Pamela Anderson is a highly-motivated lady who has been observing and protesting the slaughter of pilot whales for years. This takes place as an annual event in the Faeroe Islands and the Islanders have been doing this for centuries. The harvest is not any madness for collection of aphrodisiacs or other bizarre products from the whales as this is for sustenance of the island. (AP: Pamela Anderson wants Faeroes to stop whale drive)
The article is a submission from Lotho and it's an interesting ethical problem. There is very little difference between this and the annual slaughter of dolphins by Japanese fisherman. In both cases, the savagery of the slaughter is visually appalling. The sea is so filled with blood that it's stained burning crimson.
The fisherman say the way they perform the slaughter is humane. They also say the numbers of these animal populations are not endangered and this is likely true. Their harvesting isn't likely to significantly threaten those numbers either. (Validation necessary if you really want to hammer on this.)
When I have no moral reservation with eating cows, I can't protest what they do based solely on the fact they are killing a living being. An abattoir does the same thing, albeit with marginally less horror. The absence of horror is largely that we can't see it whereas the whale slaughter blazes in technicolor on TV monitors around the world.
So my problem really isn't what they do but how they do it. However, it's likely defensible that the way they do it is more hygienic, I suspect much more hygienic, than in an abattoir. While I loathe the aesthetics, that can't obscure the actual crime or we get nowhere.
The slaughter isn't my protest at all. Cows, mostly, are stupid. Of course they would fight for life just as any organism would but that doesn't change anything. These are some really stupid animals. They're herd beasts, none of them are ever particularly intelligent. In my moral world, that makes it ok to eat them. If I get to Heaven and find God is a cow then I'm fucked but I don't have an ethical dilemma with it. I don't particularly like it as if you look in the eyes of some cows, you'll see love like even a dog can't show you. I don't know if I could eat them if I lived with them.
The consideration, for me, becomes whether pilot whales are 'too intelligent to eat' and it may be ludicrous to even consider life in this way - I see that - but it's important, to me, to be as objective about it as I can. What precisely is it that bugs you about this ... that it's ugly? That alone is not enough to protest. As to whether we kill possibly sentient beings, I don't think it's likely ... BUT ... I do not think it is reasonable to do it without knowing for sure.
Therefore, I want to have a much better understanding of mammalian intelligence in aquatic environments as one thing I know for sure: we don't know too much about it now. Likely they know more about us than we of them. After a few centuries of stabbing, that would come.
Separating the aesthetics from the ethical considerations is filled with enough regression to drive a logician insane as you can go all night on the aesthetics of ethics. Personally, I'd rather blow a bowl of some ganja and fade back out again. To sum: I don't want to kill them. I side with Pamela Anderson on this.
The article is a submission from Lotho and it's an interesting ethical problem. There is very little difference between this and the annual slaughter of dolphins by Japanese fisherman. In both cases, the savagery of the slaughter is visually appalling. The sea is so filled with blood that it's stained burning crimson.
The fisherman say the way they perform the slaughter is humane. They also say the numbers of these animal populations are not endangered and this is likely true. Their harvesting isn't likely to significantly threaten those numbers either. (Validation necessary if you really want to hammer on this.)
When I have no moral reservation with eating cows, I can't protest what they do based solely on the fact they are killing a living being. An abattoir does the same thing, albeit with marginally less horror. The absence of horror is largely that we can't see it whereas the whale slaughter blazes in technicolor on TV monitors around the world.
So my problem really isn't what they do but how they do it. However, it's likely defensible that the way they do it is more hygienic, I suspect much more hygienic, than in an abattoir. While I loathe the aesthetics, that can't obscure the actual crime or we get nowhere.
The slaughter isn't my protest at all. Cows, mostly, are stupid. Of course they would fight for life just as any organism would but that doesn't change anything. These are some really stupid animals. They're herd beasts, none of them are ever particularly intelligent. In my moral world, that makes it ok to eat them. If I get to Heaven and find God is a cow then I'm fucked but I don't have an ethical dilemma with it. I don't particularly like it as if you look in the eyes of some cows, you'll see love like even a dog can't show you. I don't know if I could eat them if I lived with them.
The consideration, for me, becomes whether pilot whales are 'too intelligent to eat' and it may be ludicrous to even consider life in this way - I see that - but it's important, to me, to be as objective about it as I can. What precisely is it that bugs you about this ... that it's ugly? That alone is not enough to protest. As to whether we kill possibly sentient beings, I don't think it's likely ... BUT ... I do not think it is reasonable to do it without knowing for sure.
Therefore, I want to have a much better understanding of mammalian intelligence in aquatic environments as one thing I know for sure: we don't know too much about it now. Likely they know more about us than we of them. After a few centuries of stabbing, that would come.
Separating the aesthetics from the ethical considerations is filled with enough regression to drive a logician insane as you can go all night on the aesthetics of ethics. Personally, I'd rather blow a bowl of some ganja and fade back out again. To sum: I don't want to kill them. I side with Pamela Anderson on this.
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