From: sherw@ocf.berkeley.edu (Gregory Sherwin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals,alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Alaska Wolf Killing Suspended / interventionist conservation
Date: 12 Jan 1993 23:13:03 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandstorm.berkeley.edu

In article <1993Jan12.152455.20734@igor.tamri.com> donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin) writes:
>So Greg, what's the difference between a shark killing a seal and me killing
>a seal?

None if you have the same intentions as the shark has.  If the shark wants to
munch down on a pinniped, and if you have a taste for seal meat - what's the
diff?  I am not sure what this has to do with interventionist conservation
(please read this and the original subject line) -- somehow we're on the subject
of killing and killing done by humans vs. animals, which has little if anything
to do with the Marine Mammal Center and similar organizations.
>
>On the contrary:  my feeling is that the seal should be helped, if it is
>injured.  Seals are valuable resources and should not be wasted like that.

Valuable resources?  I think it is safe to assume that you are not a
commercial fisherman.  What business is it of yours is it if a seal is injured
or not anyway?

Now if I want to introduce the whole killing thing in the last paragraph, I
suppose here I could.  Sharks, for example, have been taking bites out of
tasty pinnipeds for millions of years before man's footprints were ever on
this planet.  What makes us assume that we - or even YOU for that matter -
are responsible for this?  What makes some humans so egotistical to think
that they know what the laws of nature "should be".  It's a fact of life -
people, animals, yes even pinnipeds - they all DIE.  It's part of the natural
process, and is not something that I would believe warrants a pack of humans
to play rescue rangers and perform CPR on everything that might benefit
from it because we think it will.  What often happens instead anyway is
that these animals become dependent on human support after some time,
get stressed out by their detainment, and die for those reasons or are unfit for
survival by the time they are again released to the wild anyway.  THAT
is a waste.
>
>The very fact that you'd waste more than a moment worrying that helping
>an injured seal might be the moral equivalent of kidnaping tells me that
>you have way too much time on your hands.

If somebody applies standards to animals and to people, then it is hypocrisy
if they don't live up to those standards.  By folks at the Marine Mammal
Center saying that"seals are just as important as people" in their justification
for capturing, detaining, and subjecting them to human contact and
treatment, it also should follow then that "capturing and detaining a seal is as
important as capturing and detaining a person" by that very same logic.
But it doesn't - and that is the double standard which I illustrated with
my kidnapping reference.

It was NOT intended as some battle cry to make kidnapping seals a felony -
it was used to illustrate a point.  There is a difference between the two -
trust me.  Do you think George Orwell wrote "Animal Farm" just to write
some cutesy children's story about farm animals who just coincidentally happened
to have parallels with the Russian revolution?  I guess you'd assume that
were true.  My illustration may not
be allegorical like Orwell's, but the point is demonstrated.
>
>Hell, your whole problem is right there son.  You've been watching way
>too many Disney movies.

BTW - Disney is one of my pet peeves -- all superficial image and no
substance.

>In real life, deer and rabbits don't talk to
>each other.  They don't communicate and solve complex problems together.
>They're born, they eat, they fuck and they die.  Maybe some of the humans
>that you know live on the same level but all of my friends are way beyond
>that...

So from this I can infer that you believe that the ability to find eigenvectors
for a linear system and to talk about them makes humans separate from the
animal kingdom.  Right.  Then what were we circa 1000 B.C. (as in 'before
calculus') -- were we just a *little* more like animals then?  Or how about
say 20,000 B.C. - we might have had some interesting grunts which you might
want to call language, but where do you draw the line for when humans
became this "extra-special" supplement to the animal kingdom - and no
longer part of it?  Or was this some mystical birthright quality encoded
deep in our DNA?  I always love it when somebody's claim to "obvious
superiority" when it comes to anything from humanity, to races, to religion, to
whatever is based essentially on the notion of "because we are superior and
we said so."
>
>I read this newsgroup because it amuses me.  I haven't seen anything as
>funny as you guys since Nancy Reagan urged us all to say no to drugs (it
>would've been perfect, if she'd had a wine glass at hand in the picture).
>Go on, carry on with your "discussion"; just reaize when you do that you're
>fodder for the beast.

Just curious: just who is this "you guys" that you refer to?  I mean if you
are going to stereotype a pseudo-"group" of people as if they came out of the
same injection molding process, then please define what that mold is.  You
don't have a clue as to who I am, nor do I about you - you can assume all
you want if that makes you happy.  I don't want to be the one to break it to
you that the world and everyone in it just doesn't tick or is made up of
the stuff that your personal, internalized mental model of the universe
attempts to represent.  But maybe I am wrong and that you know everything.

Yeah, right.

Sure - it is your privilege to think that political and ethical opinion
or debate is worthy only of ridicule.  Some of us might learn something
in the process - by challenging beliefs and ideas that were held and
taken for granted for generations without question. Wasn't it foolish of
us to debate a woman's right to vote - after all -- they were just
women you know.  I mean, women just don't do things like go to law
school or work for a living.  And how about civil rights?  Who's stupid idea
was it to even CONSIDER a black man equal to a white man, let alone free
him from slavery!  And then why should we have even considered things like
"air pollution controls" or how much our landfills are going to get
filled up - it's not like we have to put it anywhere where we have to LIVE
in garbage and breathe it.

And perhaps - dare I say it? - by learning some of us might become more
*superior* with our newly expanded knowledge and our ability to communicate it.
Can you imagine such a thing?! No, I think you are right - there is much greater
superiority in ridicule -- how foolish of me.

greg
Xref: sparky talk.politics.animals:10948 alt.peeves:18939