Thing is, you can say this about all kinds of animals. Dogs and birds, tigers and lions all have their own “social and cultural webs.” What you are saying is that some animals are stupid, therefore we can kill and eat them, but if the animal looks or feels like it has humanoid perception then we can’t. This is a purely emotional perspective…
Lots of people will tell you dogs have unique personalities. Is that not almost identical to the perception and sentience of said dolphins?
((Also, if you live in america, you might wanna look up the companies that sell dog meat here. There are many more than I thought.))
You know Francis Bacon died of a cold he got after he butchered a chicken then tried stuffing it with snow and ice…he was working on preservation of organic material with ice; refrigeration almost 200 years before we got them… We, unfortunately, have killed lots of things to learn about them. Darwin killed and ate one of every species he encountered. Maybe eating them gives us some special kind of knowledge of herbs.
It would be cool as shit to converse with a dolphin, but my guess is that they only like to talk about mackerel…
There’s studies proving the intelligence of dolphins of whales, that it’s on par with humans if not above. I’m not just basing it on an emotional perspective, if I was I’d claim vehemently we should not eat cows or chickens. I’m basing it on whether or not it’s productive and generating anything of a real benefit to anyone. What do we get out of it? Is it productive?
But I’m not arguing the intricate and systematic intervention in a social web that we look at through a lens of praxeology, the ins and outs of bureaucracy, economics, and policy and it’s affects. It’s much more direct, that can actually be answered in terms of short answers regarding “yes” and “no.” Should we kill whales and dolphins? Would you personally kill a whale or dolphin?
There are studies that prove the intelligence of bees as well. It is emotional. There isn’t any way around it.
It is not productive to kill dolphins? Doesn’t someone eat, buy, and sell the carcass? Don’t whales have oil and meat? It is precisely productive or it wouldn’t have demand. Those “profits” that the liberals bitch about kind of imply productivity…
You’re telling me this isn’t supposed to be an emotional ploy? You’re delusional. This is exactly what emotional politics returns to. You reduce a complicated situation and force an up or down vote…
“Would you suck the arms and legs off of a little prenatal baby with a vaccum cleaner?” Well, do you support abortion?
“Would you donate money to a retarded homeless person?” Well, are you Ayn Rand or are you Mother Teresa?
You can’t avoid the emotional angle of this kind of thing…
Intelligence is akin to an emotional justification? Fine, it’s a matter of semantics, I’ll be the bleeding heart liberal tree hugger who would rather see whales and dolphins preserved than killed, while the most productive element is “food” when it’s proven that whale and dolphin meat is not good for consumption and they cannot breed as fast as cows or chickens.
It is not semantics. It is over whether or not it is okay to tell other cultures what to do. You think because an animal seems intelligent that we should stop other people from doing …what they do.
Who gets mad at a matador?
There is little “productive” activity (other than ticket sales) to bull fighting.
People consume all kinds of unhealthy things. That is not a convincing argument against eating a particular animal.
And oil for heat and light and insolation, but you act as if “food” is an inconsequential thing. Then you resort to saying that it isn’t healthy anyway…and that they breed slower than other animals that are okay to kill and eat.
So explain to me why modernized Japan and Norway are still hunting? Is it a cultural? Survival? Or simply because “well, we were doing it before, so well…we just kept doing it” type of logic?
You could say it is cultural or survival oriented.
The cultural angle I point out is simply Japanese people have always eaten seafood, dolphins are that. They eat live squid over there. They could die when a tentacle suctions onto their esophagus, but they still do it. We don’t in the US, therefore I am tempted to call it “cultural.” just as we don’t eat dolphins…it is cultural.
But, if we all want a super libertarian world where everything is generic from one people to the next then, yes. Let them all be like us. McDolphins.
Also, are you implying that since Japan is Westernized that it doesn’t retain any of its older cutural heritage? Like their language? Or their familial respect? Their…cuisine…?
There’s a demand for heroin, don’t have to believe it’s productive.
I said modernized, not Westernized. Difference, because I’m not talking about McDolphin’s or some other generic assumption of Western culture. A people can retain their culture while progressing and adjusting in a modern world. Is it necessary to kill dolphins and whales? No, and whatever “demand” it fills can be filled by other means that are less violent.
Then again what’s some cultural attributes in the United States that were, well, disregarded? There was slavery, was that the culture of the South prior to the Civil War? You could say so. Shooting buffalo from train cars? Seemed to spike the interest of people heading westward. Designated racial areas for minorities? You can say that was a piece of our culture.
But in the end killing whales does not serve a cultural purpose in modernized countries who continue to do so when they can clearly find alternatives if they want to eat something. How much of those populations actually do eat whale, and how many of them actually need to eat whale?
killing dolphins in zoos could be profitable for a poacher, that does not make it profitable for the zoo, or the ecology of the ocean whatever be the case. not killing dolphins can certainly be more profitable than killing them.
You don’t have to believe it, but it wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t demanded. And there is some “production” involved in it…
I’m not so sure…all of your following examples are in contradiction to this. You are right slavery and racism were totally part of our culture, but Japan wasn’t telling us to knock it off. We did of that. We decided it one way or another. Now look at us…most of the people in this country hate our own history and have no respect for some of the figures that made today possible…For a national psyche (or cultural if you prefer to leave the state out of it) this is not good. It is not good to hate yourself…
From a libertarian, I’d assume it makes no difference. If one person does it, preventing them from doing so is immoral (they aren’t killing people).
You see, you are wanting to extending rights to animals. Why not plants? It seems absurd to me to tell another culture to “do it our way.”
Dolphins aren’t endangered. You are just too emotional when you hear about or see the process and would like to stop it even though it doesn’t effect you in any way whatsoever.
Poachers in a zoo? There is a breach of property rights somewhere in there…
Zoos are essentially a showroom for enslaved animals (profit). Is that better than letting them swim freely (no profit) or straight killing them (profit)?
If animals deserve rights we can’t be putting them in zoos. I feel like it’ll get murky around “owning” an animal as a pet even.
free is best for the dolphins, but id be more open to ownership by people that want to protect them, and have them be free, then people that want to kill what they do not own. this would mean some would own dolphins they want to kill, but there would be people that own dolphins that are not to be killed and live in the ocean.
ecotourism is one way for animals to be free and profitable
Right. I’d agree with that. Privately owned seas would pretty much protect all fish for certain periods of the year (while they travel through it) from pollution and overfishing.
But this has little to do with the USA telling Japan how to manage its diet et al. That link doesn’t work for me..or it just shows a white page. I realize there are some kinds of endangered dolphins and whales, but not the majority of them.
Yea…tourism. I’m sure the profits are comparable to carcass or a much more accessible “ecotour” in the form of the zoo.
Just because there’s production involved does not make it productive.
I’m not so sure…all of your following examples are in contradiction to this. You are right slavery and racism were totally part of our culture, but Japan wasn’t telling us to knock it off. We did of that. We decided it one way or another. Now look at us…most of the people in this country hate our own history and have no respect for some of the figures that made today possible…For a national psyche (or cultural if you prefer to leave the state out of it) this is not good. It is not good to hate yourself…
How do they contradict, or is the south no longer the South because they don’t have slaves? Nor, on the subject, do I hate myself because of this country’s history.
You see, you are wanting to extending rights to animals. Why not plants? It seems absurd to me to tell another culture to “do it our way.”
Okay, why plants? Why animals? Why people? Why one and not the other, insert A here and remove B here. Well, it’s pretty easy to tell the difference from a whale and an apple, and that one whale’s life and that one apple’s existence. Nor am I telling them to “do it our way,” but to take another look at their actions, if I’m telling them anything besides to simply not do it.
Dolphins aren’t endangered. You are just too emotional when you hear about or see the process and would like to stop it even though it doesn’t effect you in any way whatsoever.
We only like to see causes furthered that only directly affect us? Gay marriage affects me in no way whatsoever, but I support it. Why?
If it is produced and sold to people to satisfy their demand for it…then it is productive. Heroine, weeds, booze, sex, etc.
Ummm if you’re saying that slavery and racism were “part of southern culture”, but that they don’t have those things anymore…then they no loger exibit the same culture…it is still similar, but it isn’t the same. And it is in fact a scar. You might not dislike the history of the country, but there are many who do.
Is it? What about an apple and jellyfish? The tree “knows” how to repoduce…just as the jellyfish does. Neither have brains. They are following the same path that every other living things does; to reproduce…
The “look at your actions” argument is still telling others what to do and how to think. You can’t avoid it. Do you stand around the frozen food isle telling people to reconsider their consumption of certain foods? Even if they realize, internally, that you are right, they will still resent being told what to do. Tell a fat person that soda will only make things worse for them and watch them react.
This goes back directly to my comment of “cultural chasm.” An individual is different than ‘a people’. Telling everyone in the world to not kill dolphins is different than telling Japan not to do it. But, in the link in my OP, you can see it is directed right at a certain part of Japan. it doesn’t include Norway or the other evil whale hunting countries out there.