“It seems to me this gets kind of complicated. We don’t value the lives of animals as we do humans. But we see the lives of some animals as more valuable than the lives of others. Generally we privilege mammals, but we sometimes eat them. I understand protecting endangered species, but don’t understand valuing wild animals or pets over animals we raise for meat. I don’t know whether mammals have a sense of self or souls. If so, I guess all do and should be treated with the same compassion.”
It is complicated. I value my pets lives over many humans lives, so I completely understand valuing pets over animals we raise for meat. We don’t love and cherish the animals we raise for meat. If we were snuggling on the couch with cows or chickens, whispering sweet things in their ears the way we did to our young children, we would probably be vegetarians. And I don’t know if you can get many animals to love you the way dogs (and sometimes cats) do, so we don’t have that connection with them.
We would see it as bizarre if farms set up to allow people to shoot cows or sheep. Wildlife hunting seems to depend on it being difficult or dangerous, or at least useful (supplying food), these days it seems to fail on these criteria (for African big game).
Every time you express a moral judgment, somebody pops up to point out some other thing, more or less related, that may also be morally questionable. This is normal, and sometimes it might lead to some valuable thought. Or, it might just be a way to deflect the original moral judgment you made. In any case, it’s another kind of moral judgment that doesn’t trouble me much.
^^ You compared morality and cultural norms. I have an easier time defining cultural norms. For most of us it is a cultural norm to eat cows and pigs rather than dogs and cats. Humans domesticated all those animals and decided how to make use of them. I can’t see how morality has anything to do with which animals we choose to eat, unless we are following some religious rules about clean and unclean animals.
Reading all the different views is interesting to me. I have no strong reaction to big game hunting.
It is also a cultural norm for most of us to eat factory-killed and processed meat, rather than hunting and killing it ourselves. I see no moral difference in the two, other than how the animals may be treated during their lifetimes.
I was raised in an environment where everyone ate hunted meat and considered it a delicacy. So I started out in that cultural norm. Then I lived decades in a norm pretty much the opposite. Now I live among hunters again. I find trophies distasteful, but understand that cultural norm (I think) even if I don’t necessarily sympathize. I don’t believe I have ever known a hunter who would allow an animal to suffer for days before dying. I believe I’m willing to go out on a limb and call that immoral.
Well, I wouldn’t call that an example of something that “may” be morally questionable. I was hoping that it would be an example of something that everybody would find morally repugnant.
A discussion about ^ that would be too OT, but I can imagine people having one about making distinctions between 16 and 18 year olds, using chronological age only.
Well it was already brought up, perhaps as another deflection. Much like the possibility that some people work in slaughterhouses to meet some underlying sadistic perversion. Where is there any indication of that?
I thought Bay just said those workers might enjoy their jobs. If meat eating is moral, and someone has to provide the meat, I don’t see why that can’t be self-satisfying (and thus enjoyable) work.
Bay, I don’t know about you, but finding ourselves in agreement on certain points, I feel like I’ve sort of entered an alternate reality.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who think that morality really is nothing more than a cultural construct in the first place. Sometimes I think that myself, particularly when I see how it can change over time. So we may just be arguing about what kind of cultural constructs we prefer. Personally, I prefer one in which it’s viewed as disgusting for a rich jerk to pay 50 grand to shoot a lion with a crossbow and then cut off its head for display. But that’s just me.
In our U.S. culture, no one is killing lions with a cross bows and cutting off their heads, so your sensitivities are safe. This is happening only in Africa, where it is nothing unusual.
Not every animal death is a moral equivalent. Shooting a raccoon with rabies is not equivalent to eating chicken is not equivalent to trophy hunting near-extinct species. Refusing to equate these things is not hypocritical.
In a prior post,I made a point of distinguishing mammals. Rabies is clear to me. Wild animals vs domesticated, not so much. Endangered species, yes. Even if we accept man’s dominion over the animals, that seems like a moral responsibility of sorts. jmho.
Don’t forget that as counterintuitive as it appears, legally hunting for lions has not been shown to endanger lion populations. The opposite may be true, as reported by some studies and our own USFWS.
“It is also a cultural norm for most of us to eat factory-killed and processed meat, rather than hunting and killing it ourselves. I see no moral difference in the two, other than how the animals may be treated during their lifetimes.” From Bay, post #464, not aimed at you alh.
" I was really just trying to make a point that, if you eat meat or keep an animal imprisoned for your enjoyment, you are probably a hypocrite if you make moral judgments about hunters." From Bay, #452.
We assign relative value to all of our moral transgressions. Looking to equate things that most would not, I find, is a little weird.
Re: post 475: When you posted this several days ago, bclintonk responded with the following: (Repeating yourself is just adding to the circular arguments in this thread).
Whoa, hold on there! It’s estimated that 65% of the lions killed for sport in Africa are killed by U.S. citizens. So it’s not as if “our U.S. culture” has nothing to do with this. Most advanced industrial nations have moved beyond this sort of blood sport. My understanding is it’s us and the Russians, along with a few die-hard loyalists to the British colonialist sense of privilege, who are responsible for the fact that killing and beheading of lions for sport is “nothing unusual” in Africa.
I trust the IUCN rather more than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when it comes to assessments of the conservation status of African lions and the causes of their endangerment. USFWS doesn’t have field agents closely monitoring lion populations. Its primary responsibility is to protect species in the United States, and what it says about foreign species often lags the international scientific consensus by many years, if not decades. It is also an agency of the U.S. government and as such is vulnerable to lobbying and political pressures.
Here’s what the IUCN says:
So the IUCN clearly states that “poorly regulated sport hunting” is a major cause of lion endangerment. The IUCN also says that lion populations in 4 Southern African countries—Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe—are doing fairly well, though this must be understood in the context of overall species decline and endangerment across a much larger portion of their historic range, enough to make the species as a whole “vulnerable.”. Among the chief reasons for this dichotomy is the large protected reserves those four Southern African nations have set aside for lions and their prey species, coupled with those nations’ relatively stringent regulation of sport hunting. The acts Palmer is alleged to have committed violate both the principle of protected habitat reserves for lions and the attempts of those nations to regulate sport hunting so as to prevent further jeopardy to the species’ survival. So even if you believe that controlled sport hunting can be beneficial to the species, you ought to be appalled and outraged by the acts Palmer is alleged to have committed. That’s why Zimbabwe is in such a lather about this. They actually believe in sport hunting of lions because it generates revenue for them, though according to National Geographic, their actual revenues from legal lion hunting are relatively paltry. But poaching of the type Palmer is alleged to have committed is a direct assault on their conservation efforts and their attempts to ensure that sport hunting doesn’t contribute to the decimation of lion populations, as it has in most of the rest of Africa.
While the ICUN may oppose “poorly regulated” trophy hunting, it specifically recognizes trophy hunting as a viable conservation tool when administered properly.
It sounds like you oppose all lion hunting, is that correct?
