From: young@alw.nih.gov (Jeff Young)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Rover stares down my barrel.
Date: 12 Aug 1992 13:14:37 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

In article <1992Aug11.162101.42273@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> you write:

|> 	And you help me emphasize my point even more, Jeff.  Your pet and a 
|> wild animal are very different, in your mind, because you feel emotional 
|> attachment towards one animal, and nothing towards the other.  But they're
|> both animals, just the same.

And so are you and I.

|> If your pet dies, you will not doubt feel great 
|> sadness.  But if you see a dead cat lying in the road, your pain is much less, 
|> even though you realize that that cat was probably someone's pet, just the 
|> same.
|> 	I feel a great deal of sadness and anger when I hear of any animal 
|> being killed mercilessly and unnecessarily, because I feel compassion for all 
|> animals, just as I do my own pets.  I love my two cats very much, but I can 
|> also say I love every other animal in the world with just about as much 
|> compassion.

I think it very unlikely that you have the same feeling for animals which 
are unfamiliar to you and those which share your home, your food, your sleeping
place.  Unless I were to project the traits of the animals with whom I share
these things onto other animals I could not feel the same for them.  Even when
I see a cat or dog on the side of the road I empathize with the owner and with
the pain that the animal felt before he/she died but it is not the same as 
finding my own dog dead on the side of the road, picking up his body, collar,
etc., examining his injuries and knowing that he did not die immediatly after
impact and then taking him home and burying him late at night so that my family
would not see him.  It's not the same at all.  If you believe that you can feel
the same remorse for the death of any animal as you would feel for the death of
one of your own, you are in for a rude awakening.

You are perhaps more sensative than the average person.  If you could truly 
feel the same pain for every animal that dies including you own, I would 
expect that you are a walking basket case.  I'm not making a wise-crack, I
don't believe that it is possible.  

|> 	The other day, when my manager and I were closing up the building where
|> I work, he captured what looked like a cock roach in a small, plastic
|> container.  After we examined it, and discussed its inevitable suffocation, my
|> manager told me he would simply throw the it in the trash bin outside.  I
|> protested somewhat, but he insisted.  I mean, it's only a damned cock roach,
|> right? All black and dirty and ugly and pesky.  We locked up the store, and I
|> saw him throw the container in the bin, and that was it ... Half an hour
|> later, I came back, opened the bin, found the container and freed the roach
|> into the foilage behind the building.  Can you believe it?  I felt compassion
|> for a cock roach, of all things!  But to me, it's still a creature, and
|> innocent, despite it's general lack of emotional appeal with humans.  It
|> doesn't deserve to be tortured for another's amusement.  I felt a sense of 
|> relief after I did this, and I felt better about myself, too. 
|> 

I expect that it's your perception of "our amusement" that causes you to act
this way.  Death is a way of life, it happens all around us, to object to
it is futile.  I would think that more what you object to is your perception
of the thrill/enjoyment that others get from death.  You should have more faith
in humanity - there is no thrill to death for anyone except school-children
who don't know any better and those who are no more advanced than school 
children.  You object to the actions of other people which, in my opinion is
the cornerstone of the animal rights movement.  You wish to stop people whose
actions you cannot understand and do not condone from continuing those actions.
 

|> Oh yeah ...
|> > my own advertising resources.  "PETA member shoots family dogs and cats for
|> > sport" -- good headline?
|> 
|> 	I am *not* a PETA member.

Suprise, why?

-- 
___________	
	jy
	young@heart.dcrt.nih.gov
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals