White Pride?

[Ryantology]

I wouldn't destroy all humans who poach elephants. ESPECIALLY if it was to feed their starving children. And the fact that you do not utilize that differentiation really speaks ill of your sense of morals and ethics, in a way that I find reprehensible, to be frank. Clearly you've never suffered the pain of starvation yourself in your privileged little sheltered life to hold such sentiments; if you had, you would find yourself eating your words quickly and regretting ever speaking them with any semblance of pride or conviction. If someone is poaching elephants just because they want to be rich, then yeah, I'd be happy seeing them sent to prison for the next quarter of their lifespans. But killing them because they're doing it to feed their starving children?

I don't agree with her desire to destroy the poacher, even though elephants are amazing and beautiful and intelligent animals, and I despise that they are slaughtered for any reason at all. I think what she's saying is that she finds it arbitrary to suggest that human lives are objectively more valuable. And, is that not correct? I rather dislike any instance of animals being harmed or hunted for anything other than for subsistence (and those who do it have a moral responsibility to minimize the suffering of the animal). I think people who hunt for sport, who shoot animals because that's how they have fun, aren't that different from a person who would shoot a person for the same reason.

But, I also don't agree with killing the poacher who does this to feed his family, because he is likely doing this for want of easier and less harmful methods. I blame the people who have vastly more than they could ever need and will still deprive others so that they can have more. I blame the wealthy individual who takes from society and feels no obligation to return what has been taken. I blame rich people who want only for themselves and their own. No matter how you justify it, if you can shit in a gold toilet, you have more than you need and you have a moral obligation to the society you live in, to spread that wealth around, be it by charity or investing in job creation. I don't think that any person on earth needs a seven-figure salary to live a fulfilling, happy, safe and secure lifestyle doing almost anything that they want to do. I would tax income above $1m 100% unless it was demonstrably used in ways that benefit someone other than themselves.

Because, when you get down to it, the source of most human misery is scarcity. When one family makes more than a significant portion of the entire world's population, that's a seriously fucked-up situation. That is an example of the problem being artificial and intentional. There is enough in this world for every person to live a good and fulfilling life, which would very obviously make people a lot less interested in wars and strife. Differences in skin color wouldn't matter nearly as much.

I mean, think about American history. Think about the strife between blacks and whites. What is the origin of the entirety of this strife? Economic exploitation, the masters and the slaves. Chattel slavery tends to be frowned upon by most sane people, but that has just forced the greedy and the overprivileged on a different offensive. If your average white, black, hispanic, Asian persons banded together in common cause regarding how they are exploited by the wealthy, the wealthy would not be able to withstand them. They would have to make concessions. Wealth is not created by job creators. It is created by people who work. It's created by the factory worker, not the factory owner. If you own a factory that has no workers, then you aren't important in any sense.

This is why the wealthy exploit racial divisions. They convince the middle class that the poor want to take from them, that they want to sit around and collect welfare checks and purchase SUVs and crack and lobsters off of your dime (oh yeah, and this "welfare queen" stereotype is always a black woman who has kid after kid just to keep drawing checks, or it's an illegal Mexican who wants to come to America just to have anchor babies and suckle off the government teat). And, they even have a point, because they have ensured that the middle class pays a much larger relative tax burden than they should (of course, they have done even worse to the poor). The wealthy corporate interests who control the Republican Party and dictate its policies very openly encourage racial divisions so that the middle class views the poor as their enemy. But, the poor need assistance because the corporatocracy wants to pay virtually nothing to workers, and strip them of rights and protections to the greatest extent they can. They can't have chattel slavery, so they are trying to have feudal serfdom, a system in which the rulers basically had total control over the economy, and in which the people actually producing were forced to give just about all they worked to make, to the people who controlled their lives.

And, they will continue to achieve progress on this front as long as we allow such stupid and arbitrary differences to matter to us. That's why the average Republican voter is so frustrating to me. They are angry because they have less than they should, but they buy into the lines fed to them by their exploiters. They are threatened with the loss of livelihood if they allow the parasites to tax the wealthy. It is the very kernel of the 'trickle-down' myth. Wealth does trickle down, but only after it has all been sucked up and collected at the top, first. Wealth should be flooding down at nearly the same rate that it floods up.

As long as we pretend that it doesn't work this way, we're going to have all the problems we have now. That's crime, violence, drug use. None would be solved, but all would be stupendously lessened.

Think about that when elections roll around again.

[Losty]

I don't understand why people hate the poachers. Whoever purchases the ivory is to blame. You don't blame poor people for taking whatever job they can find to survive.

This is what a poacher looks like (warning there is a dead elephant in the background of this picture )

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Here is what an ivory purchaser looks like (warning there is a fat cat counting money inside his ivory tower in this picture)

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[Ryantology]

Precisely. Elephants are poached because ivory is a luxury for the privileged.

[JuliaL]

@Ryantology
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
And I wouldn't kill the poachers if I thought there was an alternative.
But from what I see, humanity, particularly technological western humanity, is so proud of itself being human that it fails to see the needless suffering it is causing in others. Much less does it alter its actions to avoid such suffering. We've expanded into ecosystems across the globe, squeezing out not only our direct competitors, but the thousands of species not considered profitable for humans. Building the American midwest into a mono-culture of GMO corn to make alcohol to burn in SUVs, killing any and everything which gets in our way and feeling righteously justified in the process is obscene. Collectively we fail to see this or we'd be more active in finding alternatives. I advocate family planning in hopes of diminishing population density to a level where we are not obligated to appropriate, kill and eat everything we see. I doubt it will work despite the claims of the demographers that human population will top out in the near future. I'll believe that when I see it. There are too many people who are in love only with people.

Creed apparently fails to recognize status for any non-humans. This chauvinism makes me sad. If he has a solution to theory of mind vs actually experiencing the internal reality of other humans, I'd like to hear it. I do not believe that denying self awareness in non-humans can be supported if other humans are granted the same. My empathy extends to dogs, chimps, whales and even cows. If an individual appears to be writhing in pain, I'm willing to accept that they actually are in pain. Creed is a little over the top which I recognize is an effect of the anonymity of the interwebs. I don't know if Creed is actually as simple as his posts appear.

"You're just sick!" is not a reasoned response.

[Ryantology]

@Ryantology
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
And I wouldn't kill the poachers if I thought there was an alternative.
But from what I see, humanity, particularly technological western humanity, is so proud of itself being human that it fails to see the needless suffering it is causing in others. Much less does it alter its actions to avoid such suffering. We've expanded into ecosystems across the globe, squeezing out not only our direct competitors, but the thousands of species not considered profitable for humans. Building the American midwest into a mono-culture of GMO corn to make alcohol to burn in SUVs, killing any and everything which gets in our way and feeling righteously justified in the process is obscene. Collectively we fail to see this or we'd be more active in finding alternatives. I advocate family planning in hopes of diminishing population density to a level where we are not obligated to appropriate, kill and eat everything we see. I doubt it will work despite the claims of the demographers that human population will top out in the near future. I'll believe that when I see it. There are too many people who are in love only with people.

And, that's a part of human culture that is faulty and has to change. Personally, I have no problem with GMOs. I think they are a boon if used responsibly. They can help to reduce scarcity. And, I'm excited about the idea of tissue engineering, of 3D printing meat and products like leather or lab-grown fur, so that people can enjoy all of these useful and tasty things that we get from animals, without ever having to harm any (and by reducing the vast environmental damage caused by modern agriculture). And you know there will be people who would be freaked out by the very idea, as a lot are freaked out by GMOs today.

I don't advocate destroying or killing anybody. There are simply a small number of people who have a disproportionate and excessive amount of wealth and power, and that needs to be equalized to a huge extent.

I'm not a communist. I don't believe that everybody deserves to have equal amounts of everything. I think that some jobs require more skill, physical energy, and talent than others. I do think a factory owner deserves to make more money than a factory worker, because they have a larger stake in what is happening. They are investing their money. That's fair enough. I don't think that a factory owner deserves to make more in a day than the worker does in a year. I don't believe that a person has the right to earn a profit if that profit is earned by depriving someone else of their fair share. I think it's fair for a manager to make twice what a worker makes, and an owner to make ten times as much. The owner still lives a life of comfort and luxury in this scenario, but now, so do the workers, who are now healthier, happier, and have the money to do things (and generate economic activity) they could never do before. More economically-empowered workers would naturally lead to more entrepreneurs, selling to a market full of people who have purchasing power. Anybody who tells you that wealth is a zero-sum game is an complete idiot. Be especially careful if they try to sell you gold.

It may seem like I've gone off on a tangent, but as I explained earlier, I have not. Racism is just a tool of the irresponsible rich (and don't waste my time telling me they aren't all irresponsible, because I know this and they aren't the ones I'm talking about) in their war against every lower class, but they will exploit any division they see. 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.

[abaris]

There are too many people who are in love only with people.

It makes them feel superior, which is especially true for literal religious people. Humans are gods creation to rule over and exploit everything else. That's why I post videos about recent cognitive experiments on animals whenever possible, since they are real eye openers when it comes to our fellow creatures.

Superiority complexes are also the reason for racism. Again, the banding together in some exclusive community makes even the saddest loser feel special.

[Creed of Heresy]

Creed apparently fails to recognize status for any non-humans. This chauvinism makes me sad. If he has a solution to theory of mind vs actually experiencing the internal reality of other humans, I'd like to hear it. I do not believe that denying self awareness in non-humans can be supported if other humans are granted the same. My empathy extends to dogs, chimps, whales and even cows. If an individual appears to be writhing in pain, I'm willing to accept that they actually are in pain. Creed is a little over the top which I recognize is an effect of the anonymity of the interwebs. I don't know if Creed is actually as simple as his posts appear.

"You're just sick!" is not a reasoned response.

Seriously? You don't actually have the spine to address me directly, you have to speak ABOUT me, rather than TO me?

Fine, in the future I'll just refer to you indirectly, too. Let us both be petty and childish, huh?

Well, Julia's inability to address any of the concerns I brought up about her morals regarding punishing someone with death and her subsequent need to stoop to arrogant holier-than-thou grandstanding to defend herself without providing anything of sustenance pretty much confirms what I feared about her; her view of what warrants death and what does not is black-and-white, and she would just as soon hang a man for killing another man as she would for him killing a cow, or so she seems to be implying. And since I gave her the benefit of the doubt to clarify her position, and she thus failed to do so, I am left with nothing but her previous words, which I need not address further, as they are in plain view for anyone else to see.

Now, to stop stooping to your level, I am going to be ignoring the red herrings you're now trying to throw up. I am addressing your stance that you would like to wipe out people with cold calculation for something regardless the reasoning for what they do; theory of mind vs. the other philosobabble crap you're going on about is little more than an excuse.

Animals can, indeed, feel pain. However, they cannot reason, they cannot rationalize, and they have no personalities. We know this because of neuroscience; the human frontal lobe is unique in the animal kingdom, and the human frontal lobe is where personality and reasoning come from, ergo to value a non-person to the equal level of a person is a far less reasoned stance to have than my response of "you're sick," which, by the way, is VERY reasonable, given what it was that you had said which I had been addressing.

I await your reply, and this time, grow some tits and address me directly.

[abaris]

However, they cannot reason, they cannot rationalize, and they have no personalities.

I suggest typing animal cognition into google. You'll be surprised. Alternatively you can try Brian Hare or Frans de Vaal.

At least I hope, as opposed to theists, you're actually interested in recent scientific developments.

[JuliaL]

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.

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.

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.

I suddenly find myself liking you a lot less. ... I'll give you the chance to recant, but if you find yourself not wishing to do so, I'm just going to tell you this: We're gonna have problems going forward.

Fine, challenge accepted.


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.
http://Central Africa has lost 64 percen... a decade.

Central Africa has lost 64 percent of its elephants in a decade.

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.

[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.