Letters, War, and Radishes: things to chew on

Being a copy-editor for the Beacon means that I often have the opporunity to read letters to the editor, as well as new editorials, before most everyone else. A great deal of buzz resulted from an editorial two issues ago about animal rights, and how "dumb" activists that support it, are.

The following week there were two biting letters to the editor protesting the editorial..and this week's issue will feature, it seems, a letter to the editor defending the original editorial against the two susequent protest letters.

The argument is against censorship over the opinions of the editorialist. I can understand that position, of course, but freedom of speach does not, or at least should not, cover name-calling. The editorial was juvenile in that respect, and this new letter fails to address that, in favor of attacking the administration, and the school, for censorship by printing the two protest letters.

Censorship is, to my mind, wrong. But so is making brash claims and attacks against something that has not been researched. How else can anyone form an intelligent argument without any facts? That is, I believe, the real reason behind the protest letters.

Why can't we all get along? No, never mind. I know why we can't. Humanity is stubborn, and we all feel that we are right in whatever it is we believe. How else can war be explained. There have been wars about land, about religion, about greed and about women named Hellen (if such myths can be believed). There just seems to need to be an excuse, and poof, there's a war.

The trouble is, there is no "winning" most wars. The death toll is always too high on both sides, or all sides, of the conflict for there to be any true winner. Not unless the "winner" just happens to be the one that gets the flag in the end. I don't agree, frankly. War is a tragedy, and never produces a triumph. It also seems to be, sadly, an aspect of human nature that we seem unable to avoid.

At this point, all I can think is that maybe vegetarians are right- I'm willing to gamble. What have I got to lose? If we stop killing animals, perhaps we'll stop killing eachother, too. I'd much rather kill a radish than a person.

A conversation

With permission from a friend, I'm posting up a discussion I had with her about the A&E class

Animals & Ethics is the class title
it's all about the evolution of morality, and whether or not animals can be moral creatures, or if its merely humanity that has that ability

ghost: wow
ghost: a bit mind-blowing

Yes. but the reading sometimes makes my brain want to explode.
it has so very many philosophy jargon and such that I'm constantly flipping through dictionaries

ghost: well morality is an odd word, hard to define, is it an agreement between two
ghost: as in morals about not killing eachother so a community can exist
ghost: kinda hard to live side by side if we are always injuring eachother in different ways

It's all of it. sociality as a moral construct, the argument for vegetarianism..

ghost: ahh, but i have eye teeth that are sharp
ghost: though i do adore animals
ghost: and eat very few

Yes, humans are omnivorous by physiology. That is one of the arguments against vegetarianism

ghost: no bunnies

But that's where morals come in. If it's wrong to kill, is it wrong to kill animals? or just SOME animals?

ghost:we kiss bunnies

Which ones? how can you choose? Is one more valuable than another because it's cute? That's the stuff this class discusses

ghost: ahh, i think its the domestic thing
ghost: livestock, and farms
ghost: um, is it wrong to kill animals? Animals kill animals, but being humane in the killing, that is a human issue.
ghost: this is great stuff ally

What about whales and fish and wolves and wild horses. birds?
It's not just about killing for consumption:
Animal testing for human products, circuses, zoos

ghost: definitely.

Why is it ok to boil a live lobster, but not something else?

ghost: does make the head spin
ghost: my sister is an ultra vegan
ghost:I know where her thoughts lay
ghost: meat = murder
ghost: I'm not as hard on that
ghost: but humane killing, is an issue

I eat meat, but now i'm developing a guilt complex from this class, haha.
It's like..I want to apologize every time I have chicken

ghost: me too actually
ghost: cause

oh, and things like puppy and exotic animal mills and such are also discussed in this class. breeding animals just for aesthetic value in fur farms and exotics black market sales.
The whole phenom of the white tiger, for instance..inbreeding. Most that are born are so disabled or disfigured that no circus will show them, and they are either killed or used for the fur trade. It's sad. I've done research.

ghost: see, thats why I'd end up like Rena (my sister)
ghost: i do eat cheese 24/7

You really do. I've noticed. Ah, but cheese comes from milk which comes from cows. Is it morally right to steal from cows?

ghost: yes it is, or you might ask, killing plants for salad, or microbes in water, is it time for me to die than hmm, what is left ? see

Exactly. almost everything a person does kills something. It's a tricky issue

ghost: yes

Even Vegans.

ghost:yes

They kill stuff all the time by breathing.

ghost: brown rice kills the rice plant.
ghost: and tofu kills the soy plant
ghost: so back to
ghost: raising livestock for food

Yeah.

Freedom over Morals?

In the class discussion today, interesting topics were brought up.

Liberty versus Morality, for instance.

The example brought up was lobsters, and how, to eat a lobster, one must boil said lobster. It really does put things into perspective, and leads a person to consider the freedom of being able to do something, to the righteousness of doing that same thing.

Is it right to boil another creature to death, just because it tastes good? Because a person has the ability do something, can it really be said that it is perfectly ok to do that thing? You certainly can't say that that is true for every case, and if you can't, does that make everything true, but only on a selective basis?

If a cow tasted better when boiled, would someone boil a cow alive? What about a dog?
And if the freedom to do any single thing is more important to people than the rightness of that action, where is the line drawn?

That's always seemed to be the case with my view of the NRA. Just because they can, should people own so many guns? Is it really safe for anyone else to have 80-year-olds to 18-year-olds (barring some legal inability that I don't know about) carry firearms around, simply because they can?

Shouldn't there be a better reason than "because"? Has there ever seemed to be the need for one? It seems that it is human nature ( sometimes, at least) to come up with a glib answer for everything, even when there isn't an answer.
"Why?" "Just Because."
I'd imagine that there are many people who never consider changing their eating habits, for instance, simply because that is how their habits are. Just because.

Dialogs

Being a writer of fiction, dialog has always seemed like an intelligent way to get points across. One of the text books for Animals & Ethics is written by someone who obviously thinks along those same lines, although to a certain extent, philosophical dialog is a bit different than fiction. The focus is not on the plotline, or characterization so much as it's on the dialog itself. The concepts, if you will.

I've read a philosophical dialog before. Plato, I think, from his Republic. I took a class on Critical Reading, once, and I believe that was where I came across it. I don't agree with everything Plato did, but his was truly a brilliant mind. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms has quite a bit to say about him, but most of it revolves around how he believed that all things stem from ideas, and a higher plane of existence.

I wonder what he would have thought about the topic of this class, though? It's very unlikely, I'd think, that many, if any ancient Greek philosophers would have thought to ponder anything beyond human morality and idealism. This seems to be a modern topic of debate. I'd love to know who the first philosopher was, that came to the conclusion that thinking about it at all was a wise choice..

To Start with

I've never imagined myself as any sort of philosopher; I suppose you could say I'll admit to being a thinker, but nothing so very labeled as "philosopher". Not more than any other person, in any case.

Be that as it may, my decision to take a philosophy course stemmed directly from a simple desire to learn just what is what. The moral dilemma is an ageless thing; it seems that howsoever long there has been man (humans, that is), there has always been a question of what is right, what is wrong, and just what values do we all share in common that go beyond what is relative to our own experience..and what's simply inherent to us as a species?

Philosophy does nothing if not raise more questions, even as it might help to answer some. Maybe. Maybe not. The point is, it makes one think. A good thing, really, when the world seems to spend so very much time doing nothing of the sort. Hopefully, as I read the class texts, and converse with the other students in my class, I'll get a greater understanding of just how huge the entire debate really is.