It doesn't change the fact that a world view that expouses kindness to animals will, if they succeed in spreading their world view, endanger and outright slaughter tens of millions of animals. There are 15.8 billion chickens living on the planet as of 2002. What's going to happen to them?
If a law was drafted and passed within the lifespan of a chicken (or cow or pig), then any animals who were born after the start of the process but before the law was passed would become dead weight and would be killed if no-one was willing to take care of them until they died.
If the planet gradually turned away from the use of animals, then the chicken population would be reduced not by culling, but by not allowing the chickens currently alive to breed.
If a law was drafted and passed within the lifespan of a chicken (or cow or pig), then any animals who were born after the start of the process but before the law was passed would become dead weight and would be killed if no-one was willing to take care of them until they died.
A law of that nature would probably have a "date of effect" separate from the date of passing (as most laws do) to take account of the lifespan of contemporary domestic animals. Or a clause along the lines of "animals born after date x shall be <sterilised/whatever>". It would still take a while to work through - some domestic animals have very long lifespans. Even cats can live ~20 years.
(In fact, there's an interesting question-mark over the validity of wills/trusts for the well-being of some animals - particularly birds and tortoises - given their long lifespans. But this isn't the place for a legal debate.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by thubby
i've always suspected that peta was actually an elaborate effort to troll people.
I have long suspected this too. If so, they deserve some sort of lifetime achievement award.
Let's be honest here; a lot of the noises humans make are because we're hungry and horny, too.
Of course, humans tend to be noisiest when we're drunk off our asses.
I am under no delusion. We're animals, after all. We've merely stepped out of the plains of our lowly origin unto a larger stage but still bare the markings of it, as Darwin said best.
A lot of humans are also parasite ridden, cold and half starved. Alcohol just makes it all a little bit more bearable. Debatable as it is, beer was one of our greatest inventions and one of our worst.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sutremaine
If a law was drafted and passed within the lifespan of a chicken (or cow or pig), then any animals who were born after the start of the process but before the law was passed would become dead weight and would be killed if no-one was willing to take care of them until they died.
If the planet gradually turned away from the use of animals, then the chicken population would be reduced not by culling, but by not allowing the chickens currently alive to breed.
Sadly, the Law and a lot more of what I'd like to say to this goes way to close to forum rules. So I'll merely say...murder is murder and the targeted and marked extinction of over 17.8 billion living things is a travesty when they're merely being killed off because of "dead weight".
I'm kinda shocked that this has gotten six pages of comments. PETA isn't worth the brainbytes.
Its pretty much relentless mockery with a couple pages of arguing over the ethics of pokemon. I dont think anyone is seriously arguing in favor of peta.
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"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nerd-o-rama
Traab is yelling everything that I'm thinking already.
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
Natural rights? The only rights nature grants you are the right to kill and eat the creatures you're strong or clever enough to overcome, and the right to ultimately feed worms.
Everything else is man-made. You have whatever rights you have either because your government gives them to you, and hasn't pissed its populace off enough to cause a revolt, or from taking the rights you're willing and able to take for yourself by force, either individually or as part of an organization. The latter has been how most of the free world got the rights they have. If you don't believe me, read your people's constitution, if you have one, to a tornado or a bear that's bearing down on you, then come and tell us how it went.
Nature is an uncarring bastard that doesn't give two cp about your rights; see disease and disaster.
So, for clarity's sake, are you saying you haven't read John Locke or that you dismiss him?
He's totally worth a read if you haven't.
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"Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good." - September 1, 1939. W.H. Auden
Quote:
Originally Posted by Keld Denar
+3 Girlfriend is totally unoptimized. You are better off with a +1 Keen Witty girlfriend and then appling Greater Magic Make-up to increase her enhancement bonus.
So, for clarity's sake, are you saying you haven't read John Locke or that you dismiss him?
He's totally worth a read if you haven't.
Hadn't heard of him before your post, but after a bit of cursory research I dismiss him.
His ideas of natural human rights are predicated on the man-made construct that is civilized society. If there is no society, you have no rights, in other words. Locke himself acknowledges that in nature there is only the defense of self.
Rights are a concept, not something inherent to nature.
At least until and unless you blur or erase the line for where society and nature become seperate. If you consider a structured society part of the nature of man, then it gets a bit more grey, but in that case dominating other species is still an inherent right of man as a result of his nature, and the result of evolution.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell
Kelb, recently it looks like you're the Avatar of Reason in these forums, man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LTwerewolf
[...] bringing Kelb in on your side in a rules fight is like bringing Mike Tyson in on your side to fight a toddler. You can, but it's such massive overkill.
Peta did something stupid and obnoxious? I never could have imagined... oh wait, this kind of thing happens all the time. PETA is a joke and regardless of their actual beliefs, this kind of thing makes them a joke.
I'm reading his work now, but I don't really expect I'll have a sudden change of heart.
Edit: A more thorough examination of his works only reinforces my initial impression. His entire thesis is based on the construct that is civilization, which he himself calls a departure from the natural state which is governed by its own law of survival of the fittest.
Btw, I'm not saying rights are a bad thing or superfluous in any way. Having rights is definitely better than not having rights and I'd fight to maintain/regain any rights I think I deserve if someone tried to take them. I'm just saying that considering rights as something that comes from, or is inherent to, nature is a fundamentally flawed idea if you consider nature and civilization to be seperate things.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell
Kelb, recently it looks like you're the Avatar of Reason in these forums, man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LTwerewolf
[...] bringing Kelb in on your side in a rules fight is like bringing Mike Tyson in on your side to fight a toddler. You can, but it's such massive overkill.
If you keep reading Locke you'll learn that natural rights and the state of nature, while related, are not the same thing.
I get that already. That's actually kinda my point.
The "natural" of natural rights is a misnomer, since they don't come from nature. Natural rights are the rights that a particular society sees as the most basic, fundamental, and somehow intrinsic rights that should never be violated. That doesn't make them any less a part of the culture that grants them or actually inherent to being a living creature. Alot of Locke's arguments also come from his views on morality, another social construct that has nothing to do with nature.
Don't get me wrong. They're fine works that should be given their due respect, IMO, but they don't even try to deny that rights are something that's a part of human civilization rather the part of nature.
After reading Locke's works, I think he'd probably be baffled by the notion of trying to apply the idea of natural rights to animals, much less the idea of extending any more rights than that to them.
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Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell
Kelb, recently it looks like you're the Avatar of Reason in these forums, man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LTwerewolf
[...] bringing Kelb in on your side in a rules fight is like bringing Mike Tyson in on your side to fight a toddler. You can, but it's such massive overkill.
I get that already. That's actually kinda my point.
The "natural" of natural rights is a misnomer, since they don't come from nature. Natural rights are the rights that a particular society sees as the most basic, fundamental, and somehow intrinsic rights that should never be violated.
Then you read it wrong. We have inalienable rights that are insecure in the state of nature. The role of government and society is to establish a system to secure - not grant - those rights.
Then you read it wrong. We have inalienable rights that are insecure in the state of nature. The role of government and society is to establish a system to secure - not grant - those rights.
Coming to a different conclusion isn't reading it wrong.
The idea that rights are inalienable or otherwise intrinsic is just that; ideology. Further, it still stems from a morality concept which is just as much a social construct as the rights themselves. Your rights are A) not inalienable, as countless regimes across the world throughout history have done more than an ample job of proving; there always have been, and still are places where you have only the rights you can take at gun or knife point; and B) not intrinsic, because otherwise they'd be observed by nature in -some- form; overriding instinct to not violate the rights of others for example, or having those rights respected by creatures on the same level of the food-chain.
Locke even hangs part of his argument on the concept of ownership; specifically the notion that one of your natural rights is the right to defend your property, and that your body and being belong to a deity; which isn't any more natural than rights or morality. Hell, even the idea that they're insecure in nature hangs on the concept of security, another human idea based on the concept of ownership.
Like I said, I can definitely buy into the social contract. I think if you're going to have a government, it's purpose should be to protect and support the people from outside aggression and natural disaster with no mind toward its own profit, but ultimately that has nothing at all to do with nature and everything to do with culture.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell
Kelb, recently it looks like you're the Avatar of Reason in these forums, man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LTwerewolf
[...] bringing Kelb in on your side in a rules fight is like bringing Mike Tyson in on your side to fight a toddler. You can, but it's such massive overkill.
Then you read it wrong. We have inalienable rights that are insecure in the state of nature. The role of government and society is to establish a system to secure - not grant - those rights.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera
Coming to a different conclusion isn't reading it wrong.
Are you arguing about Locke's views or Kelb_Panthera's views?
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"So, Lord Elrond. Have I gotten this right? You want us to give the One Ring to the halfling? To Belkar?"
"Roughly half of humanity is in denial regarding their own stupidity" (V.S.Ramachandran)
Natural rights? The only rights nature grants you are the right to kill and eat the creatures you're strong or clever enough to overcome, and the right to ultimately feed worms.
Another way of expressing this, in a more abstract sense, would be that in nature you have the right to the product of your own labour (provided you are able to defend it).
That's at the core of Locke's political philosophy. In providing collective defence of the fruits of its citizens' labours, the state guarantees a right that's present, but limited, in the state of nature.
Personally, I take a fairly Hobbesian view of the state of nature - there are no inalienable rights, with the arguable exception of the right to self-defence which isn't permanently alienable, and the purpose of the state is to limit liberty to provide security - but I don't think Locke is entirely wrong, either.
The Atlas is also goofy but it has that whole "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man" menacing smile thing going for it. The guy who drew that one up was obviously taken to the Nutcracker when he was a child... and he was screaming in terror the entire time.
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enterti, Cogidubnus
Glyphstone, out of all the playground I think you scare me the most...
We even have at least one user whose persona is inspired by that movie, IIRC.
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"Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good." - September 1, 1939. W.H. Auden
Quote:
Originally Posted by Keld Denar
+3 Girlfriend is totally unoptimized. You are better off with a +1 Keen Witty girlfriend and then appling Greater Magic Make-up to increase her enhancement bonus.
Thomas More used the phrase "man-eating sheep" to describe the process of enclosure in England. Essentially, landowners and powerful tenants would expel peasants from the commons in order to make more money selling wool. As the displaced peasants often died, the sheep were "man-eating."
Locke's writings were used, in part, by landowners to justify enclosure (right to own property and all that). In part, because it was a centuries-long process (More lived roughly 100 years before Locke). Hence the connection between man-eating sheep and Locke.
The Atlas is also goofy but it has that whole "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man" menacing smile thing going for it. The guy who drew that one up was obviously taken to the Nutcracker when he was a child... and he was screaming in terror the entire time.
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enterti, Cogidubnus
Glyphstone, out of all the playground I think you scare me the most...
Are you arguing about Locke's views or Kelb_Panthera's views?
I'm defending my views. Locke's already made his clear.
I'm saying that while, IMO, Locke's ideas are a good framework to base a government on, he's made a disingenious statement about where rights come from. I also think he did so deliberately. Remember that all political theorists must, by definition, be well versed in politics.
By saying that those rights are inherent he implied that a government denying those rights was taking something away, and in doing so garnered support by engaging people's distaste for having what they view as theirs threatened.
Had he been straightfoward and said that they were the fundamental rights of the liberalist ideology, it would've implied he was making it up, which he was, and it likely wouldn't have been quite as well recieved.
"Natural" rights are a relatively new idea, and they are an idea, that only came into being a few hundred years ago. Before that the only people that had any rights were rulers and the aristocracy that supported them. The rest of the populace only had as much freedom and privelage as they were allowed under their ruling regime.
Ultimately all rights, natural or otherwise, are just political philosophy. They're not and never have been something inherent to nature.
Again, I think that having rights is better than not having them and fully support the social contract as a framework for government. I'm just being honest about the fact that it's a philosophy, not a natural law. If it were a natural law then humans wouldn't be the only ones that recognize it. If you look at any other group of social animals you'll see that they're led by the strongest, smartest, or otherwise most capable member of the group that's able to seize and maintain power.
Man's laws are many and complex. Nature's law is singular and simple; survival of the fittest.
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I am not seaweed. That's a B.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell
Kelb, recently it looks like you're the Avatar of Reason in these forums, man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LTwerewolf
[...] bringing Kelb in on your side in a rules fight is like bringing Mike Tyson in on your side to fight a toddler. You can, but it's such massive overkill.
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
