Arguments from the circle of life brutal aside (wolves eat deers, tires eat birds, green stalks and petioles rise from their nutritious fertile life particles)--before these creatures were opened and gnawed at, like you and I they were: partaking of conscious awareness.
Even without their having been seeded with advanced cortices corresponding to language, self-identity, mathematical prowess etc, these fellers liked to feel the wind, suspire, fill their mouths and bellies with grub - the satisfaction of chewing. The sensations of kinaesthasia and propriocpetion. The joy of urinating, defecating, and child-rearing.
Emotional bond should not be the one factor in your deciding to recognize a common strand of inner-life (and dignity for that inn(f)er-life) in other creatures or not.
If those were your pets, I mean, would you be so affrontive? Would you be keen to parade their mangled, maggoty corpses to set a point? And why should you feel differently if those animals aren't yours--are wild? Are you comfortable with being so relative?
Yeah, we are flesh and blood, and the world is ragged to us; mostly we impact minimally and are impacted heavily, bending billows to forces much, much greater than any single person, all the way unto death. Boo-yaa to the bone-chilling stoic spartanism of nature, nay?
I'm fine, really, with your exemplification of our being flesh and blood waiting to be devoured; or, if it be your subconscious motive, to express a simple desensitization to death.
But I think it's equally valid and healthy for people to be averse to the thought and sight. Each living thing is more than the sum of its visible body, you would agree, and yet, because of our biological arrangement, we're mind, body, and identity inextricably linked. In effect, the us-ness we convey is partially formed by our inner lives and by our outer shell, so that not only do our mental projects leave their impressions, but a sacred aspect is cast from our bodies as well.
It might seem silly to invoke this perception by animals; but for all their "un-speciality," all their multitudinous passings and goings in reminder to us of our small and humble stature, each of them, too, meant everything to someone else, and are every much as deserving of our being disturbed at their brutal absence.
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Arguments from the circle of life brutal aside (wolves eat deers, tires eat birds, green stalks and petioles rise from their nutritious fertile life particles)--before these creatures were opened and gnawed at, like you and I they were: partaking of conscious awareness.
Even without their having been seeded with advanced cortices corresponding to language, self-identity, mathematical prowess etc, these fellers liked to feel the wind, suspire, fill their mouths and bellies with grub - the satisfaction of chewing. The sensations of kinaesthasia and propriocpetion. The joy of urinating, defecating, and child-rearing.
Emotional bond should not be the one factor in your deciding to recognize a common strand of inner-life (and dignity for that inn(f)er-life) in other creatures or not.
If those were your pets, I mean, would you be so affrontive? Would you be keen to parade their mangled, maggoty corpses to set a point? And why should you feel differently if those animals aren't yours--are wild? Are you comfortable with being so relative?
Yeah, we are flesh and blood, and the world is ragged to us; mostly we impact minimally and are impacted heavily, bending billows to forces much, much greater than any single person, all the way unto death. Boo-yaa to the bone-chilling stoic spartanism of nature, nay?
I'm fine, really, with your exemplification of our being flesh and blood waiting to be devoured; or, if it be your subconscious motive, to express a simple desensitization to death.
But I think it's equally valid and healthy for people to be averse to the thought and sight. Each living thing is more than the sum of its visible body, you would agree, and yet, because of our biological arrangement, we're mind, body, and identity inextricably linked. In effect, the us-ness we convey is partially formed by our inner lives and by our outer shell, so that not only do our mental projects leave their impressions, but a sacred aspect is cast from our bodies as well.
It might seem silly to invoke this perception by animals; but for all their "un-speciality," all their multitudinous passings and goings in reminder to us of our small and humble stature, each of them, too, meant everything to someone else, and are every much as deserving of our being disturbed at their brutal absence.
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