Social justice warriors have opened a new front in their continuing war against Reality: animal suffering. They’ve noticed it, they hate it, and they will no longer abide it. (H/T to @Outsideness where I first learned of this.)
It has long been an argument from Yours Truly that animals are viciously ripping each other apart, and that if vegetarians and vegans were seriously serious about their positions, they would take steps to stop the slaughter and enforce a vegetable diet on all beings.
Well, Vox has heard me. Yes, in “Wild animals endure illness, injury, and starvation. We should help” Vox explains, or rather paints, a terrifying picture of an unregulated animal kingdom. Wait. Kingdom? Equality is not attainable in such an archaic, medieval political system. This is the first hint that change we can believe in is needed.
You have no conception of the daily horrors animals face. Vox explains—ladies, now is the time to avert your eyes—“Gulls peck out and eat the eyes of baby seals, leaving the blinded pups to die so they can feast on their remains.” It gets worse: “A shrew will paralyze his prey with venom so he can eat the helpless animal alive, bit by bit, for days.”
I myself have witnessed hawks disemboweling rabbits, big fish swallowing little fish, and crows doing things to bodies of the dead that can’t be printed in a family blog. Once I saw a wolverine, with every evidence of pleasure, mercilessly hunt down a squirrel and separate it from its noggin. Mea cupla, though. I like these other animals have killed, gutted, skinned, and eaten many, many animals, having been bred in the far north where such behavior was not then known to be evil.
Vox explains: “The natural suffering of wild animals is real and breathtaking in its enormity, but incredibly little is being done to reduce it…little thought has gone into the question of how to help wild animals avoid natural agonies.” To the progressive, every evil is a problem which must be solved. He believes this axiomatically, just as he believes that because he believes every evil should be solved, that therefore every evil can be solved.
Hence, “Unfortunately, wild animals lack the power in society to speak out and relieve their own suffering like humans, so it’s harder to recognize the urgency of their needs. But we should act on their behalf.”
Vox explains that one of the best ways to reduce suffering is the very method they recommend for humans: birth control; which is to say, birth prevention. “[W]e might be able to humanely reduce population numbers using contraceptives.” I don’t know, though. Can you imagine brigades of SJWs roaming the woods trying to strap condoms on bears? Experience with human animals shows it might be easier, and would be certainly far more effective, to convince grizzlies that sex is meant for pleasure and not procreation.
Reducing births can’t be the only solution, though, as the picture which heads this article proves. Violence is passed on generation after generation. But SJWs have many tactics, the most popular being Screech Shaming. How do we stop seagulls from gruesomely blinding seals? Twitter campaigns, primarily. We get people to hold placards reading “I stand with the #BlindSeals.” Or we get pictures of ocularly deprived seals with their cute little canes and have the New York Times run op-eds denouncing racist gulls. Make that speciest gulls.
Students traumatized by the sudden comprehension that the early bird gets the worm actually means the appalling death of another creature can release lists of demands to cowardly administrators, demands which might include free tuition for all minority animals, creation of departments of seal studies, official recognition that seals are an oppressed group in need of coddling, etc. You know the drill.
Objections? “Some might argue that we shouldn’t intervene in nature because it could cause harmful ripple effects elsewhere in the ecosystem, like through extinction or overpopulation of some species.” Some might. But, Vox explains, “Unfortunately, wild animals lack the power in society to speak out and relieve their own suffering like humans, so it’s harder to recognize the urgency of their needs. But we should act on their behalf.”
The progressive mind can see no rebuttal to this argument.
These guys are longing for the Millennium. Maybe there’s hope for them yet.
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
– Is 11:6-9
Cleveland Amory believed we should separate prey and predators. He apparently didn’t care that cats go blind without meat. It was just wrong to eat any animal, whether a human or another animal was doing it.
This is head in the sand behaviour. The only thing this does is leave a really big target for passers by to kick.
I have always told fans of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull that seagulls are MEAN. They eat birds and anything they else they can catch. Seagulls also push baby birds out of cliff nests to kill and eat them. Jonathan was not a nice creature. (Though seagulls are handy for reducing the Morman cricket population.)
LaLaLand must be getting very crowded now. Of course, at some point, reality steps in a smacks the daylights of the residents, but until then, we are left to wonder at the devolution of the human brain.
Gary: Good point. Also, the world is prophecied to end in fire in Revelation. The pictures of the earth on fire used by global warming advocates always makes me wonder if they understand they are preaching what the Bible prophecies.
Anecdotal evidence would suggest a disproportionate number of humans who harbor cats are liberals, and these harbored cats are notorious serial killers: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill
Briggs,
Are you certain your blog host restarted with the correct system date? Or maybe Vox rebooted with the wrong date. Either way, I thought I was reading an April Fools post.
Note: it could be that Vox now channels The Onion, 24/7.
It’s a good thing nobody is mentioning the insect world. Female spiders eating males alive, wasps laying eggs in live caterpillars. Ticks.
Sheri, for three summers I lived on an island with thousands of gulls. It can be dangerous to animal or human to wander into their nesting territory. A friend was nearly knocked unconscious by one. What we interpret as MEAN, though, is just their way of life. The strong and the lucky survive. Young gulls are most in danger when they first learn to fly and leave the nest. I have seen adults attack fledglings in the air, drive them down to the sea, and drown them. Then it’s lunch time.
“To the progressive, every evil is a problem which must be solved. He believes this axiomatically, just as he believes that because he believes every evil should be solved, that therefore every evil can be solved. ”
This can not be true. A real progressive does not believe in the existence of evil.
To prevent Sealaphobia being passed on from one generation to the next, I can recommend A Modest Proposal.
Gary: I was using the term MEAN in conjunction with the Jonathan Livingstone story. I personally do not think of them as mean, but rather as the predators they are. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
MattS: Progressives don’t believe in evil, but they do believe the world should work the way they want it to and anything that does not comply with their vision is to be corrected or removed.
The seals need to form an organization to protect their rights. They could call it “Seals for the ethical treatment of animals”.
RE: “Progressives …believe the world should work the way they want it to and anything that does not comply with their vision is to be corrected or removed”
Part of the approach they take to accomplish that is very damaging to themselves –
MUST READ: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
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When I was young I read all the Dr. Doolittle stories. What we need to do is to train all animals in the universal sign language (their vocal chords aren’t adapted to speech), so they can make their needs and desires known to us, and we can mediate between predator and preyed-upon. Sorta like the UN, don’t you see?
Mr. Briggs don’t break your hammer. You need a better tool. Try the pile driver!
Subtlety, Survival, sadism, cruelty.
Survival is essential to life. If you are an animal you are not morally responsible. If you are human you ARE!
That includes the duty of care to all life. Delighting in cruelty and sadism where ever it is found is painful to witness and obviously upsetting.
Many advocates have done a lot of damage and this is so well known that it isn’t clear why the madness continues. Michael Crichton wrote essays and spoke on the ecology topic, every one who has lived has heard of tales from the animal rights people.
Let me make an obvious suggestion as to why this error of idealism is made in this case. Painful emotions are difficult to tolerate without some response. It is easy to be fooled by a false solution which pretends or seems to remove a pain. People experience pain differently and therefore respond differently. The worst decisions are made under the influence of strong emotion, you might be buying a bad idea.
This is what the advertisers do.
Some people don’t give anything much thought in life and just react without thought. These people can still be convinced but not if you throw them out and put them off with more pain.
Cruelty is one thing, sadism is the next step.
Lastly, if I had to survive and gut something I honestly don’t think I’d survive. That makes me weak. I know.
It is innocent life that screams to be saved which cannot be ignored. Only the cruel, sadistic or anaesthetized can ignore that scream. When it comes it changes everything.
I think this is the beginning of a new industry—more than a zoo, because zoos have their problems—but something that is more humane and does not capitalize on the natural cuteness that some animals have. (There is bigotry in that pandas get more love than the hippos.) I’m thinking of an efficient way of providing housing, food, and healthcare for the animal kingdom. The food would have to plant-based. Animals can be allowed periods when they are out on their own, but not too much on their own, so they don’t get hurt. If successful, such a scheme can branch out into serving insects.
As anthropologist Ashley Montague used to say: Lions don’t hate gazelles; lions love gazelles.
We are looking mostly at mammels here. What do you feed a snake? Very few of them eat worms or insects. How do convince a rattlesnake that salad for dinner is good? How to deal with the venom it developed for hunting food? (How to keep it from biting you for depriving it of food?) Can Bald Eagles survive on salad and corn? How does one even get an eagle to eat salad? The logistics of this are a testament to the insanity of the idea.
I am again fascinated with people who claim to believe in evolution and then suddenly decide they don’t like the way it works and try to effectively destroy it. Talk about imposing your values on things.
Sheri, as I said in a previous comment, all we need to do is to teach animals how to communicate with us, and then mediate between predator and prey. Perhaps this could be a new subcommittee or agency for the UN.
Bob, I’ve tried communicating with a two-year-old about why he should eat his spinach. It resulted in spitting on the high chair and me. No amount of communication overcomes a vile taste in one’s mouth! 🙂
Joy: Weren’t you lecturing me on reality and now you admit you so dislike the reality of death and prey animals you would starve yourself to death?
Why do we consider it acceptable to munch on creatures (plants) which have no face and no legs. And consider this – not all plants have a clean record; the venus fly trap, for instance and its cohorts. Has Peter Singer proposed yet that we and all perambulating critters with faces and stomachs should nourish ourselves only by licking rocks?
Yes Gary, who will care for the plants who have even less ability to speak of their pain and horror than seals? I think that it’s ok if all of us (human and other animal) only eat fruits AND plant the seeds.
Certainly ethicist should be an allowable item in any creature’s diet.
I think Vox is spot on and no-one should stop him and his fellow travellers from spending their own money and time bringing their dream to fruition. A start in the Arctic circle would be a good strategy.
Perhaps they can keep us up to date with progress from time to time.
Until then we can only hope a cure for terminal stupidity is not too far away before someone sets up a charity for misunderstood bacteria.
Sheri, I’m not sure you realized I was, unusual for me, trying a bit of sarcasm–a la Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”… well, maybe it was just too close to what others advocate for real.
Bob: I detected sarcasm, yes. I just did not understand that to which you were referring. Unlike many here, I have not read many of what are considered “classics” and will often miss any references to such literature. My reading is almost exclusively nonfiction.
Sheri, I apologize…I didn’t (and don’t) mean to be snide about literary references. Sometimes sarcasm is too oblique, if you’re not used to using it.
Bob: No problem. The internet makes distinquishing sarcasm even harder as most of us have discovered.
Ever since Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, we knew that nature was all about difficult conditions and the fight for survival, especially when Marlin Perkins sent Jim Fowler out to tag some lion or alligator (Marlin was no fool).
That is why we humans gave up living in nature in the first place. Too much danger, drama, and starvation. Farming and ranching gave us a more reliable food source.
Why isn’t Vox suggesting the obvious solution that animals in nature take a cue from humans and create their own farms and ranches? Sheesh. Those guys truly aren’t rocket surgeons.
You like death? and prey? Strange that you would find it odd that I do not.
The headline says it all. However we do now know the fact about seals which I could have well done without knowing. We all know about the natural world but most of us don’t live in the jungle or act like we do. We don’t have to enjoy it’s ugly aspects and this post was ugly.
This post warrants something to be said about morals since it is a moral assertion right there at the top. It certainly wasn’t intended to be humorous given the “sorry girls” remark just black, very black.
Moral questions require reference to a higher power.
Nothing on that from anyone. Just crowing and tyre kicking.
You see if you and the other readers are all exercised about this misguided behavior do something constructive.
I expect these sort of remarks from atheists. More cruelty won’t convince someone that cruelty isn’t wrong whether you hate animals or not. That is so patently obvious.
Would I starve to death? Let’s hope I’ll never have to do the experiment. However that’s not something you’ll have to concern yourself with. My weakness is my strength. I’m not going to stand by when the next knife wielding maniac attacks another person going about their day in the new jungle that is our city of London. Some here will be the ones filming for upload. There’s “utility” in hatred of cruelty wherever it appears.
Now it’s bedtime.
Joy: I missed the part in the Bible that said “Do not eat meat”. I remember a lot of meat eating and animal sacrifice. Christ was referred to as a sacrificial lamb.
Yes, I hunt and fish. I whack those cute little bunnies and put them in my freezer. I raise ducks and eat them. I hunt Bambi. I find absolutely nothing immoral about this. It is who we are and how the world works. Things eat other things. It is not cruel. It is reality. God-sanctioned reality.
Joy,
“You like death? and prey? Strange that you would find it odd that I do not.”
I don’t find it to be odd, personally I find it to be delusional.
All things that live, die. All things that live must consume other things that live. Even plants must of necessity take nutrients from the soil, soil that is the decayed remains of other things that lived before them.
This is neither moral not immoral, it simply is, and it can be no other way.
Plants are living things every bit as much as any animal. eating plants involves killing other living things every bit as much as eating meat.
to say that killing animals to live is immoral but killing plants to live is not is delusion.
If you truly believe that killing other living things to feed yourself is immoral, then the only moral choice it to starve your self to death. You say you have no intention of doing this, so are you a hypocrite or are you a liar?
God doesn’t sanction cruelty.
Your hunting triumphalism doesn’t help your case or say anything new about the natural world.
You hunt to eat, but clearly enjoy the kill like the domestic cat. The cat is not morally responsible. Nor was the Jack Russell which fanged one of the ducks. Of course I was upset with the dog but the dog is not morally responsible and I reasoned that EASY thought.
Hunting is survival….that’s not a difficult concept. Survival is difficult only if you have to hunt for your own food and have no shelter etc.
If you’re still upset about reality we can reopen that debate now? We can’t deny reality though and to be honest I don’t want to play.
MattS,
There is no need to resort to uncivil language.
Lying about what? delusional? about what?
Where, yes, show me where I said that eating meat was morally wrong? You can’t do this because I didn’t say it and don’t think it.
Attack the argument not the person. Really you can do better than that MattS What does the “s” stand for?
This is an echo chamber.
Let me try again but please be sure to read the comment in it’s entirety fully if you’re going to be so rash.
You thought you found a vegetarian to bash. You did not.
You thought I said that the natural world was immoral. I did not.
You thought I said eating meat was immoral.
I did not.
Your response was unthinking and unfeeling. What else is there?
Your response, Sir, was content free.
Joy, this is just another little reflection of the Social Darwinism which has permeated modern American conservative thought. (As usual, they’re behind the times.)
JMJ
Joy,
“MattS What does the “s” stand for?”
It’s my Last initial.
“You thought I said that the natural world was immoral. I did not.”
You didn’t? You mock a post mocking others who seriously believe we should try to stop some animals from killing and eating other animals , calling it cruelty and sadism what else could that mean.
“Attack the argument not the person.”
Practice what you preach. “Subtlety, Survival, sadism, cruelty.” is not attacking the argument.
The article proposes reducing animal suffering by reducing the animal population by birth control. How far away is, “we have to destroy these animals to save them”?
I read it a couple of times trying to decide if it’s satire or not. Still not sure.
Okay MattS, You add nothing.
If my comments are to be so flattered as to be called preaching then it is important that you, understand.
Cruelty, surely the easiest preach? The topic that doesn’t need a preacher? That is my central point.
My expectations are low: Greenpeace, animal rights groups whatever flavour, many charities, The natural world!, letters that tell me I’ve won a prize, BBC, history teachers, “make poverty history”, Economists, perpetual motion, climate change, the hole in the ozone layer, feminism, career politicians, world peace. I take all that as a given. Did that need saying? Evidently. It adds nothing though.
What a disappointment! mattS The list just got longer.
I don’t expect to find animals being kind to one another. People aren’t why should animals who aren’t morally responsible?
The interesting point is whether, why, when, how or where humans ARE! Those are all interesting questions.
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Joy,
“The interesting point is whether, why, when, how or where humans ARE!”
Perhaps, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the article by Briggs or anything any of the prior comments. No one here is celebrating human cruelty towards animals. There is no sadism on display, but you insist on ranting about it and accusing Briggs and other commenters of it.
Ouch, Sheri hurt Joy!
You’ve still got it wrong and me wrong. You could work your way through the dictionary of bad ideas. Well done for not burning cats.
Forget the headstand, it was a bad idea.
Just sing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0MK7qz13bU
A movie ahead of its time…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzQN-ACH6rA
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb.”—Isaiah
“But the lamb won’t get much sleep.”—Woody Allen
I don’t believe in animal rights because my cat doesn’t.
To truly end animal suffering, the most ethical choice is to kill wild predators (especially Cecil the lion)
http://qz.com/497675/to-truly-end-animal-suffering-the-most-ethical-choice-is-to-kill-all-predators-especially-cecil-the-lion/