faculties than an adult human is capable of it. I'd say that the majority of the animals that humanity exploits are - but again, I like my easy hamburgers too much.

Mind you, this is mainly because they've been selectively bred over thousands of years. If by 'fitness' you mean survival and propagation, then yes, they're better off. That doesn't necessarily mean a better existence for the animals themselves, however.

That's exactly what I meant. Animal suffering can't be graded on the level of humans. It's just silly. If a human was to benefit, I wouldn't give a shit how an animal is treated.

The current dog my family owns, a golden retriever, was given to us by our grandparents; they foster goldens rescued from abusive homes.
When we first got her three years ago (and even now, to a lesser extent), she would pull away and literally cower in a corner if presented with your foot, your fist, or a fork. Not even in a threatening manner. An attempt to lazily pet her with your foot while zoning out on the couch would terrify her. It's probably one of the saddest things I've seen.

I'm not a zealous animal rights activist, but please don't try to tell me that animals are incapable of extreme suffering or mental trauma.

Yeah if you want to just make up stupid hypothetical stories about how you are deriving some tiny benefit from an animals suffering you can. But obviously we aren't talking about someone getting their jollies by torturing animals.

Yet if you were to take him to a pet trainer he would be normal again in a week. If you take a traumatized human to a psychologist it takes a lot more effort. Not to mention the fact that a human suffering is much more important than an animal suffering. A human is actually smart enough to understand their suffering, an animal just feels discomfort. I'm not advocating torturing animals, I'm just saying that I would rather a thousand animals got tortured than one human got tortured.