If humans are so horrible to animals

WISDOMfromPO-MO

I am not being flippant, sarcastic, or whatever other adjective like those you can think of. I am asking a serious philosophical question.

I do not have a PhD in communications. I have not spent much of my life gathering and analyzing the content of the various media that dominate our lives. But it seems to me that there is a narrative so big and so powerful that it is taken for granted. It goes like this: factory farms, the extinction of many species, the way that animals are treated in scientific research and by the entertainment/amusement industries, and other atrocities leave no doubt that humans see animals only for their instrumental value and that humans' history of cruelty to and indifference to the suffering of other animals makes humans the worst beings ever in all of the universe.

I am not saying that that narrative is right. I am not saying it is wrong. I am not saying that I agree or disagree. I am being as objective as I can be.

I am asking, if we assume that that narrative is right, how do we explain what I just read: Elephant Mysteriously Washed 5 Miles Out to Sea Miraculously Saved By Navy .

We are not talking about a country with the wealth and resources of the United States of America. We are talking about Sri Lanka. We are not talking about a domesticated animal that someone has a lot of emotion, money or other resources invested in. We are talking about a random wild elephant that was released back into the wild.

Yet, they spent 12 hours saving that elephant.

If the aforementioned narrative is right, how do we explain the behavior reported and described in the latter three paragraphs?

TheMadFool

How do you think geniuses feel?

Some of them, e.g. Archimedes, Netwon, Euler, Turing were advanced beyond their time. It was like they time-traveled back from the future.

Similarly, I think our mental evolution, the parts that deal with rationality and morality, has outstripped our physical evolution. In a way, we're gods (able to be rational and moral) trapped in a primates' body (kills, hates, etc).

Zoonlogikon

I think people (for the most part) are inherently good, and do not wish harm on any other living thing. That's why you get this story. Most people do have empathy, for every living thing.

I'm going to give you a very non philosophical answer, that borders more on a personal opinion. I don't hunt. I could never pull the trigger and end another living things life. But when I go to the grocery store, or McDonald's, this meat is presented to me in such a way that I don't even associate it with another living thing. It's packaged and marketed, I know in the back of my mind it was once a creature. One that probably had horrible living conditions up until the day it was slaughtered. But when it is advertised to me daily without ever being associated with the animal I lose any sense of empathy. It's food. It doesn't make any of it right, but I don't think that it lumps all human beings into heartless killers. For the most part we're not. We're just complacent.

Terrapin Station

the way that animals are treated in scientific research and by the entertainment/amusement industries, and other atrocities leave no doubt that humans see animals only for their instrumental value and that humans' history of cruelty to and indifference to the suffering of other animals makes humans the worst beings ever in all of the universe. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Lol at the idea of that possibly being objective.

Anyway, the explanation is that we don't have one hive mind. There are lots of different views about animal ethics and our relationship to animals is complex.

Cavacava

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO

It goes like this: factory farms, the extinction of many species, the way that animals are treated in scientific research and by the entertainment/amusement industries, and other atrocities leave no doubt that humans see animals only for their instrumental value and that humans' history of cruelty to and indifference to the suffering of other animals makes humans the worst beings ever in all of the universe.

Agree here with TS, very difficult argument if taken seriously. The analogy argument between human and non-human animal suffering, breaks down I think. Are the people: who produce food for us, who attempt to cure our aliments, who entertain us, and those who eagerly buy that Big Mack, complicit in a morally travesty that seems to have gone on for as long as humans walked about?

Roke

The narrative itself is one way to tell we aren't really like that.

Personally, I've found it really therapeutic to simply drop the premise that people generally speak truth. Things are exactly what they are, and that's usually quite different from what people say they are. Dissolves a lot of cognitive dissonance.

If humans are so horrible to animals

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