Last year Leona Helmsley left $12 million to her dog, Trouble, setting off a heated courtroom battle. California just passed a proposition that says farm animals must be humanely caged. The legal line between humans and animals is blurring further everyday. When it comes to "animal rights," should your cocker spaniel be entitled to the same freedoms and protections as your kid?
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It is a Leap to Say Animals Have Interest in Leading Their Own Lives
- From Paul J Fitzgerald
By Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J. - Santa Clara University
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Animals' interests are profound and obvious
Animals will fight mightily to avoid being killed. Hens in barns rush out first thing in the morning and start exploring, pecking at the ground, basking in the sun. Hens kept in battery cages, denied space and natural pecking opportunities, cope by pecking each other. Sows in two-foot wide gestation crates kick at the steel bars until their legs are bloodied. They desperately try to make nests out of their packed mud or concrete flooring. Primates in tiny steel cages in vivisection labs resort to endless rocking behaviors or self-mutilation; they go insane from the deprivation and confinement. Dogs left on chains all day become despondent.
When confined or deprived animals are given a supportive and accommodating environment, everything about them improves dramatically - their health, their demeanor, their energy, their appetite, their gait, their body language.
As much as we may want to elevate ourselves above animals, we, too, are animals. In fact, in some empathy tests, animals score higher than humans. Loss of humility leads to oppressive domination. We can be great and spread peace by being generous to all sentient beings, by extending our moral sphere of concern as widely as possible.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, in his beautiful poem “Sympathy,” said “I know why the caged bird beats his wing, till its blood is red on the cruel bars." The bird, with all his heart, wants to fly, not be imprisoned for life. Mr. Dunbar, the son of two runaway slaves, understood that animals, like humans, have needs that run deep and are extremely important to their lives. He felt the bird’s psychological pain.
Humans and animals both have profound interests and they suffer when those basic interests are denied or violated - that is the basis for legal protections, for our having compassion, and for rights.
- garyl
November 12, 2008 9:59AM
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Fitzgerald's Catholic Doctrinal Assumptions Inappropriate and Cruel
The contemporary mainstream Judeo-Christian is likely to point to scripture to justify the selective exercise of compassion practiced in today's world. It is no coincidence that Paul Fitzgerald is the director of a Catholic Studies course at his university.
Humans are amazing in their compulsion to overcomplicate issues so as to justify their own evil.
No need to overcomplicate what evil is. It is when one acts in his or her own self-interest at the expense of another. The greater the expense to that other, the more evil the conduct. Evil does not have to have the component of "sadism" in it in order for it to amount to evil. Just selfishness will do.
People try and justify and rationalise by all sorts of fabulous mechanisms.
Judeo Christian doctrine is one of the most convenient. It just so happens (what a coincidence!) that Paul Fitzgerald, who is arguing that it's not enough to have an instinctive desire to live in order to be entitled to live - he's arguing that one must have "an interest in leading [our] own lives".
Really? So a Downs Syndrome or autistic child or a baby merits no compassion nor protection from pain? If in some nightmare, a normal adult human was next in line in the slaughterhouse, must that human be thinking "I have an interest in leading my own life" or are the more probable mental processes going to be more basic ones of avoidance and evasion reflexes?
What arrogance for those such as Fitzgerald to presume otherwise. And what arrogance for him to suppose that animals do not have a pictorial dialogue in their head representing their own life. I've witnessed my dog yelping and moving whilst asleep and presumably dreaming.
The seemingly innocuous character of Mr Fitzgeralds arguments actually forms the depraved intellectual basis for a collective evil on a mass scale that is shameful.
Great beautiful minds such as those of Einstein, Jeremy Bentham, Voltaire, Pythagorus, Plutarch, Moby, Paul, Stella and Linda McCartney and Thomas Edison and many many others selflessly recognise the truth of something most of us are still unwilling to accept.
Those who agree with Fitzgerald can not honestly do so unless they have witnessed the truth of what we do to animals in order to get meat on our platters and medicines into our pharmacies.
This is not an academic issue, it is a practical reality from which we are shielding ourselves... with the encouragement of "academics" like Fitzgerald.
For starters, check out " www.meetyourmeat.com ", then " www.goveg.org " for more information.
- sean joshua
November 12, 2008 5:00PM
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Agreed
Speciesism is the grounds that make's this assumption, and the perfectly logical contradictions that follow, work for some.
- Alex M
December 1, 2008 8:24AM
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no surprise
Animals kill and consume living beings (other animals and/or plants) in order to survive, and it is in their "interest" to survive and multiply according to the rule of the "survival of the fittest."
All of these qualities make-up a human being, so yea they do have an interest in leading their own life and it shouldn't be a surprise.
- pioneerlinh
February 3, 2009 9:16PM
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Humans and Animals
Humans and animals are diffrent. We may share some qualites like the fact that we consume living beings for food. While we share traits other more important ones stand out. Such as the fact that as humans we are a higher form of life. Animals do many things similar to humans but we can do much more in the way of thinking and have our own society based on it. If animals were on the same level as human beings then some legal rights would be in order they, however much we argue, are simply not on our level. Animals may be higher developed in some instances but if animals and humans were truly the same and had the same rights then we would undoubtably be overrun and be the lesser species. We control the planet and what we do with it, animals are under our domain and do not have the same rights as you or I.
- Pedro
February 11, 2009 9:25AM
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Dominancy isn't always the answer
Just because we are the more powerful species does not mean we should have the right to use animals like they're nothing. Would you want to be treated that way by a more dominate species for their benefit? I think not.
- pioneerlinh
February 11, 2009 11:13PM
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Humans and Animals; Analogous?
Mammals are one of the most successful groups in the animal kingdom.
Primates, our Family in the mammalian class, consists of pottos, great and lesser apes, lorises, monkeys, and lemurs. Primates are known for a variety of species that are intelligent, lively, curious, and social. From the massive gorilla to the tiny mouse lemur, primates have many features in common. For instance, primates have long, flexible arms and legs. Most have opposable thumbs, binocular vision and most important, perhaps, they have big brains.
Nonhuman primates are of special interest to people because certain species are genetically close to humans, which makes them excellent animal models for medical research. Tests show that primates, particularly chimpanzees, are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.
However close, a lemur’s brain has a large smell center as well as a big area for the brainstem and instincts. The human brain has a huge cerebrum, the center of reason. The smell center and brainstem area have shrunk.
Not to mention, only 29% of the genes in the comparison of the Chimpanzee Genome and the Human Genome sequences are the same.
In higher mammals, the cerebral cortex (the center of reason in humans and the smell center in lemurs, as I described above) has a large amount of folds, an indication of the intelligence level. The majority of non human primates share this trait with humans. But, this is not enough to rank monkeys as our equal. Humans have a cranial capacity nearly three times that of the chimpanzee, and even more than that in comparison to other primates.
Even with a cranial capacity three times the chimpanzee’s, the thing that most radically differentiates the chimpanzee brain from the human brain, is that the chimpanzee does not have the hemisphere specialization that human beings does.
This naive brain limits its host’s mode of perceiving, understanding and expressing itself. And even though it is known that chimpanzees seem to have artistic abilities, these abilities will never be hemisphere-related functions in the brain, as it is known from the creativity seen with the human being.
If humans were in the animals shoes, they most likely wouldn’t care too much how they were treated -if they noticed-, noting that they are incapable of doing so. Animals minds are innocent to desire because their problems are best soloved instictually. Therefore it is obsurd that humans, superior in innumberable ways, should grant equal or even partially equal rights to lesser beings who have not a single concern of freedom and equality.
- FhionaBridge1504
February 17, 2009 12:06AM
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No animals dont have the same rights as people.
People are superior to animals, plain and simple. We have more highly developed brain functions and have our own intentons not just insticts. Animals should be protected to a degree, I have no problem with ending the mistreatment of animals but I do have problems with a cat having the same rights as me. If I go out and kill a person in cold blood, I'm obviously going to jail for a long time. If animals had the same rights as people and I ran over a dog that dashed across the street in my path then I could be arrested. Animals do have rights just not to the extent that humans do. All sentent life has some rights, but some are more important and should be treated as such. The life of the most sickly poor person on the face of the planet is more important than that of an animal.
- Pedro
February 5, 2009 9:16AM
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We need Them.
I think that humans need animals just as animals need humans. We may be superior in "brain functions," but without animals at all, a lot of people would be unhappy. So why they are here living on this planet, isn't the least thing we can do is give them some rights like us, since we're already eating a big majority of them and testing them for our own purposes? I do admit that the life of a sickly poor person is more important than an animal, however can you single handedly kill an animal or test an animal and see its health deteriorate right before your eyes?
- pioneerlinh
February 21, 2009 6:03PM
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Instincts Not Interest.
Yes, animals do kill to survive, just like humans do. However, their desire to kill is purely instict. Not the interest to survive. They instinctivly know, from birth, what they must do to survive. Infant water buffalo can walk only hours after birth. Naked, blind, new born tasmanian devils instinctivly understand that they must crawl to their mother's pouch to live. They have no interest in doing these things, they have the instinct to do so.
Humans however, have emotions that envoke the interest to do things. Even during the later stages of life, when skills begin to develop, humans actions are based on interest. Thats what sets us apart from animals.
When an adult lioness stalks her prey, she uses a method that rarely changes, even throughout many generations. Humans develop easier and more efficent ways to 'harvest' food. We apply intrest. To better our species and our future. Animals do not.
- FhionaBridge1504
February 5, 2009 9:21AM
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Humans have Instincts
Half of the things that humans do result from "instinct." For example, when we are born, we instictively have the want for our mothers. The other half of the things we do is yes, by "interest." However animals do have interests and do not always act on impulse. Take a cat. When they see a rat, their first instinct is to chase it and dispose of it. Nevertheless in one case, there was a cat who did see a rat, but instead of running after it, the cat just sat there observing it. Can you explain that? Or lets take a dog and its puppies. These animals were in isolation and starving to death. They had a small morsel of food and instead of the dog eating it, it gave all its food to the puppies. Wouldn't it be the dog's instinct to eat the food? Yes, but instead of acting on instinct, the dog acted out of interest.
- pioneerlinh
February 21, 2009 5:52PM
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Human Instincts arent dominant.
Yes, humans do have insticts. However, the section of the Human's brain that triggers an instictive response is not nearly as dominant as any anmials.
Humans have a larger cerebral cortex, allowing the to reason. Thinking problems through, prior to acting, is a characteristic of higher development.
When a feline spots it's prey, the first reaction is to stalk it. The cat -small or large- will observe the prey. Animals know when they are capable of snagging their prey. This is a primial observation that even some plants display. -EX: venus fly trap- When the opportunity to strike reveals itself. The cat will go in for the kill.
Also, dogs do show some minimal compassion to their offspring. However, I have personally seen many dogs -and other animals as well- devour their babies out of greed. The pooches were menatally unable to consider the consequences of their action. Besides, if they could, there would be none in their mind. Food is food. Canabalism means nothing. They wouldnt even bother to grieve.
- FhionaBridge1504
February 26, 2009 2:37PM
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we dont know how animals think
We cannot deny that animals act in self-interest- but we cannot be sure they act only in self-interest and indeed have no interest towards others.
- sor666
May 6, 2009 7:07AM
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