White Pride?

[Creed of Heresy]

You disagree with Creed because you would kill a person to save an elephant, while he would kill an elephant to save a person, but you're fighting the wrong enemy. Would you both not prefer it if poacher never felt the economic necessity to kill the elephant? Join together against the real enemy, because it isn't each other.

First off, I agree pretty much entirely with your post, right to the ending. However, I would like to clarify that my stance is not necessarily that I would kill an elephant to save a human life; a lot of factors would come into play, like who that human was, why that elephant would have to die... Stuff like that. If the person killing the elephant was just doing it for shits and giggles I'd happily club the fucker over the head and use his body for fertilizer to grow crops to feed elephants with. But if the elephant had to be killed because it was stampeding throughout a village, for example, or if there was no option for the person doing the killing besides killing the elephant or his children dying of starvation, I would side with my other human beings on this matter. Why? Because I can socially communicate with other humans, and ergo, I can relate to them much more than with a non-human animal. I cannot socially communicate with other animals except in a few instances; ergo, I cannot relate to them, and ergo I cannot empathize with them in as extensive a capacity as I can with another human being. But I can empathize with them in the ways in which it is possible to do so. I can empathize with an animal that is in pain. Which is why I am wholly against assembly-line slaughter-houses where the animals' pain and suffering is ignored in the name of so-called "efficiency" and "maximized profit margins." If you're gonna kill an animal to eat it, fine, whatever, that's nature for ya; life only comes from death. But if that is going to be the case, and unfortunately, it is, do it quick and don't let either its life or its death be one of suffering. I can feel pain, a cow can feel pain. I empathize with this. Not universally as if it were another human, but it is something I can relate to. Would I want my throat slit so I could die suffering the agony of a razor slice and feeling the horror of my blood gushing from my neck to the floor? Or would I prefer someone put a bullet dead center through my head to destroy my brain stem so that I am terminated instantly and without pain?

Which do you think? The answer is the same as the question of "how would you prefer an animal to be slaughtered?" Everything must die eventually. I would rather it take me quickly and cleanly. Ergo, I would rather the beef I am eating be from a cow that died quickly and cleanly.

Ultimately, I would prefer 3D-printed and lab-grown meat over killing an actual animal. Ultimately, I would rather not choose between damning the poacher's children to one of the most agonizing deaths imaginable and killing the poacher himself for killing an elephant for its ivory to prevent that, and killing the elephant and sparing the poacher's children such a fate.

I would rather neither of those things happen at all. I would rather the shitheads who think that rarity = valuable commodity that should be obtained for social standing alone no matter the cost or actions entailed be smacked around, and the poacher to instead be a farmer or a lawyer or something that could provide for his family adequately.

Now, poachers themselves are typically very poor. They do not sell directly to the consumer; they sell to someone who buys the material and then makes a product of the material and sells the product for a markup thousands of times bigger than what they paid the poacher. After all, there's a lot of potential poachers, and not a lot of elephants. Supply and demand. Poachers typically don't have shit to their name, and they're eager to accept whatever they can get for their efforts. They are the factory-floor workers and they're paid minimum wage at best; the guy who owns the factory pulls in more in a day than any ten of those workers do in a decade, to borrow your (Ryan) mentioning into this context.

I have a problem, however, with people who view all non-human animals as total equals and ergo that laws and morals extend equally to them as much as they do to human beings. We are not equals, in many senses of the word. Not in personal accomplishments, not in accomplishments of the species as a whole, not in capability to affect the world around us (for good or ill), not in capability of self-directive, not in capacity of understanding, not in terms of cognitive discourse, not in terms of empathy. Some come close in certain regards. But to say we are equals to them entirely is a bunch of hippie bullshit, and it's a very naive, world-ignorant viewpoint that amusingly seems to only rear its head in societies wherein the individuals have the luxury of such wishful thinking.

For the rest who've experienced the world for the dog-eat-dog hellhole that it is, such notions are childish at best, and condescendingly insulting much more commonly.

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OK made it back: had to prove I'm not as misanthropic as some here think...fixed supper and spent time with first husband and #2 son.

Given what follows? You failed at proving anything.

For instance, given the ability, I would probably destroy all humans who poach elephants,

I used the word 'destroy' advisedly. It could mean to cause economic destruction, cultural destruction or perhaps just cultural assimilation. It was satisfying to see Creed of Heresy jump immediately from destroy to kill. It is the same reaction exhibited by some who equate depopulation with genocide. Just to be clear and in the extreme, if you stop having babies, in a relatively short time your population will collapse and you will be depopulated. No killing required.

de·stroy
dəˈstroi/
verb
verb: destroy; 3rd person present: destroys; past tense: destroyed; past participle: destroyed; gerund or present participle: destroying

put an end to the existence of (something) by damaging or attacking it.

I'm so, so, SO sorry for thinking that things like "definitions" should not be based on personal subjective whims; I should have assumed immediately that you meant some roundabout bullshit, especially with how very clear you made it!

._.

The following is not a typically humanist position though it shows Creed's proclivities:

There are always going to be human beings who deserve nothing but swift termination.

Yes, me saying "some human beings deserve nothing but swift termination" DOES show my proclivities about some human beings needing to be swiftly terminated, good job, you're quite perceptive!

If I'd had a chance to terminate Hitler to stop the Holocaust, I would've done so, and swiftly.

Oh, but I meant terminate "advisedly:"

ter·mi·nate
tərməˌnāt/
verb
Def: bring to an end.

Are you sure that's not what YOU meant to say? See? No killing required! I could have meant cultural termination! Or maybe I meant "terminate them" by jailing them for life to stop them from causing further damage.

If you wanna play the ambiguity game, fine, two can do that. You're not as clever as you think.

See, though, the difference between us is that...well, you're perceptive enough to notice that I'm a humanist. When I say "terminate," and I am a humanist, and "terminate" does NOT mean "kill," why do YOU jump to the conclusion that I mean kill, huh? At least you have context to lead you in the right direction. Unlike you, who seems to only be spewing the usual unoriginal cliche conservatist misanthropy.

I admit to some bias in favor of elephants because I see their plight as one reaching its final phase. Because the reaction of the majority of humans matches the knee-jerk stupidity of Creed, I expect the african elephant species to go extinct in my lifetime.

Lol. "Knee-jerk stupidity." You keep saying I'm dumb and simple and stupid and yet the only thing you've managed to do so far to say WHY can be summed up as "NUH UH, YOU'RE WRONG!" Ryan's far more sensible than you; he gets what my point is, unlike you, who seems to be too up your own ass to pay attention and get what I am addressing, here.

Some of my bias against the human populations comes from a conservative self interest. Despite our hubris, we do not understand what it takes to maintain a functioning ecosystem. Climate change is a current example but not the only one. If the maritime oxygen producing organisms go belly up, how long can you hold your breath?
We are utterly dependent on environmental services yet we continue to live our lives as if we were early European immigrants to the new world. When you've exhausted the resources in your immediate area. When your family has outgrown the family plot in Connecticut just move west. Well, there is no more west to move to. Ryantology has a more measured and I think reasonable position; that inequities in the population leads members at the bottom of the pile to destructive acts of desperation for which they can be forgiven. I can respect that attitude, but I think it is and has been shown to be inadequate. We live as biological entities in an environment where the majority of the pressures come from the invisible hand of unguided economics. Where individuals strictly act in their own best interests with the expectation that eventually all will benefit. This ignores the evident fact that human populations are limited by the carrying capacity of their environment.
I think we're screwed. That any moves we make to come into a more rational, sustainable equilibrium with our surroundings are coming as too little, too late. The elephants will all be killed and big oil will buy enough PR and politicians to keep climate change cooking. Eventually, through some unpleasantness, perhaps crop failure from extended drought, technological civilization collapses ( link to book on historical collapse of Anasazi,Mayan and other civilations)
I'd prefer the elephants, chimps and gorillas as social, intelligent individuals survive this transition. I don't expect they will.

Basically, you are a pessimistic defeatist who has written off all of humanity as bad because of the actions of the select choice few who have more power than the rest of us. Ryan states that fixing the problems of inequity will address the issue. Your response is "it's been shown to be inadequate." We've only just begun in the last five or six years to work on addressing the problems with inequity. The world has been around for billions of years and it's been dealing with us for millions of years as well; it can wait another decade while we hammer it out, and until then, dismissing the goal and effort as "inadequate" just as the work towards it has begun and then saying "it's not happening" because it's not instantaneous is as premature as the ejaculation of a high school kid losing his virginity.

As for the collapse of previous societies, you're comparing civs whose peak of technological capacity was stone-working with the modern civilizations whose peak of technological capacity is still soaring skyward; literally, we're planning an expedition to Mars here in the next decade or so. I'm sure the author of that book did a bunch of good studying and stuff, and he who fails to learn from history repeats himself, yes, but history cannot repeat itself in the same way; the circumstances of today are different from the circumstances of 500+ years ago.

You've given up on the human race.

I look at science and technology, and I see humanity reaching for both its own salvation, and for the preservation and enabling of the world(s) on which we live.

I haven't given up on humanity. THAT is why I am a humanist.

Want an example of why?

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-ocean-clean-up-kid

Gee, it almost seems like human beings not only have the capacity to repair the damage being done to the planet, but they also are doing something about it!

Tell me, what have you done to try to repair the damage we've done to the world? Because this dude is 20 years old and he's already developing something that will remove all the plastic in the entire ocean. If you're so passionate about this, to the extent that humanity's damage sends you into a state of misanthropic pessimism, why aren't you doing something like that?

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[quote='Creed of Heresy' pid='834882' dateline='1420320021']
Elephants don't have standpoints and pigs can't agree or disagree.

Citation needed.

No, that's a negative assertion. You are the one that implied elephants have standpoints and pigs can disagree with us.

YOU provide the citation. You're the one who made the initial claim, not me. You just pulled a theist on me.

"I say god is there."

"There is no god."

"PROVE IT!"

That's you. You just asked me to prove a negative to an assertion that you made.

"What can be stated without proof can be dismissed without proof."

But again, I referred to neuroscience, so I did so all the same; ball's still in your court, though.