At the time that I made that comment about the hunters, I did not know that anyone at Feelies knew any of those people. I am WAY behind on reading posts.
Just as hunters and right-wingers and people who don't believe in global warming are all free to voice their feelings here at the FEELINGS thread, I also am a person with feelings, and those are my feelings about hunters as a group. Of course it is really sad that people died, hunted down themselves.
I noticed there were several posts about the poor hunters at this thread. All those posters seemed to just assume that everyone reading them had the same values about hunters and animals, as if hunting is the most normal, noncontroversial thing in the world. To some people, though, it is not, and the thought of it makes me sick.
Hunters today kill animals for the pure, gory pleasure of killing other sentient, feeling beings. How can that really do anything but make people less reverent towards life? I cannot comprehend how hunting could be good on any level.
Unlike some earlier human groups, or people who live in subsistence cultures, we do not need to hunt to live. I do put the value of animal life equal to human life, and I believe for myself that it is morally wrong to kill animals or eat them at all.
I also believe in the concept of karma, and that was the philosophical basis of my earlier statement. Five less hunters--a very good thing for the animals. Of course I wish those people had never gone hunting, never learned to hunt. I am not gleeful that they are dead. Human life also is precious. However, the animals are helpless and innocent, and I put them on a higher moral plane because they deserve more protection than people who make conscious choices to slaughter them.
If the choice were saving my child or saving my dog from a truck crashing towards us I would save my child, but I don't believe that I have the right to kill or consume a living being. Those are my spiritual beliefs, as they have evolved over a long period of time, and I am as entitled to express them as anyone else is entitled to express theirs.
I'm sure that I know some people who do hunt, especially cyber friends. I think that everyone has to decide what their own values are. I think there are lots of ways that people contribute good things to the world, and I am sure some hunters do all sorts of wonderful things that are very charitable. |
