From: sherw@ocf.berkeley.edu (Gregory Sherwin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals,alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Alaska Wolf Killing Suspended / interventionist conservation
Date: 13 Jan 1993 02:40:46 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandstorm.berkeley.edu

In article <C0rLMq.1J8@news.iastate.edu> z1dan@exnet.iastate.edu (Dan Sorenson -- Cereal Killer) writes:
>	I'd think it became obvious when humans figured out the thighbone
>of an antelope was a suitable club and used it to kill other critters.
>With the possible exception of a few primitive uses of rocks or sticks,
>we are the only animals to use tools.  To make it even more simple for
>the purposes of debate, we are the only animals that *make* tools.  If
>you want to know what separates us from animals, it's this skill we alone
>have achieved.  Whether a flint axe or a 80 megaton nuke, we made and no
>other animal can lay claim to this feat.

Why do you exclude sticks and rocks?  On what grounds do you dismiss this
information as not valid to your arguement?  Is it because there is some
essential reason for it, or is it just because it complicates your ideology
that "man uses tools, therefore man is superior" when studies with primates
show that it is hardly unusual for chimpanzees to assemble rods together
to create a device to reach for a banana when left alone in a cage.  Or are
we going to say that chimpanzees aren't animals per se either and
are more like humans, so they are exceptions.  (Yet one more exception.)

The problem with this tool arguement is that it ignores simple physiological
factors.  Hands are the tools for our tools - we would, admittedly, be rather
useless at making tools without them.  What would a good part of the point of
disability insurance be if not for this fact?  The fact that chimpanzees
also use tools demonstrates the physiological dependence of tool use.
It is also indirectly dependent on habitat as well, since hands would prove
much less useful than fins if in an underwater environment.

Further still - what absolute standard is used to determine that tool usage
equates directly to superiority?  From our human perspective, a unique
quality that we have may seem superior - but we are not the only animal
species with unique abilities.

>	I'd say superior firepower arising through the creation of tools
>is a legitimate claim to superiority with respect to the rest of the
>animal kingdom.

The problem with this arguement here is not so much the acceptance of
the idea that "might makes right" (though it is a problem, since it can be
equated with the "we are superior" philosiphies that drove Nazi Germany and
similar groups in history -- though I ask you to please pardon one further
abuse of the ever-popular Hitler analogy), but that it is based on humanity as
a collective.  Certainly - if we are going to claim species superiority, we
must do so at that level.  But this approach does ignore the several facts.

For one, at the individual level, "might makes right" does NOT apply equally.
If you were lost at sea and encountered a hungry, pissed-off shark - I'd
place my bets on the shark.  Okay - we can say you might have a tool, like
a gun.  Likely, that gun was not made by you - that the only part of the
process of making such a tool that you participated in was running off the
numbers on your VISA.  Of course, this is only an example, but if I were
to apply "might makes right" here - I'd say that the shark was superior to
you.

Now to address the collective of humanity as superior - though not everyone
has access to tools like 80 megaton nukes (not even you - so does that
make those who do more superior to you?  Should it?) - should we even use
an 80 megaton nuke, who would survive?  Not humans, but cockroaches, ants,
beetles, etc.  Does that make them superior as a collective, because in the
end they would win?
>
>	Peeve: that the obvious is so difficult to see for some.

I am not denying that humans have unique abilities, but the fact is that
I see that you seem to accept this sort of superiority more as a self-
evident truth without question.  Blind faith.  Unquestionable beliefs
belong in religion more than they do in the name of science and nature.
You have been conditioned since birth to believe that, mainly by the very
source who considers itself superior without ever seriously questioning
the foundation for such beliefs.  Whether it was calling black men
subordinate to white men, or by stating that humanity has unquestionable
superiority over the animal kingdom, it is all quite similar to the
unquestionable belief that the universe revolved around the earth.
We know now that this isn't true, but it was blasphemous, ridiculous, and
even heard of when it was first postulated.  Of course this is not to
say that like the center of the universe, we will find out that humanity
isn't the centerpiece of all creation.  But the fact remains that your
belief that the superiority of humans is so self-evident may be as
presumptuous as the previous egotistical belief that the universe revolved 
around the earth.

And we have corrected our beliefs (well, some of us) that blacks and
native americans are savages along the lines of animals that do not
deserve equal protection under the law - and that was blasphemous at the time
as well.  These savages don't bathe - they don't write or read -- therefore
we are superior!  Your reference frame misleads you from time to time --
so I wouldn't be so smug to suggest that such things are so OBVIOUS.
What was so OBVIOUS in the past has often come to be looked upon as
stupidity in the future.

greg