aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2007
- Messages
- 20,082
you're being sarcastic right?? and this is a very bad joke right? .. right? ... is it?
No.
you're being sarcastic right?? and this is a very bad joke right? .. right? ... is it?
Because a dog is smarter than a bull or a cock.
I want to ask if you would feel the same if it was a human, but I suppose that is quite different, since it's the same specie as you...I guess I might, depending on where the wind was blowing.
Beyond that, if you want to waste a perfectly good cow and don't pollute any place beyond your land, it's none of my business. Why should I meddle?
I disagree. But I think maybe you're misunderstanding me a bit. I'll try to elaborate.Those are impossible ethical standards.
I've never said that we can't kill animals of course, and my stance of "kill without needlessly inflicting pain" is something I believe everyone can live by.You may choose to live according to those yourself, but you can only do that because others do not. Ultimately humans and animals are competitors for natural resources, and we kill animals all the time.
Yes, and those pests should be killed fast and painlessly - to the farmer's ability of course. I'm not asking people to run around trying to catch birds and give them a sedative before they shoot them, but simply to do their best to shoot and kill instantly, and not letting the animals suffer needlessly.And in the process we cannot afford such absurdly high moral qualms. Do you kill "pests" (rats, insects, etc - and keep in mind that for farmers "pests" include many other animals, from birds to a wide assortment of mammals)"?
Those aren't accidents of course, and killing animals is not something I'm against. However, if you have to kill a wolf, bear, moose or deer, then it should be done with a good shot that will have a high probability of killing instantly.Do you kill dangerous wild animals? Is it an accident that the large predators are nearly extinct? Is it an accident that the large herbivores which might compete for the agricultural output are almost extinct?
Well yes, as Winner crudely tried to say, the more violence and suffering one experience, the more tolerant towards it one becomes. But that is a positive statement, and not a normative one.It is only natural that the people who perforce of circumstances have to deal with such things and regard animals in a mostly utilitarian point of view will also regard bullfights, for example, as a perfectly acceptable spectacle.
I'm fully aware of how nature works, but I disagree that such knowledge makes it reasonable for me to tolerate that a sentient (i.e. can feel pain) being is needlessly inflicted with stress and pain. Especially when the only reason is entertainment!And it is also reasonable that others, even "city dwellers", who are aware of that nature of the relationship between animals and humans, also maintain the same point of view.
Fair enough.I do not oppose your personal choice of not wanting to "torture" animals before you kill them. I do oppose any desire to impose such a limit on other people.
Seconded - as well as everything else you said.But to inflict pain on a sentient being without it being needed is evil, and should be banned!
Competition over natural resources is far fiercer between humans themselves than between humans and animals. And we kill each other all the time as well. What you said is no reason to differentiate between humans and animals.innonimatu: Ultimately humans and animals are competitors for natural resources, and we kill animals all the time.
Competition over natural resources is far fiercer between humans themselves than between humans and animals. And we kill each other all the time as well. What you said is no reason to differentiate between humans and animals.
I don't see how we can cogently condemn bullfighting (or any blood sport) whilst remaining meat-eaters.
When I sit down to eat my freshly cooked sirloin steak I am not eating for sustenance. I can live perfectly well off a vegetarian diet. I am eating meat because I enjoy meat. I am essentially saying that that little bit of extra pleasure from taking a bite of sirloin completely justifies killing. That morally, the few seconds pleasure I get from the flesh I so fancifully fry fully compensates for taking the life of an innocent creature.
Murder is pretty bad. Morally one would say that it's one of the worst things one can possibly do. The fact that we completely reject the idea that meat eating is morally reprehensible clearly shows we don't apply moral value to cattle. Morally they're not worth anything otherwise we couldn't possibly justify killing them. Killing them for a tiny bit of pleasure.
Concurrently it can't possibly matter that we garner pleasure from watching a bull fight. If our pleasure from meat eating is justified than surely our pleasure from such theatre is justified. Of course we could never justify such a thing if cattle had moral worth but we obviously repudiate the idea that cattle have moral worth. If we didn't we could never justify raising them, pumping them chock full of steroids, imprisoning them and finally butchering them.
If we're fine with that we can't object to bloodsports.
@innonimatu are you saying that a bullfighting ban is unenforceable?
No, I'd say that any ban is enforceable, if you're willing to go far enough to enforce it. And have the power to do so, obviously.
What I question is how far is it justifiable to go in order to ban bullfights. And that also depends on the place, of course: banning bullfights in the Sweden would be a non-issue, for example, because no swedes are likely to challenge such law. Banning bullfights in Spain is virtually impossible, unless you want to pull some Franco-style repression...
It's not about moral relativist, it's about circumstantial relativism. The morals we apply, as observers, may be the same in both cases:you may want to protect humans, and you may want to protect animals (and this because most humans want it done). And you likely think that protecting humans is more important than protecting animals. Using the example above, it seems to me that the vast majority of swedes and spaniards would agree on that also. But banning bullfights would not cause conflicts among humans in Sweden, while it certainly would in Spain. Therefore, morally, it would be a good idea to ban bullfights in Sweden, but a bad idea to try to do so in Spain.
This is likely to change, as when supporters of bullfighting become a tiny minority in Spain (they already are a small minority) I have no doubt that the self-righteous majority will have no qualms about crushing any feeble resistance they may put up, of course. That's the way the world works, morality and logic be damned...
The cow that the steak you're eating came from wasn't killed while a bunch of people sat around and cheered on while some guy slowly tortured it to death.
But like.. can't you just stop the bullfights? Would people start rioting in the streets?
I don't even think people would start rioting in Canada if hockey became illegal, and we kinda love our hockey.
So what?
Murder is wrong. Gladiatorial games are wrong. Torture is wrong.
Now I think it arguable that bullfighting is straight-up torture. Certainly other bloodsports aren't. Nevertheless I'm prepared to accept it for the sake of arguments; bullfighting is torturous.
Is torture worse then murder? I think that very contentious. I think most people would prefer torture rather than death. Certainly a lot of people are perfectly happy to inflict torture when they would blanch at murder. Nevertheless, I suppose bullfighting is torture followed by murder, that's two bad things so its twice as bad, right?
If they feel like they are a clear majority, they will (in a free country where the state institutions are limited in how far they can repress the population) simply ignore and ridicule the law. If they are a regional majority, likewise. If they are a disperse but relatively big minority, they'll fight back and the harm caused will far outdo the good intention of the law. If they are a small minority most or even all will bow down immediately, or after a few get beaten and/or arrested.
It involved a lot of slapping a bull in the face with bare hands.
It was awesome, and no I am not making this up.
Anyway, real bull fighting is not much worse than a slaughter house, and I eat meat - so I am not going to sit here and be a hypocrite.
But how can you ignore the law if there are no more bullfights going on in the first place?
The owners of the venues where bullfighting takes place would defy a new law? Wouldn't they want to continue to make money instead, and focus on other events?
During the autumn festivals in Barrancos, a small border town in the south of Portugal, bulls are sacrificed in honour of Our Lady of the Conception despite the existence of a law that prohibits bullfights in which the animals are killed. In the past the Barrancos festivals had been the object of occasional anthropological studies, but little was ever heard about them other than that a small group of people attended them year after year. Suddenly, one summer they became the central focus of both political and media attention. The recent history of Barrancos is a paradigmatic example of the way that in the modern world a small township’s local festival charged with a strong symbolism can be blown up and turned into a national phenomenon that touches on issues of symbolic power, cultural domination and cultural rights.
It doesn't take much to organize a bullfight. The example I mentioned above, from Portugal, was Barrancos, a tiny municipality (the whole has less that 2000 inhabitants) in the border with Spain. The bullfights happened during the week when that small town had its yearly festivities, and was community organized. The police did try to fine, and even later arrest, the organizers, but no one would give away who they were. The local police knew, of course, but they too would not cooperate.
Under those circumstances, either you apply the full weight of state power to repress the whole community until it breaks (technically easy enough, but politically impossible, and I'm glad for that!) or you give up.
In the city, or at any rate in more "civilized" regions, state power can be, ans is, exercise in more subtle ways, as you suggested above: make it unprofitable to organize some event, and in the absence of community organization it works... and that is one of the dark aspects of our "civilization" - how easy it is to manipulate people and events by just controlling the money and the regulations.