(June 22, 2015 at 8:50 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(June 22, 2015 at 8:26 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote: I get all messed up even when watching fictional TV shows and movies. When I see a horse fall on it's side, I cry every time. Once, I saw a squirrel crawling across the road; half of it had been run over by a car (this was years ago, and I'm getting choked up thinking about it), so I called an animal rescue and stayed with it until they came. Another time, I came across a seagull that had been hit by a car, caught it in a wine box (luckily there was a liquor next door), and drove an hour to meet a seagull rescue lady. I asked her to keep me posted, but she said she was just going to put Stanley (I named him Stanley) down. I cried for two days.
I don't know why, but I'm not the same with people. Sure, I have empathy, and I'm sad when people are suffering; I just don't have the gut-wrenching mortification that happens deep down that I do for animals.
I'm the same way, and I have a theory for this.
I think it's because I see humans as being on the top of the food chain, and animals as being weaker. It's like seeing a child suffer verses an adult suffer. They're both horrible, but seeing it happen to a child seems all the more sad because children are weaker, more defenseless, and more innocent than a fully grown person. I feel like we have a certain instinctive duty to protect those weaker than us, and to me, animals fall into that category.
My thinking is similar, but I don't think it's because animals are "weaker", necessarily, rather that is' just hard to communicate with animals. I can ask a person, "what hurts?" With an animal, it's way harder; same with children: their communication skills aren't honed. Some of it has to do with weakness too though, for sure.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
