Wednesday, February 4, 2009

A post to make up for Tues and onto Thursday--remember who's talking

I was particularly interested in the animal rights section becuase of the new domain it introduces. But I think it is also good to remember that animals themselves do not observe either legal rights or moral rights, probably becuase they don't care. The term "law of the jungle" means to me that anything goes and there are no rights whatsoever. This is the "law" animals observe. Humans, on the other hand, spend considerable time on the subject--so much that they feel inclined to post on a website about it. WE, humans, assign them those rights. They don't give them to themselves...or at least as far as we know.

Say I'm walking in the woods, and ten wolves jump me. If they want to eat me, they are going to. They don't care if I say, "I have a right to live!"--I'm food. I think a Max (Dr. McCrickerd's dog) wouldn't see going on a walk as a right or priviledge...it just is to him. I have a feeling Grizzly Bears would love to store, breed, and eat humans if they could.

What's interesting to me about animal rights is the driving force that compels us to assign them moral/legal rights, when we know they would not do the same for us. Why bother?

My answer would be that humans are conditioned to protect the innocent outside their own families and communities. We see animals, we love them, and feel a duty to protect them...most of the time. Animals don't have that--or at least I haven't seen one that does.

"My cubs are my business, your's are your business. If they trot over here, I'll eat them. Stick to the boundaries," the lioness says.

She protects her immediate family. No one else. So why do we, she asks. Why do humans care?

1 comment:

  1. I think that many advocates of animal rights would say that if we are going to give infants rights then there's no good reason to not give animals rights insofar as infants possess no qualities that many animals don't possess. For animal rights activists (and environmental rights activists) it's always going to be a question of consistency. What is it that gives those things rights that we say have rights? If other things have those same characteristics, then consistency demands that we give them the same rights.

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