Quote:
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Originally Posted by Mush Martin
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Letum
What do you think of removing the teeth out of a seal, sorrounding it with food and then waiting for it to starve to death?
Thats nature's way.
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Good bat  |
It's the way we all go. Death and suffering are inevitable and unavoidable.
For humans it is different because we are conscious of the world in a way
very distinct from even the most intelligent animal. For us, human death
and suffering can become tragedy, rather than just nature.
A stone breaking in two as it falls from a rock face, an amoeba becoming
a indefinable part of the chemical soup it lives in, a salmon floating to the
surface or a crippled antelope dieing in the sun is not tragic.
Neither is the bull in the bull ring, the seal on bloody ice or the sheep on
the floor of a lorry.
There is pain and suffering, but that is universal and unavoidable; that is
nature.
it is right that this appeals to our compassion, but empathy: to place our
understanding upon the animal and make it's situation a tragedy, is
misplaced.
Only the understanding of a man bleeding to death on a road because he
thought it was safe to overtake or an old man fighting for his last breath
because he does not want to die is tragedy.
That does not apply to a carp of a badger or a horse.
For me to have compassion, there must be the ability to feel pain.
For empathy there must be understanding.