Animal Rights / Respect for Animals (= Non-Human Species here on Earth!)

[Jake_Sully_1]

Jake Sully talks to the Omaticaya on Pandora (using an avatar):
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The Sky People have sent us a message...that they can take whatever they want.
...we will show the Sky People...that they can not take whatever they want!
And that this, this is our land!
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Mark Schmid talks to the non-humans on Earth (without the luxury of an avatar!):
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The humans are sending us messages every day...that they can take from us, from our dignity, from our bodies and souls whatever they want.
...we will show the humans...that they can not take whatever they want!
And that our dignity, our bodies and souls belong to us!
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This is my contribution to "Respect for the Other". And it is a huge part of why I am "serious" about this movie. More on my web page: www.animaldignity.org (shamelessly showing off)

What do others think about respect for non-human species here on earth and Avatar?

Regards,
and thank you to the creator of this forum,
may Eawa be with you, Eywa ngahu
Mark

[Tsamsiyu Atsteu]

I think respecting animals is a good thing, and that recognizing their sacrifices (when we eat them or use them for materials) is also something that should be encouraged. We used to have a much more spiritual connection to our food, because we had to hunt it. Now, with food so easy to obtain, that respect has been almost completely lost. No more do people thank the spirit of the animal that died to feed them or their families, nor do humans utilize the whole animal like we used to. (Such as trophy hunters and so on) However, animals are just that... animals, and they don't have the same rights as sentients, so you should be careful what you imply, because such can be mistaken as that animals are more important rights-wise than humans. We are all interdependent, is what I feel, but also, we as sentient beings have certain rights that animals cannot have.

[Col Quaritch]

and opposable thumbs

[Coyote]

Thumb supremacist! ( )

[Jake_Sully_1]

Hi there!

I think respecting animals is a good thing, and that recognizing their sacrifices (when we eat them or use them for materials) is also something that should be encouraged. We used to have a much more spiritual connection to our food, because we had to hunt it. Now, with food so easy to obtain, that respect has been almost completely lost. No more do people thank the spirit of the animal that died to feed them or their families, nor do humans utilize the whole animal like we used to. (Such as trophy hunters and so on) However, animals are just that... animals, and they don't have the same rights as sentients, so you should be careful what you imply, because such can be mistaken as that animals are more important rights-wise than humans. We are all interdependent, is what I feel, but also, we as sentient beings have certain rights that animals cannot have.

I think playing one (humans) out against the other (animals) is wrong.
That's why I deal with "Humans" as just another animal in the folder of "Animals" on my page.
Both are sentient beings, individuals with a personality (even if this is relative when you go down to bugs, etc.) and BOTH deserve respect.
Unfortunately in our society everything must be protected with laws / rights, otherwise it's like Cameron says: "If we can take it, we will."
That's why I feel animals should have rights, at least very basic rights in our society.
If natives such as Native Americans or even the Na'vi would have had rights, I'm sure they would have given animals some rights. Even if you eat and kill animals for food, you can still respect them and give them at least the right to protection from bodily mutilation if you do not kill them.
As to the whole food thing: It's well known that we can produce our protein in western civilization without killing animals anymore and in fact, this is WAY better for the environment and as some say, even for our health (if we supplement it with the right minerals, vitamins, etc.)

What I'm driving at is not just eating animals though. Countless other animal rights orgs are doing a great job on that and I wouldn't interfere. I'm talking about animals in our "clans". Our "Direhorses" and our "Banshees", etc.
We do not treat them with enough respect I feel when we castrate them, just to make them easier for us to use. Horses and dogs can be kept separated from the other gender and there is no need to castrate them for birth control. If we want them to mix with the other gender we can even give them vasectomies and tubual ligitations. No, castration is not about birth control, it's about taking away from the animal its sexuality. And that is a form of disrespect. When disrespect goes to such severe forms as sexual mutilation, such as castration, I feel it's a very severe form of lacking respect for the other. So severe that in fact, I am very convinced it has serious consequences on us and our society as well. It's an attitude that we should and need to put down.

Regards,
Mark

[Kayrìlien]

The subject of animal rights and dignity is hard to nail down, because different people across the world value the rights of animals (and people) in vastly different ways. On one hand, you have people that believe that animals lack the higher brain functions that make humans unique, and therefore are subordinate to the whims of our species in every way. On the other, you have Jainism, which teaches that all living things are sacred, and many followers of this religion will not even eat certain vegetables that they believe to contain high levels of bacteria and therefore too much life. I imagine that the vast majority of people fall well to the center of these two extremes.

Regarding specific animal species, I believe that the vast majority of humans in industrialized societies fall into one of two categories. The first category are the oblivious; these are people who don't think about animal rights on a regular basis, don't think about the massively industrialized process that creates their food, and really have little to say about the general conditions of non-human life. The other category, probably the majority, are the hypocrites. These are people who, because of cultural influences, have vastly different interpretations of the rights of animals depending on their species.

This list sums up the average attitudes of people in this category (Note: This is in no way a reflection of my personal viewpoints):

-- Domestic animals, such as dogs and cats, should be protected from harm, and people who commit acts of violence against them should be punished severely. Eating them is unnatural, unthinkable, and wrong.
-- Livestock animals, such as cows, should be allowed to live a relatively happy life, and should be treated well as long as they are alive. However, their main purpose is to be eaten, and there is nothing morally wrong with that.
-- Large predator animals, such as tigers and leopards, should be protected from illegal hunting and allowed to live either in extremely remote regions of the wild where they cannot harm humans, or in zoos where their impressiveness can be displayed as a curiosity. Eating them is immoral, mostly because all these species are endangered.
-- Small "pest" animals, such as rats and gophers, are a nuisance, and it is perfectly acceptable to use poison or lethal force to remove them from your property. However, if one of these animals is selected as a pet, such as a rabbit, it then gains the same level of respect as do domestic dogs and cats. Eating them is considered to be disgusting.
-- Marine mammals, especially dolphins, are "intelligent", and should be protected. Hunting and eating them is immoral, except possibly by subsistence fishermen. (read: Inuit, but NOT Japanese)
-- Fish are not intelligent, nor can we identify with their lifestyle, plus, they taste good, so it is alright to capture and eat them by any means necessary, including allowing them to suffocate to death.
-- Insects of all kinds are pests, and it is perfectly moral to kill them just for being near you, with the possible exception of butterflies.

Do you see how odd this is? Why is it that certain species, either because of their usefulness to humans, or perhaps their beauty (think pandas), are granted an elevated status of protection and respect, but others are not? I believe George Carlin put it best: "If lobsters looked like kittens, we couldn't bring ourselves to drop them, still alive, into a vat of boiling water. Unfortunately for them, they look like alien space mutants. Bring on the butter." It is rather hard to get people around the world to agree on uniform standards of animal rights, mostly because even ONE viewpoint (an average American being depicted above) is so utterly confusing and self-contradictory that there is little hope of ever getting TWO viewpoints to align, let alone the multitudes of cultural norms of Earth.

Regarding castration, you must remember that humans have some sort of odd fascination with genital mutilation; it is practiced in nearly every culture around the world, both primitive and advanced. Extending this discourtesy to animals is not far-fetched, but it is rather puzzling. And you're right, it's not about birth control, and neither is human ritual circumcision. It's just one of the less savory quirks of nature of our species.

The TL;DR of the above is that I generally agree with you, I just feel that you have to take a wide-angle look at the situation to truly see how convoluted this issue is. If you want an interesting story about one specific issue that falls under this umbrella, look at the legality/illegality of foie gras in California over the last 10 years.

Comments?

Kayrìlien

[Col Quaritch]

I love the comment people are animals too, then everyone is soo shocked when their children behave like them in the streets. So that's all I'm going to say, treat animals respectfully sure but placing them over humans never, love my pets but if it came down to them or my family. Well I do have pictures to remember them by.

[Jake_Sully_1]

Hi Kayrìlien!

Hey thanks! Great post!

I agree with you totally that it's really hard to nail down animal rights, to come up with something that could be written down in law.
I also agree that every different person has a different view about how to treat animals correctly.
And I agree that people are often not logic about how they treat different species differently. The example of bugs and butterflies or kittens and lobsters are great examples. (I kill bugs ONLY when they pester me and would never eat lobster or crab.)

Why is it that certain species, either because of their usefulness to humans, or perhaps their beauty (think pandas), are granted an elevated status of protection and respect, but others are not?

Maybe this has to do with how we ourselves are made up instinctually. We prefer and give more value to things that look good to us. A butterfly is beautiful. It's beauty does something to us. Perhaps these are our instincts. I saw a movie once about human mating, saying that our human instincts make us choose mates with regular, nice, aesthetic features above others. We just prefer it, but cannot say why. I think that qualifies for an instinct.
Beautiful things, things which we perceive as beautiful just cause positive feelings, perhaps releasing endorphins in our brain. For some people that might mean that beautiful things such as butterflies remind them of the beauty of creation, or the creator, or Geia, or Eywa, or whatever.
Similar with killing lobsters but not cats. It's instincts at work here too probably: Cats have big forward oriented eyes, much like we, much like our babies. (What a coincidence the Na'vi are so much like cats, huh?  ) If our brains wouldn't be flooded, or at least injected with a little endorphins when we see two big round eyes in a regular face looking at us, our babies might not have had such a good chance of being cared for by us / survival. The whole "face" theme is extremely important to humans, as recognizing faces plays a MAJOR role in our social life. That's why we breed dogs and cats to have faces like us. Recognizing faces has become an important part of our "hardware" / instincts, so we are happy when something fits the face scheme and lets us use our "hardware". We breed dogs such as labs to have flopping ears because that makes them look more like human faces, etc.
It's the whole thing of: If the Na'vi would have been tentacle-ridden black piles of gibberish, would Avatar have been as successful as it is?
That certainly is an important question to ask.
Of course, the answer is probably no.

So we know that humans have instincts which make them picky about what they like and what not, specifically, things should look like humans or at least have regular, aesthetic features, be beautiful.
Knowing this, it's natural to use beautiful and appealing creatures to draw our sympathies for other species.
James Cameron does this just like animal protection organizations.
I myself believe there are "key"-animals which can and probably should be used to make people aware of animal protection. Horses for instance are just much better to use than, lets say whales, although whales might be just as intelligent and worthy of protection.
In this sense, even animal protection "instrumentalizes" animals, in that it picks certain animals which appeal to the particular instincts of homo sapiens, causing sympathies, and then uses those sympathies to slip the message of more respect for animals through the "door".
It's exactly what Cameron did. Create sympathies and slip messages through the door.

A lot of people object to this "instrumentalization" of the beautiful, to this designed use of means to get messages across. I don't. In fact, life proves that it's necessary. Had Cameron used black piles of gibberish for the Na'vi, his film would have delivered the message to a lot LESS people.
Same with animal protection.
The key point I guess then is, how to pack abstraction into the message, how to tell people, look you have sympathies with this beautiful thing, that is slightly different / Other, but, based on logic, you also should respect this other thing, which is ugly, a LOT different / Other, even if you don't have sympathies for it.

Anyway, I keep coming back to Avatar. I think Cameron did a really great, no, an AWESOME job with it.
He used his knowledge about human instinct masterfully to create sympathies for the Other. Which is just totally amazing and even a little puzzling to me, because in Titanic it seems there were no such messages or "higher goals" at all.

Anyways, gotta stop, otherwise I'll be tagged with the clan name "He-who-writes-too-long-posts"... 

Mark