For many people, the zoo is a source of childhood amazement and fond memories: swinging monkeys, laughing hyenas and growling tigers. Conservationists say zoos advance their educational and preservationist efforts, but others see zoos as prisons where innocent creatures are unjustly held captive. The next time your child asks you to take them to the zoo, what will your answer be?
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Modern Zoo Facilities Have Consistently Increased Their Effectiveness
- From Jack Hanna
By Jack Hanna - Director Emeritus, Columbus Zoo
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Paternalism
This argument assumes that our paternalism is justifiable. I ask, then, to what principle can you appeal to justify this paternalism that shouldn't, to be logically consistent, be extended to humans suffering extreme poverty, hunger, disease, etc. throughout the world? If such a principle cannot be articulated, it's selective reasoning or irrationality at work here.
I would ask further, if the interests of the nonhumans is driving our actions in regard to zoos (as the argument explicitly states) why shouldn't we employ these resources to challenge the paradigm whereby animals are treated as our property? Why not, that is, participate in P.E.T.A.-like advocacy efforts to alter our habits and irrational assumptions and beliefs about nonhumans, which, of course, leads to the endangerment of the gorillas we are now forced to protect?
- Alex M
August 28, 2008 4:43PM
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