Reading about the anger stoked by Karl Rove's plan to go dove hunting reminded me of a recent oped by Vicki Haddock in the Chronicle, where she explores why animals sometimes receive more sympathy than people. A few anecdotes from the story are telling, and so totally California:
...football star Michael Vick pleaded not guilty to criminal charges after authorities raiding his home found 66 angry dogs, a dog-fighting pit and bloodstained carpets. An indictment claims that losing dogs were drowned, hanged and shot, or soaked and electrocuted.
Also last week, an 8-week-old rescued kitten named Adam underwent skin grafting at a Sonoma County animal hospital after having been caged and deliberately set on fire. Two 15-year-old girls stand charged with felony animal cruelty.
In both cases, as in other notorious incidents of animal cruelty, public outrage has been fierce -- so much so that it almost seems to outpace our empathy for human affliction.
[...]
Meanwhile, thousands of dollars are cascading in from around the globe to help pay for Adam's grueling recovery. The staff at the Animal Hospital in Cotati has been overwhelmed with well-wishers.
[...]
It's worth asking why animal victims sometimes evoke our emotions more than human ones.
(Recall the case of the mountain lion that attacked jogger Barbara Schoener jogging in El Dorado County. After authorities killed the cougar, donations to find a home for the cougar's orphaned cub were running more than double what people pledged to a trust fund for Schoener's children, until the national press trumpeted the irony.)[This has been debunked, thanks TTT!]Similarly, some Santa Rosa residents are wondering why a wounded kitten triggered a greater outpouring than the killing of a 16-year-old boy in the same Apple Valley neighborhood last year. A reward was issued on behalf of the feline victim, not the human one. And the cost of kitten Adam's care could nourish a village of Sudanese children.
She goes on to discuss the various forces at play--pampering pets, the replacement of children with pets, animals' helplessness, anthropomorphism, the link between cruelty to animals in childhood and adult sociopathy. But I think this is the best explanation:
One is practically theological. We tend to regard animals as pure, blameless, sinless -- and thus lacking responsibility, however unfortunate their fates. Mahatma Gandhi, a vegetarian who famously contended that a nation's morality could be judged by the way its animals are treated, observed "the more helpless a creature, the more entitled to protection by man from the cruelty of man."
Researchers have found that when humans suffer abuse or tragedy, the rest of us subconsciously look for ways to distinguish our situations from theirs as a way of tamping down our own anxieties.
Thus we rationalize that a crime victim shouldn't have ventured into a certain neighborhood at a certain time, or consorted with people of ill-repute, or been careless about locking their doors, or dabbled in drugs -- whatever might have jacked up their risk of jeopardy.
We simply don't play the same "blame game" with animals.
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There is a house they call the rising sun.. Its been the ruin of many a poor boy and god I fear we are all one
http://www.housefront.com/PropertyDetail.aspx?qry=339813&propertyID=700…
Roves little love shack
Well, I like most animals more than most people. So, yeah, sure. Except kids, becasue they are innocent and should be protected, even from the stupidity of their parents.
In this case, there is also probably something to do with the fact that doves are often used as a symbol of peace and innocence, and Karl Rove is.....*ahem* anything but peaceful and innocent.
Rove is lying scum, and he wants to go out and kill things for fun rather than food, and the things he wants to kill are the symbol of peace and innocence. You seriously don't have to be an animal lover to see all the things wrong in this particular picture.
At least one of Vicki Haddock's points is nothing more than a Limbaugh-legend:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1244
LIMBAUGH: "On April 23, 1994, a woman named Barbara Schoener, 40 years old, was killed by an 82-pound mountain lion in El Dorado County, California.... She has two kids and a husband. The collection fund had been started for a trust fund for the kids and their education, but at the same time a companion fund had been started by a bunch of animal rights activists for the orphaned lion cubs.... As of May 23, the orphaned mountain lion had received $21,000 in donations and Barbara Schoener's two kids had received around $9,000." (TV, 7/5/94)
REALITY: Long after this story got debunked, Limbaugh continued to repeat it. On May 31, Folsom City Zoo offical Terry Jenkins sent a letter to Limbaugh correcting an earlier broadcast: "There has never been a 'trust fund for the kitten' as you reported, nor any other fundraising efforts by the zoo or anyone else (with the exception of $36 raised by the coffee store across the street). There certainly have not been any 'animal rights people' deciding to set one up as you claim they have." ABC's 20/20 debunked the story on June 4, with Barbara Walters concluding: "Unsolicited public donations have come in for the cub, but so far they total less than $3,000, so people do care more about children than cubs." Yet more than a month later, Limbaugh was still sticking with his distorted version."
Incidentally, clicking over on that first link you provide also gives one insight into the minds of the people who support the dove hunting, and it isn't pretty either.
They are rather good examples of the unfortunate crossover between people who aren't interested in animal welfare OR human welfare.
One bit of fallout from most theistic religions is the idea that humanity is somehow tainted. We won't get away from this until we come to an understanding the humanity doesn't need a god to come and save it. We need to rescue ourselves.
I tend to fall into the category of sympathy from the animal's helplessness.
For a while, I merely thought homeopathy was stupid, so it didn't arouse my anger. Then someone posted an anecdote of a couple who tried treating their dog's easily curable ear infection with homeopathy. The end results weren't pretty to think about when it started spreading.
I typically don't find violence to animals at all funny unless they've been strongly anthropomorphized like in cartoons. If you think like a human, you can potentially do something to deserve getting flattened under an anvil.
well the other week over a 1000 cattle were broiled alive in south dakota by the sun and the conditions that they are kept in in their feedlots. nobody cared. but if someone leaves 1 dog in a car in the summer heat, oh shit!
so people dont really care about animals, only cute ones that they think are different than the ugly ones they like to eat at outback steakhouse.
Even while I was reading the quoted story I had my doubts about the truth of all the examples of animals eliciting more sympathy and donations than people.
As to religion's effect on animal vs human sympathy, I think the major Middle Eastern religions tend to consider animals to be worthless except for their utilitarian value to humans. Thus torturing or killing animals should be considered a crime only if done to another person's animal. This is not a universally-held religious belief, but it occurs often enough. It is also reflected in former Interior Secretary James Watt's attitude toward natural resources: use 'em up 'cause they're here for us and the world will end soon anyway.
Ron's observation is a common one. It is sometimes used to excuse behavior, as in, "Well, they kill cows, so what's the big deal about kililng a dog?" The badness of one does not excuse the badness of the other.
Well, with Rove part of it is that neocons seem to love killing things without putting themselves at risk (well, unless they go shooting (not hunting, mind you) with Cheney). There's something creepy about people who love to kill.
I think it's empathy based on familiarity. I like cats. I have always lived with cats, so I am familiar with cats. I know that domesticated cats are basically friendly, trusting creatures, which are not smart enough to understand human malice. I think this is why I have such a visceral, horrified reaction whenever I hear about cruelty being inflicted on a cat.
I think I react less strongly when I hear about cruelty to dogs, other animals, children and even babies, because while intellectually I know that these creatures are just as helpless and trusting, I'm not as familiar with them. I haven't ever spent enough time around them to have met some that I loved.
I think I react differently to the mistreatment of older humans because I subconsciously believe that older humans have some kind of fighting chance, and are at least aware of what is happening to them, which makes it less horrifying.
This is not to say that I have never found human death or mistreatment horrifying -- but when I have, it has not been an instinctive, automatic reaction. Some people and some circumstances have triggered reactions; others haven't.
I think part of it is people have more choices about their lives than animals do. Also despite the ferocity and size/strength advantages of many animals, they don't have as many ways to fight back as we do. They have brute force and that's about it. Humans can fight back in all kinds of ways, social stigma, lawsuits, shame, calling the cops, psychological warfare, imprisonment, causing job loss, "the best revenge is living well".... plus there's still brute force.
I don't like this portrayed as a dichotomy, that caring for abused animals negates our ability to care about people. The real problem is not that people care about the needless suffering of animals, but that they don't care enough about the needless suffering of people. The case about the burned kitten and the 16 year old who was murdered, which case got more media attention? Why not just call out people who lived in the community, new the information, and did nothing? Why does it matter that another terrible incident got attention? It is dangerous to play the "this terrible thing is worse than that terrible thing" game. That game gets us nowhere.
Also, plenty of animal abuse cases go unnoticed (or ignored) every day, it is not like they all get tons of attention. Seriously, the dog fighting and the burned kitten are 2 incidents out of what, thousands? (Ever seen an industrial hog farm, puppy mill, or cosmetics testing lab). Implying that people care more about the suffering of animals than they do about the suffering of people is misleading. These incidents are isolated and do not represent the way society actually deals with animals.
But I do agree, we should care more about each other. The disparity is how much we care, or how much the media cares, about people has been pointed out in many recent high profile cases. Minorities who disappear or turn up murdered are almost always given less attention (think Laci Peterson or Jon Benet). This is our problem.
I think that the comparison with children is the key factor.
Both pets and children are trusting and depend on us for care. An adult human is somehow subconsciously seen as "tainted" by association with complications cruelty of society and some people see animals and children as "pure". Since adults are part of the society that produced the cruel people, we somehow either deserve bad things more or children and animals deserve it less. This leads to a more emotional reaction to cruelty directed at children and animals.
I see this tendency in myself sometimes (we have four cats and no children, yet) and try to fight it.
The fact of the matter is, this Barbara Schoener lady was mauled by a Lion because the Lion saw her as a threat.
People demonise potentially 'dangerous' animals for using their primal instincts.
You can stand next to a venomous snake and not get bitten, but as soon as you intimidate or threaten that animal, you get what you deserve.
What the hell was she doing hanging around Lions anyway?
Help Protect Birds in Slaughterhouses
PETA's investigators witnessed despicable acts of cruelty to animals that would horrify any kind person. Live birds were slammed against transport trucks and walls, punched and kicked, hung by broken legs, and used as punching bagsall either for "fun" or out of frustration. One worker ripped a turkey's leg off her body when trying to pull her out of her coop, and another crushed a bird's skull with his shoe until her head exploded. Another worker swung a bird against a handrail so hard that her spine popped out. One turkey was even sexually assaulted by a worker for "fun."
Even though birds constitute more than 98 percent of the land animals eaten in the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture refuses to protect birds in its enforcement of the only federal law designed to protect animals at slaughter, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA).
I actually feel more for animals than humans and I wondered why for quite some time. I could not pout at info-mercials depicting starving children, but nearly cry at commercials depicting abandoned animals.
After some soul-searching, I realized that the lives of humans meant less to me than animals was because of how corrupt our species is from the rest of the world. We claim everything and dictate what the world should and shouldn't be and that includes how we treat other species. They are the victims of our carelessness with how we take care of the world, being the more superior, intelligent beings and we suck at this job.
Animals are in the crossfire and we are responsible for certain extinctions of species and possible future extinctions through unnatural means, not the natural order of extinction.
So, I have concluded that I unfortunately despise my fellow man, because we're just bullies with the bigger stick. Oh well, self-hating makes us a bit humble.
That is both sad and despicable. Thanks for ruining my breakfast.