NOAA fisheries said that a dead bottlenose dolphin was found on West Mae’s Beach in Cameron Parish, Louisiana with multiple gunshot wounds on March 13.
There is this concept of ‘Us and them’, a in group and out group. In conflict it is often utilized to make your guys hate the other group and ‘dehumanize’ them so that you can prevent your guys directing sympathy towards the enemy. The other guys may have different language and culture and whatnot. Language is one of the best barriers for sympathy and is well recognized by the ones that use this to their advantage.
To a large extent, I think it is the same principles that prevent people from recognizing the suffering of individuals of other species.
We apply importance to the recognition of suffering so we can prevent it. I say we apply it to everyone.
Now, of course we can nit-pick and try to separate out who or what we apply sympathy to. You could designate some things as just automatons; such as ants, bacteria or even viruses. But I’m not gonna do that now.
I believe emotion is the basis for morality, and there is no objective morality. I have little emotional reaction to an ant dying. I have some emotional reaction to a dolphin dying. I have a great emotional reaction to a human dying. Your emotional reactions to these things are different from mine. That’s where the conversation ends for me.
I could make up an explanation like yours to explain why I feel this way, but the truth is that I just feel this way. I believe that’s also the real explanation for why you feel the way you do. I doubt you really logic and reasoned your way into caring for humans and animals equally.
I think the individual tragedy of every death that happens hitting you would be a tornado that ripped you from your sanity and sent your soaring. Some say that’s what happened to God. But we’re not gods, we’re small people with small lives, and it’s easy to connect the death of a dolphin by gunfire to the death of the world by overconsumption, even if only metaphorically. It’s a tragedy because of everything that it is, not because of the one cute dolphin. Although that is also sad.
There is this concept of ‘Us and them’, a in group and out group. In conflict it is often utilized to make your guys hate the other group and ‘dehumanize’ them so that you can prevent your guys directing sympathy towards the enemy. The other guys may have different language and culture and whatnot. Language is one of the best barriers for sympathy and is well recognized by the ones that use this to their advantage.
To a large extent, I think it is the same principles that prevent people from recognizing the suffering of individuals of other species.
We apply importance to the recognition of suffering so we can prevent it. I say we apply it to everyone.
Now, of course we can nit-pick and try to separate out who or what we apply sympathy to. You could designate some things as just automatons; such as ants, bacteria or even viruses. But I’m not gonna do that now.
I believe emotion is the basis for morality, and there is no objective morality. I have little emotional reaction to an ant dying. I have some emotional reaction to a dolphin dying. I have a great emotional reaction to a human dying. Your emotional reactions to these things are different from mine. That’s where the conversation ends for me.
I could make up an explanation like yours to explain why I feel this way, but the truth is that I just feel this way. I believe that’s also the real explanation for why you feel the way you do. I doubt you really logic and reasoned your way into caring for humans and animals equally.
I think the individual tragedy of every death that happens hitting you would be a tornado that ripped you from your sanity and sent your soaring. Some say that’s what happened to God. But we’re not gods, we’re small people with small lives, and it’s easy to connect the death of a dolphin by gunfire to the death of the world by overconsumption, even if only metaphorically. It’s a tragedy because of everything that it is, not because of the one cute dolphin. Although that is also sad.