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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (48214)	5/18/1999 2:08:00 PM
From: lorrie coey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

You mean "on".

To: Neocon who wrote (48214)	5/18/1999 6:16:00 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 67261

The following post will likely be quite a mess. I am writing it very quickly. So I will have to depend more than I do typically upon your ability to catch my meaning. Dinner calls. Salmon. I love to eat salmon, even though they are wonderfully intelligent fish. (grin) We may by various means fight to make other cultures value the attributes we value, or we may attempt to annihilate cultures because they do not value the things we value, but the only real authority we have that allows us to claim what cultures should value is Might. Now it is perhaps human nature to value intelligence and sociability because they are defining human characteristics. The nature of the cherished intelligence may differ from culture to culture on the basis of context (but the principle is the same), but this is not a claim as to what should be, but only a claim as to what is. There is nothing here for our purposes. The debate here concerns whether humans should make morally/ethically based demands on other humans merely because an animal possesses intelligence and sociability to some primitive degree. Merely because one species possesses attributes we admire to a greater extent than other species does not make it apparent the members of the "higher" species are by morality or ethics inedible. We can cherish intelligence and sociability in ourselves while appreciating their superficial existence in other organisms as we hunt and eat them. They are not human, and so our eating them represents no breach in the notion of civilised human relationships that you and I share. What many animal rights advocates aim to do is extend the notion of civilisation such that it includes non-human organisms. (Begin goofy pudding brain music) They see a world wherein all living things are One, united by a multi-dimenional fabric of life, the origin of which rests in all things. In this world no living thing has the right to assert its will over another living thing. All is One and One is All. (End goofy pudding brain music) What they advocate is patently ridiculous. To live, we humans must assert our will over other living things. We must assimilate some thing that lives, and that is that. For obvious reasons we should not extend the notion of civilisation to include non-human organisms. And our cherishing of attributes that on some level are shared by non-human organisms presents us no objectively apparent reason to prohibit our consumption of these organisms. We should let the Indians kill and eat their whales (I am curious as to the taste of whale meat. I wager it is really quite good. Chimps are filthy critters, and so I am not as curious about eating them). We should only become concerned should the Indians begin to deplete this natural resource such as to deprive other humans of the opportunity to enjoy it however they choose. What gives humans this right? Might does, and Might is Right.