Which life is more important? Animal's or human's

[charlie and algernon]

Poll question: Which life is more important? Animal's or human's

i have to ask after many fights here over animal violence. Some seem to think that an animal should be put down for the smallest transgression against a human while others want to completely forgive animal aggression and adopt a "they had it coming" mindset towards humans. So i ask, which life is more important? A human life or an animal's life?

[some guy]

1. humans are animals

we just try to ignore that. All lives have value, so in general, I think all lives have equal value.

:hi:

[dEMOK]

16. I both agree & disagree...

I voted for wearing fur, before I voted agains't it.

[hickman]

2. Unfortunately many humans decide to make animals part of their lives.

Many humans choose not respect the animal. German Shepherds were bred to be herd dogs with one owner that they lived and died for. Bloodhounds were bred to put their nose to the ground and follow the scent through swamps, mountains, back yards. Animals get violent when they're raised by idiots. Dogs have always understood pack mentality. Purebreds were bred for a specific reason. Humans keep treating dogs like infants. No research, just "oh, what a cute puppy!" It's sad when an aggressive dog bites someone. They get put down, especially if they bit a kid. Their owner should be fined big time and not allowed to have an animal until they learn how to look out for it.

Edit for punctuation and clarity. I fixed the punctuation but I'm too tired to fix the clarity. Sorry.

[chknltl]

3. What if the "animal" were sentient....?

What if future science demonstrates that cetaceans are sentient and even have souls and have an understandable language based on music..... What if that same science were to prove that cetaceans are at a different level of societal development than we are? Would they deserve equal rights to life as humans? Would we need to negotiate with them over "our" use of "their" oceans?

Another: What about the "proto-humans"...the australopithicenes for instance...if we landed on a planet at some point in our future, one inhabited by these creatures, (they even have fire and paleo-lithic technology), how should we treat them? Should they be treated as food? Should they be "Uplifted" or downtrodden while we steal their planet?

Should mankind somehow survive the bush administration, we will one day face such dilemmas. Homeo-centric views that we share today may need drastic re-evaluations once we start getting out into the universe.

This ignores the possibility that the universe may decide to take pity on us and give us an "Uplifting" or (horrers), take us out in a pre-emptive strike to prevent us from doing what we do so well right now. Perhaps they are weighing the same question posed here by the OP: Which life is more important: Animal or Human?

[some guy]

4. Homeo-centric

I like that word. I was thinking of using 'humano-centric' in my post, but figured there was probably a better word.

Thanks, I'll try to remember it...

:hi:

[chknltl]

6. Oh stop it...

I think your post opens up some VERY profound questions...questions that, with a bit of luck, we shall someday face. How do we expect to be treated by other creatures and how should we deal with them. Even now we are discovering just how intelligent dolphins are for instance...it is not too much of a stretch to predict that they may indeed be a sentient species. A species just as alien to us in their sentience as was some of those aliens Capt. Kirk bumped into in the original Star Trek episodes! Yet today they are oftentimes treated as food!

I am not advocating "cow worship" here but I wonder how we will act should we bump into a planet with "sentient cows"...where do we place the bar that says this life form is sentient and this other is "food". When should we even START thinking about such things?

What if indeed we are being watched by space-faring races who are concerned by our need to dominate that which we carelessly fail to understand? Hopefully they will be able to look into their own past and see a time when they were equally dim-witted...Hopefully this is all part of our growing pains and this is quite common with most other sentient beings who are yet planet-bound.

I really do think you have asked a great question...one which sooner or later someone was bound to expand on.

btw: I got to sit through a few Anthropology classes years ago...I am fairly sure I heard that word "Homeo-centeric" somewhere along the line. (Or perhaps that night I spent at a Holliday Inn.....)

[some guy]

7. You flatter me

:blush:

but I think you have me confused, possibly with the original poster. I only had a one line post.

:pals:

[chknltl]

8. oops so I did...

Wouldn't be the first time....wanna hear my thoughts about pot legalization?
:blush:

[some guy]

9. okay

I lean 'for' legalization, but have some concern that I might become a raging pot head if it were legal. :)

Tell me your thoughts...

[chknltl]

11. I was trying to be snarky...

...not hyjack our fellow DUers thread.

But now that you ask: Some folks could not wait for legalization and determined to be far ahead of the curve here.... nobody I know of course....we are all happy law abiding citizens here!*

*(a :hippie: can never be too careful)

[some guy]

12. okay, back on topic then.

You make good arguments in terms of sentience, and non-earth species. I just have a hippie view of life. I kind of see how all the various species form symbiotic relationships with other species, and each finds a niche they can survive in with relative stability.

Except humans. Since we can't communicate effectively with other species, we sort of take a vote about which species is more important, and since we're the only species voting, we of course come out the winners. Yay rigged elections. :eyes: We do that within our own species as well. Ignorant savages, if they were as smart as us, they'd have cannons and be better able to defend
themselve from us.

I once read a newspaper article, which I mostly don't remember now, where a researcher was trying to say that cancer cells were just mutated normal cells, and if the mutation could be reversed, it would stop that particular cancer. For reasons that were mentioned in the article, but which escape me now, I sort of thought, that's kind of how humans are; we don't live in harmony with the world we inhabit, but change it to fit our desires. I'm not sure how I got that idea exactly.

Anyway, I was talking to some one I worked with about it, and he basically got the idea that I was saying humans were the cancer of the planet, which isn't exactly what I was trying to say. Several years later, though I did laugh when I was watching The Matrix, and the Agent Smith character put forward that same argument.

And since you mentioned Star Trek; I really disliked the Star Trek movie where the extraterrestials were destroying earth, but our intrepid heroes went back in time to fetch a whale and bring it forward so it could save the planet. Maybe it was two whales.
I thought, "Hey, you should have done a better job ensuring the survival of the other species back in the day. It's a cheat to think you can go back and undo the harm after the fact."

:hi:

[chknltl]

18. Sorry asleep at the keyboards here....

I think in the bigger scheme of things we humans DO fit in. I believe that we are leaving a phase of our growth, a make or break phase where this pre-adolescent society could have destroyed itself and is beginning to look to it's own future. We have begun to understand that being the dominant life-form comes with a responsibility to ALL life on our planet. By the time we become a space faring race we will have matured even further I suspect. It won't be the same group of yahoos who conquered America over the past few hundred years. (Pardon my ethnocentric analogy there...I am what I am)

If you could liken our planet-wide society to a single human life, we would be like a teen. We are completing a phase of "me-me-me", one where we naively believe that we have the keys to all knowledge. We are just entering adulthood. We (collectively) are starting to concern ourselves with the future and our nest-egg in that future. (Our nest-egg being our environment and all things living in it INCLUDING ourselves).

If you could liken us to a cancer, yes we spread like one but we mutate as well, that mutation is likely one which is repeated by all planetary cultures throughout the universe. If this is the case, the "Klingons", for instance would never have become a space-faring race, they would have self destructed long before they could have taken their adolescent chest thumping society off-planet. Nor would WE be ready to head off planet yet either...we simply ain't mature enough yet.

I suspect this is a natural process, one repeated on countless planets throughout the universe. I believe that each planet must suffer those growing pangs of it's dominant lifeform until that dominanant lifeform takes the reigns of it's own environment and reverses the damage it did!

I also suspect that to think that we are not really part of this planet's system, it's natural order, is more of that "homeo-centric" thinking. It suggests that we are "apart" from the natural process, (for better or worse). This thinking is still quite common and reflects our being like a teen not quite understanding his/her place in the bigger picture! I suggest that in spite of this, we WILL get through this awkward phase and that it will draw to an end on it's own accord regardless of what you or I may muse on here.

I believe once we mature as a society where we can instinctively realize our interconnectedness with all other life on this planet we will have arrived as the mature stewards our potential suggests. We may at that point find ourselves welcomed into a universal society. How cool is that!?!

Ok That's enough "blow-hardedness" out of this hippie for one night. I can not get more faded than I already am.... like the typical drunk, I'll likely relook at my words in the light of day tomorrow and think: OH HELL you didn't REALLY post that! Perhaps I can blame the acid I ate decades ago...yeh that's it..."flashbacks" made me post this!
:hi:

[Nicole]

5. Human's life.

My loved ones' lives are more important to me than any animal's. No exceptions.

[Oeditpus Rex]

10. Which human?

Which animal?

:shrug:

[pokerfan]

13. Good point

Let's say that you could only save one:

Bush or a cockroach?

What would you do?

[SeattleGirl]

14. I say both.

I think that we need animals, and in many cases, they need us too.

As to your point, I think that there are some animals who will attack humans, but that most often, it is because we invade their territory.

More specifically, since there have been several threads on this, it makes me sad when a dog is put down for attacking an animal, because I think that, unless the dog has been running loose all it's life, the blame falls mainly on the human(s) raising it. My youngest sister had a pit bull for a number of years before the dog had to be put down (for medical reasons). Tessla was one of the sweetest, most loving animals I've ever encountered, because she was raised that way.

[datasuspect]

15. human life

i would eat every other animal except human

[Fox Mulder]

17. If it came down to the life of a human or any other animal,

the human's life is much more important, obviously.

[femmocrat]

19. As much as I love animals, I say human.

A local man drowned this week trying to save his lab who was retrieving ducks in the river. The dog swam safely to shore.

Ironic, I thought. A dog is replaceable... a human life is not.

[begin_within]

20. Animals of course. Humans should become extinct, as far as I'm concerned.

[Kajsa]

21. Both lives are equally important.

We share this planet together.

No one has more right to be here than
anyone else.

Now- tell that to the big land developers,
who big gargantuan, ugly strip malls and
cookie-cutter condo villages on any strip
of open space the can get their hands on.

" Oh dear God, there are coyotes in our backyard!"

No shit, Sherlock!
Your house is built on the site where they lived for decades!

[datasuspect]

22. animals taste better with gravy

they're important because they leave nice little browned bits in the pan with which to make delectable sauces and gravies!

i loves me some animals.

[jilln]

23. Completely meaningless poll.

[datasuspect]

24. i guess that settles it

end of discussion.

ah. that's better.

[Pool Hall Ace]

25. How is it determined which life is more important?

I happen to like animals more than I like humans, but that doesn't mean animal lives are more important. I've never been intentionally harmed by an animal, and I can't say that about a human. Again, that doesn't mean the human life is less important. :shrug:

[Karenina]

26. I look forward to the very near future

in which homo sapiens will be schooled in exactly how important their existence is in the larger scheme of things.

[Hand]

27. Kind of depends, doesn't it?

I'd save a cockroach before Chimpy or Crashcart...

ON EDIT: With apologies to pokerfan, who beat me to it. :hi: