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Why do some people value animal life over human life.

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Iv'e always been puzzled by this. I can understand being desensitized to human violence(though i dont share that) but to outright believe an animal has more worth than a human is completely preposterous and contradictory to the self. Can someone help me understand.
 
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Leunam

Member
They want to seem cool and deep.

Like those people that say "I hate humanity," every time a sad article is posted.
 

MaxSteel

Member
what are you talking about exactly? like saying one animal's life is worth more than one human's life - or are you talking about experimenting on animals etc when trying to find cures for human diseases?
 

gerg

Member
fuzzyreactor said:
Iv'e always been puzzled by this. I can understand being desensitized to human violence(though i dont share that) but to outright believe an animal has more worth than a human is completely preposterous and contradictory to the self. Can someone help me understand.

I imagine that few people believe that animals have a greater "worth" than people do, but it doesn't surprise me if people believe that (some) animals have an equal worth. Not only are some animals incredibly intelligent, but it's not at all clear, for example, whether or not people have free will, and it's hard to describe "personhood" in a manner that discludes certain animals but includes people such as babies and coma victims.

Calcaneus said:
Some people feel like animals are more innocent than people.

There's probably some of this, too. Animals are completely amoral.
 
MisterHero said:
Because animals don't cause wars.

Animals don't have nuclear arms.

Because we keep them down by eating their asses. Fucking monkeys would be deploying ICBM's by now if we didn't lock em up and poach them in other countries.

Fuck your evolution cows, you're Hamburger Helper!
 

gerg

Member
fuzzyreactor said:
animals aren't innocent(atleast by the foundations of justice and kindness), they just dont have a conscious.

If we define innocence as "free from moral wrong; without sin; pure", then by virtue of being amoral creatures animals would certainly be innocent beings.
 

Phobophile

A scientist and gentleman in the manner of Batman.
They're antisocial sociopaths who can get along with animals because they don't talk back.
 

ToxicAdam

Member
People hate themselves, so the project that anger towards all of humanity. Show me a "cat lady" and I'll show you a very angry person that hasn't dealt with their unresolved emotional problems.
 

Vyer

Member
I don't think most people value animal life over human life, they just tend to carry some value of animals and at least some level of empathy.

Of course, on the Internet, most people try to play the role of one of the two extremes.
 
gerg said:
If we define innocence as "free from moral wrong; without sin; pure", then by virtue of being amoral creatures animals would certainly be innocent beings.
okay, so if a man was raised and believed that killing, rape and so on was morally right. is he innocent?
 

ianp622

Member
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that animals are innocent, since they are acting on instinct. The general idea is that humans do not have to act according to some instinct. This combined with the general distrust of the human race perpetrated by the negative slant of the media leads people to feel more sympathy towards animals.
 
Some animals are worth more than people. All value is relative. Some individuals have more value to me than others, and similarly some animals. We could kill 80% of the world population without losing too much value in all honesty. The world would probably be a better place for it too, but short of a pandemic or natural disaster of epic proportions it isn't going to happen.
 

dinazimmerman

Incurious Bastard
serious answer: because animals don't stir up as many negative emotions as other humans do

and because some people are just extremely sentimental
 

gerg

Member
fuzzyreactor said:
okay, so if a man was raised and believed that killing, rape and so on was morally right. is he innocent?

No, because he wouldn't be an amoral person. Amoral =/= immoral. Something which is amoral is "not involving questions of right or wrong; without moral quality; neither moral nor immoral". (An alternative definition might be "having no moral standards, restraints, or principles; unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong". In your hypothetical, the man in question would have moral standards; we'd just consider those standards immoral.)

An example of an amoral question might be "Should I paint this car red or blue?" The reason this question is amoral is because it makes no sense to talk of whether or not it is right or wrong to paint something red or blue.
 

soco

Member
Why do people put the lives of a group of people over other groups of people? (race, deviance, heritage, class, family, etc)

why do people like chocolate over vanilla?

so long as you're aware that some people feel that way, does it really matter why? chances are there are as many reasons as there are people who feel that way.
 
Fisticuffs said:
people don't value animal life over human life. Just animals over shitty humans.
I thought it was this.
For people that would take a bullet for a cat and not a child, I'm inclined to believe they have some kind of mental disorder and leave it at that.
 

MaxSteel

Member
AtomskEater said:
I thought it was this.
For people that would take a bullet for a cat and not a child, I'm inclined to believe they have some kind of mental disorder and leave it at that.

yeah, this.
 
diunxx said:
I would sacrifice the lives of each and everyone of you to save my dog, real talk.

Good for you, psycho. I would kill your dog and every dog in the country to save the life of one street junkie.
 

dinazimmerman

Incurious Bastard
gerg said:
No, because he wouldn't be an amoral person. Amoral =/= immoral. Something which is amoral is "not involving questions of right or wrong; without moral quality; neither moral nor immoral". (An alternative definition might be "having no moral standards, restraints, or principles; unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong". In your hypothetical, the man in question would have moral standards; we'd just consider those standards immoral.)

what if raping and killing outsiders was glorified in the culture that person was raised in, but disrespecting one's father was considered the worst moral offense possible? how would that person be considered "amoral?" is it even possible to be amoral without being mentally unhealthy?
 
A. The human race overpopulated, the same can not be said about most animals.

B. A lot of people are nothing but burdens on other people. Prisoners, welfare, etc.

C. Animals can't defend themselves so someone has to.
 

Kola

Member
fuzzyreactor said:
Iv'e always been puzzled by this. I can understand being desensitized to human violence(though i dont share that) but to outright believe an animal has more worth than a human is completely preposterous and contradictory to the self. Can someone help me understand.

Take a look at the embedded video here. Compared to these people even water bugs and camel spiders may have more worth.

http://www.peta.de/web/chinapelz.1732.html
(Beware, this is quite nauseating...)
 
Because they fail to connect with most humans and assume the worst about people. In contrast, they can can ascribe any emotion they want to an animal because that animal won't speak for itself (even though the animal would probably tell the person to fuck off and die if it could).
 

gerg

Member
Goya said:
what if raping and killing outsiders was glorified in the culture that person was raised in, but disrespecting one's father was considered the worst moral offense possible? how would that person be considered "amoral."

Again, you seem to be conflating "amoral" with "immoral". Something which is "amoral" exists outside the framework of morality, so by describing something as the "best or worst moral activity" that action is inherently moral or immoral. (The point of your question might have been to raise cultural relativism as a viable ethical position, but that would have been completely beside the point at hand.)

is it even possible to be amoral without being mentally unhealthy?

Define "unhealthy". But I imagine that people without a concept of morality probably have a different cognitive process to most others.

Edit: I think it may be fair to say that people are born without an inherent concept of morality (and thus babies are amoral beings for a time), and that grasping this framework develops as we grow older.
 

Munch

Member
I believe animals and humans are just as valuable.

Besides, I don't remember animals enslaving my ancestors. Or denying them rights. Or denying other people rights. So sometimes I'm just a bit sweeter on animals because they do show you nothing but love and compassion unless you THE HUMAN decide to fuck with their minds and make the violent.

They're like babies/toddlers for their entire lives in mindset.
 

Alcoori

Member
I actually had a discussion about this with a friend when I told him I wanted to volunteer at an animal shelter.
He said I'd better volunteer at some charity helping people rather than animal and in the following argument, told me that no human being's life is worth less than any animal's.

I disagree with that, I would save a cat over a pedophile for example. In my eyes, some people lose their worth when they disrespect human life themselves.

Of course all of that can be debated and he had some valid arguments. But in the end, being against raising and killing animal for futile reasons such as wearing fur isn't a stupid cause at all.
 
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