How important is animal life to you?

Question

Nice Guy Wrote in a previous question: “Matt has basically stated that animals are equally important as humans. I'm sorry, but no animals life has as much importance or relevance as that of a human. For one to think that an animals life is just as important as his own is absurd. Can anyone possibly believe that the life of a pig, cow, or chicken can even compare to the life of a human being?”

How do you feel about this? Does an animal's interest in living have any weight in our deciding how we treat said animal? How is an animal's interest in continued existence qualitatively any different than our own?

I'm not trying to give Nice Guy a hard time, I just think this is something that should be discussed, and his answer provides a good starting point.

We have some real deep thinkers responding so far.

Beebs' Answer sort of misses the point of this question. But to the point it does adress I could not agree more.

What I would like people to ponder is that animals have the same interest in their continued existence that you do yours. We have no morally relevant reason to respect a human's interest in continued life wile denying to afford animals the same consideration.

@ Niceguy, I wrote you a responce but it is too long to fit here. You can find it here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/veggiefacts/message/58

Take care

-Matt

@ Nice guy: I’m fairly disappointed in your last post. If you want to debate these issues then lets go. If not, then don’t pretend to engage in one and then back out mid discussion. You say “I believe my goal of simply reducing animal suffering to a minimum, is simply more realistic than that of abolishing it.” And I give you plenty of reasons (and there are plenty more) as to why that will never happen, which you make no attempt to address. You also say, “And though veganism can perhaps make a very small difference, I don't think it can, will, or ever has lead to any significant noticeable change.” I find this a very curious statement to make seeing as the term “Vegan” has only been around for about seventy years, and the theory of abolition has only been with us for thirty years. Animal welfare on the other hand has been around for at least two hundred years, or if you consider India then around 2000 would be more accurate...

I fail to see your historical basis for making the claim that Veganism and abolition cannot create change, it has not had the chance to. Finally, a Vegan diet (or very near Vegan diet) can work for everyone. Read the China Study. Also who are these “credible sources” that claim to be against a Vegan diet? Name names, I’m sure it would be interesting to see just how credible they really are.

First, in response to your comments regarding the health of Vegans, I used “very near vegan diet” in parentheses after the words “Vegan diet” The near Vegan diet was referring to Dr. Dean Ornish’s early work in reversing heart disease. The “Vegan diet” which appeared out of parentheses referenced all other works by prominent scientists such as, Dr. T Colin Campbell, and Dr. Neal Barnard. Even the American Dietetic Association agrees that a Vegan diet is completely healthy by saying, “Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy,
childhood and adolescence.”
Second, with regard to your “intuition” about the animal rights movement, I guess we are just expected to take your opinion because you do not “foresee” a radical change in people’s diet? I think you were right, we are done here in regards to Animal Rights Vs. Animal Welfare.

. You obviously are ignorant to even the most basic augments from each side, let alone the state of the movement and the struggle that is taking place for the grass-roots sections of the movement to beat back the corporate welfare groups that have done nothing but retard growth. In sum, your information about the healthfulness of Veganism is outdated at best, misinformed at worst, and your “intuition” about the possibilities and direction of the Animal Rights movement is just plain wrong.

Answer 1

I recently saw pictures of a Hurricane Katrina animal rescue. I saw houses that were destroyed, and next to the house, would be a dog, tied to a steak.... It made me SICK. Thinking of it now brings up so much anger in me. What kind of depraved person would do that. It was not as though there were seconds left, and they were going to be beamed out by Scottie in immediately. There was a long, slow evacuation process, and they left those animals to slowly die.

If your house is burning down, you try to save your animals. I will say though, that you save your children first. But you bring an animal into your house and under your protection, you better care for it.
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I once had to do a report on the Psychology of Slavery for an African American Lit class. One thing I noticed through my reading was that slaves verbally lost their human status. They were often called animals. I decided to do an extensive survey about this, but the only group we verbally do such a thing to today is actual animals. We call one “pet” so we know to love them. The other we call “animal” so we can distinguish not to care about them and believe we have a right to torture and kill them. After the animal is killed, we call it “meat” so we never have to make any mental correlation.

My search was to find where we draw the line as we have done this to groups of people over and over again throughout history. I am just saying the same mental process people used to go through the African American Holocaust is the same mental process we use to make animal slaughtering ok today. It is something we click on and off, and the words we use to describe a being have a lot do to with it.

I had many categories in my survey, which I gave to the students in all my classes.
One section was “Animals.” I had questions such as:
“Would you eat a cow?”, “IF you were starving, would you kill a cow to eat?”
… eat a dog, starving, kill a dog, kill your OWN dog
I even went on to compare animals to people.

I found that many people, in a hypothetical world, would kill a human stranger before killing their own dog... and yet, would eat a dog if they needed food. Familiarity and how much we are willing to know about an animal has a great deal to do with things.
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Another tool we use is how to condone such behavior is understanding. Understanding does not mean language, but culture. If we had not yet discovered the other hemisphere (I’m in the U.S.) and we set on a voyage to France. We would not be able to understand the language, but the culture would be similar enough to our own that we would consider them *like us* aka, civilized society.

If we went to a place where people lived of the land, half naked or naked, in small tribes (and we had not been exposed to this before) we would label them as *not like us,* uncivilized and animal like. This is historically accurate, so you know it is true.

We grow up with dogs. We can tell they understand us; culturally, we have come to understand when they are happy and sad; we have come to know they feel pain, and we feel for that pain. We know no such things of cows.

If human culture had made different choices in history and randomly decided to have cows or pigs living in their homes, and decided to eat dogs/wolves, then we would be giving our pet pigs presents on Christmas and have cats and dogs in factory farming without every questioning.
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I am sorry I got so very very off track, I have just put a lot of thought into the value we place on life and its relationship to language and culture.

To answer your question, I believe life is important, and no living creature deserves to suffer needlessly. Yes, an antelope is going to suffer when a lioness or what have you kills it, but that death needed to happen. However, as a human, I suppose I do consider human life more important. If I was in a hypothetical situation where someone was going to kill me or kill my cat, I would choose my cat (sorry Simone!) But if it was kill me or kill my nephew, I would choose me. The optimal situation is of course that I save me, my cat and my nephew, but that’s not what hypotheticals are all about.

If the situation was torture however, I would have a difficult time condoning the torture of another at all.

What all this means on the grand scheme of things? I have no friggen clue. You wanted discussion, so I rambled my behind off like I have never rambled my behind off before.
Just email me if you want me to take this long rant off your question.

:)

EDIT: Yes, I believe animals have the same interests in continuing to exist that I do. I believe they don't want to be tortured, and they don't want to die. (Who would?) I believe they protect their young; I believe they mourn; I believe they fear; I believe they suffer, and I believe they want.

Answer 2

I really liked Kitkat's answer. That's along
my line of thinking. I believe it is totally
unacceptable morally to kill for the sake
of convenience.

Commisioner David Stern of the NBA tried
to move to a cruelty free, synthethic skinned
basketball. The star players complained that
it wasn't as easy to grasp. They went right
back to leather. It's more important to throw
a ball through a silly hope over and over
again than it is end the use of something
derived from a cow's hide. Sadly, this is
a prime example of how arrogant
we are as a human race.

If an eighty year old man gets a terminal
illness and starts to use a drug that was
validated on a lab animal; is six more
months of life worth snuffing the animals
life out? Don't do it on my acoount. I'm
going to die anyway.

On the other hand if a misquito
is biting me ,it's me or it. I'm not
taking it's interest at heart because
it's not considering mine.

Borrowing that I say, "live and let live".
They have just as much right to a full
lifespan that i do. I downsize i to make
a Buddhists point.

Answer 3

Animal life is important to me under the aspect of keeping a natural balance on this planet. I believe that we humans have destroyed this balance a long time ago. Being a political person, I do care for humans and sociological/political circumstances. But that does not mean I consider animals to be something to be tortured, destroyed, abused or extinguished or manipulated in any way. And just because we don't have the ability to communicate with animals does not give us the right to maltreat them. Pain and misery is felt equally strong in every living creature and taking care of the animal life is one of our responsibilities after having caused so many negative changes in the Eco system.

Answer 4

Animal life is very important to me. I work as a pet-sitter---I have to take care of my clients' pets as well as keep the animals happy and occupied while their owner is away. My job may provide an income but its the animals that make it worthwile. I also own a dog, a Chihuahua, who is the light of my life. I can't imagine waking up in the morning and not seeing his adorable face. I'm very protective of him. Animals are my life and always will be. I think that animal life has as much importance as a human life. Animals, such as a dog or cat, give us companionship and meaning in our lives. If loved and cared for well, a pet can be your best friend for life, and give you a lifetime of memories that you will cherish for so many years.

Answer 5

I think Denis Leary said it best when he said we only want to save the cute animals. Sad but true. Save the otter. Kill the cow.

We've proven that pigs are smarter than chimps. Pigs can play video games. And learn from them! But chimps are cute. So save them. Pigs are not cute. So kill them.

Live was given to them the same as it was given to us. Breathed into them by the Creator. A gift. Even the tiniest ant runs away when it sees the tissue coming to squash it. Even his little simple self wants to live.

How we treat the most simple creatures denotes our mindset. Serial killers start with animals. We've disregarded animals so long and so much. Now we've worked up to people. Just like serial killers. The old and infirm? Kill them. They are of no use to us.

It's all wrong. All wrong. Respect life. In all its form.

Answer 6

Very important, as a food source

Answer 7

Animals are certainly as important as a humans. They are so important to us, what will we be without horses? Without dogs to guard, herd, and work for fire stations? and their other countless stories, dolphins saving human lives and more. You may say that individually most are unimportant. Well no offense, but isnt that true for humans too? Do you think the young pretty 20 year old who just got a job as the hottest model, is that rly important, what about even more plainer joes and janes? no offense but we arent THAT important either. We are but a speck on a big planet, and even our planet is just a speck from pluto. Individually 90% of us are not terribly important, but collectively we are, and isnt that the same with animals too?

Answer 8

I fully respect all their interests and I treat them 100% equal. I take only the amount I need and kill some of them by a slit of throat to bleed their blood into a bowl honorably (humanely as opposed to beheaded or throat rip out of trachea most do to cows) for their body to give me a meal but I free their spirit with a body at peace ritual of admiration of killing them in this manner. Then I freeze flesh then I cook using every single body part.

I would not ever boil a lobster alive.

Answer 9

I dont think we have the right as humans to ASSUME that we are the superior being. Humans are the only species responsible for polluting our world, destroying natural resources, contaminating our food supply, war, air pollution, altering what God gave us by genetically modifying foods, and basically mucking up everything we touch or are provided with. Animals however, live off the land, taking only what they need to survive, and not contributing to all the madness. That makes them superior in my view. Yes, as humans we have evolved brains that allow us to think beyond an animals capacity, yet we (society as a whole) do not use them wisely. When a shark attacks someone who is swimming in the ocean (the sharks house) we hunt down and kill the shark. If a bear or mountain lion attacks a hiker in the wild (the bear or mountan lions house) we hunt down and kill the bear or mountain lion. Now granted, if one of those critters turned up in my living room, its going down, but I just don't think animals are given enough credit. Seems to me the animals have it all sorted out way better than us mere humans. Not going to ruin my karma by eating one.

Answer 10

Are these "animals"

(1) my cats?
(2) the massive rats I used to see in my alma mater's loading docks?
(3) random groups of cows?

For me, there's a big 'increased responsibility, increased privileges' issue. I assume all three have an equal interest in living, but I don't have an equal interest in all three.