From: sherw@ocf.berkeley.edu (Gregory Sherwin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Colorado Hunters under attack
Date: 5 Jan 1993 20:22:24 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandstorm.berkeley.edu

In article <1993Jan5.170206.29823@cbfsb.cb.att.com> motto@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (mary.rita.otto) writes:
>Mr. Sherwin,  (no sarcasm, just differentiation from Mr. Popken, aka Greg, too)
>
>You certainly have an interesting sense of the ethical.  If I may take your
>ethical example, and summarize it, I would say that it states, in short,
>that hunting is not ethical since it is enjoyable and not necessary for
>survival.

Nope - that hunting is to kill animals out of a sense of fun and pleasure
as opposed to a means of survival makes it barbaric.  I think there is some
truth to the idea to "take only what you need from this earth", and by
putting slugs in animals brains because it has something to do with
having fun and appreciating the great outdoors as opposed to feeding your
family perverts humanity's place within nature.  Maybe you don't think
that killing a moose or a rhino to put its head on your wall is a waste,
but I do.  Fact is that we as humans are animals just the same - and when
we kill not out of survival, we are acting not as if we exist within
nature, but above it.  That this world was created solely for the amusement
of humans.  But you see - that is a fallacy.  If we pollute and turn the
planet into a charred mud ball, we have to live in that crap.  It goes
full circle.

To justify killing out of recreation is to justify any serial murderer
who gets off on watching people die.  Just because we can exert our power
over nature doesn't necessarily make it justified - just as if someone
who overpowers you and beats you senseless and steals your car is not 
necessarily right for doing so either.  And if we claim this superiority over
our own backyards (ie. nature/animals/etc) not out of a sense of mutual
survival , but out of an egotistical and self-satisfied sense of
intellectual superiority, we may as well hunt mentally retarded people for
the fun of it too.

>
>Using that same ethical evaluation, sexual intercourse for any purpose
>other than reproduction (a survival chore) is unethical since it is
>enjoyable and not necessary for survival.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call putting a 9mm slug in the
brain of my lover a form of foreplay.  Maybe you do - I don't know.
I think I won't take that chance and refrain from asking you out on a date
this Saturday night. :)
>
>Using that same ethical evaluation, drinking beer is unethical since
>it is enjoyable and not necessary for survival.
>
Drinking beer in and of itself is not unethical at all per se if you read me.
However, drinking beer becomes unethical when you do so in order to maximize 
the amount of fun you have as you go drunk-driving over a few unwary
pedestrians here and there on the way home.
>
>As I said, a rather interesting sense of the ethical.
>
>Do you also object to these things that people do?  If not, why do you
>object to hunting?
>
>
>Mary Otto

Call me interesting I suppose, Mary.

greg
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