Edit: Surprised at all the vegans in this thread. I didn’t think there were so many of you. I’m glad you care so much about animal rights, that you’re willing to forego eating them and using products made from them. If you’re not vegan and have moral objections for this, maybe you should look at yourself first and all the animal abuse you sanction by eating animals and using animal products. Did you know dairy cows have to be pregnant to produce milk? They’re artificially inseminated throughout most of their lives. I hope everyone complaining about this also complains about ice cream and cheese. Or else they would be hypocrites who just want to blame others but never look at themselves.
Surely you must have some system for valuing certain forms of life over others, otherwise functioning is not really possible given the reality we find ourselves in. For example, pretty much anyone at some level values the lives of humans or more intelligent animals over the lives of, say, mosquitos, cockroaches, flies, etc, but those insects are animals too after all. (And while one certainly might put some value on some insects, I know if I find a ladybug inside I’m decently likely to try to take it outside without hurting it, I’ve never met anyone who would get as worked up about a dead bug as they would a dead cat, or put the same effort into saving a spider that they would into saving another person from a deadly situation. Clearly, the value of such animals is at some level held to be less.) Even further, it would be even more strange to value other living creatures as much as humans, like plants or bacteria (indeed, considering that one involuntarily kills countless bacteria just by existing and must consume plants to live, a hypothetical person who cared just as much about them as people would either have absolutely no regard for the lives of others, or would be consumed by constant guilt to the point of probably being unable to survive in the long run). Clearly then, just about everyone has some sort of hierarchy of what animals are more valuable than others, whether one consciously believes it or not. If intelligence is the metric that one uses to decide this, then one must value humans more than any known animal, because while some are smart, no animal is quite as smart as humans are. If intelligence is not the metric you use, then what is?
It’s interesting that you bring this up because I have been encountering people lately who have a different take on insects - that they actually kind of put insects above humans. Just yesterday someone responded to me saying I get attacked by bugs that, quote “You are not getting attacked. You just live in the same world like them and take up space that once was theirs before”
So like its my fault that I’m getting bug bites. Humans are to blame for existing in the wildlife and that’s why animals and insects try to take people out all the time.
There’s this popular poster on tumblr who goes by bogleech - their stuff gets reposted to reddit last I saw. They also support this idea that bugs are superior and humans need to just stop being afraid of insects and respect them more.
Alternatively people who don’t value other people’s lives may have a personality disorder (emphasis on may). Of course that is if it’s not to sound edgy on the internet but if they truly don’t value human life.
I will never understand how wanting to treat intelligent creatures with dignity is controversial.
Seriously? Who even talks like this…
It’s not controversial, most people think it’s stupid. Controversial would be if so many people agreed with you that it would polarize the society. Which you might think is what happens, but it’s really not.
Most people know that a human’s life is more valuable than an animal’s and think you guys are a little crazy. Treating them with dignity is fine by me, but pretending they’re on the same level as us is not.
