Human Rights and Animal Rights: Why does one feel more out weighed than the other at times

[Parasondox]

Suuuuuuuuuup Escapist (Don't worry I can't speak slang or do text talk to save my life)

Now before someone bites my head off saying how dare I say blah blah blah about something to do with nothing, I just wanted to make a quick post about something I have been thinking for while.

If you haven't noticed the pattern in my threads, I think a lot and question nearly everything cause I don't things just by 1 small evidence. Is there a GOD, I don't know but would love to know if they're more of us out there in the universe rather than something created us in 6 days and have to take that as a face value fact with no evidence to support it.

Back to the main topic, I support human rights and I also support animal rights. BUT does it seem sometimes that one out ways the other in certain situations. When an animal is portrayed badly in a video game, the whole Mario wearing fur situation, PETA will be on that case like a businessmen chasing for a hooker on a Friday night making sure his wife doesn't notice a strange smell and hair on his collar or underwear... sorry that was too much. Video game animals aren't real PETA so relax. Even some and i mean a small some even considered giving Dolphins human rights. Some news media and government brush torture of humans under the carpet as if it was nothing but if it's to do with an animal, then in comes the storm.

What are your thoughts on the matter and do you think one has been more outweighed than the other? I'm not saying which is more important but whether one has more defense than the other.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

PETA are a very loud minority that nobody takes seriously.

As for the torture of humans? Certain orginisations take that extremely seriously, they're just not loud attention whores like PETA.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The vocal minorities are always out there, it's a just question which one gets the spotlight next.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Human Rights are prioritized over Animal Rights in 99.999999999% of all situations. In any circumstance where they aren't, you can be assured there will be a long lineup of humans on hand to cry foul about the unfairness of it all.

Keep in mind we live in a society where Animal Rights have been improving in leaps and bounds, and we still torture animals for sport, perform medical/pharmaceutical experiments on them daily for our benefit, keep them in horrifying conditions right up to the point where we eat them, or jam them in dubious concrete zoos so we can be entertained by their listless half-lives.

Certainly you are free to prioritize human welfare. That is a perfectly human thing to do. But don't try to suggest we live in some kind of Beast State where our rights are constantly encroached upon or trampled by uppity animals.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Even some and i mean a small some even considered giving Dolphins human rights.

I live for the day that dolphins are given human rights. Because that's the day we build dolphin prisons, and start putting dolphins in jail for infanticide (More common in dolphins then humans), rape (About as common in dolphins as in humans) and animal abuse (Torturing and killing porpoises for no reason).

Bring it on, PETA!

 

[omega 616]

I remember seeing somewhere that give 5 times the amount of money to animal charities than human ones. I know that's vague as fuck I can believe it, the amount of cute animal pics on the net dwarf baby pics and videos... I'd bet just cat pics out weigh any baby stuff.

So while people are sympathetic to humans they see an abused animal and throw money at it (which honestly just makes the situation worse!). Might also have to do with humans do it to animals which can't really fight back.

Then there are multiple more money than sense people who leave cats and dogs thousands, maybe millions for no reason, other than they are stupid. (come on, what is a cat going to with 100 grand? Go on a serious cat nip bender?)

 

[Parasondox]

I remember seeing somewhere that give 5 times the amount of money to animal charities than human ones. I know that's vague as fuck I can believe it, the amount of cute animal pics on the net dwarf baby pics and videos... I'd bet just cat pics out weigh any baby stuff.

So while people are sympathetic to humans they see an abused animal and throw money at it (which honestly just makes the situation worse!). Might also have to do with humans do it to animals which can't really fight back.

Then there are multiple more money than sense people who leave cats and dogs thousands, maybe millions for no reason, other than they are stupid. (come on, what is a cat going to with 100 grand? Go on a serious cat nip bender?)

It's like when millions are spent on pandas. If they are too lazy to fu... I mean "mate", why are we even forcing them and spending so much money on them to make sure they don't go extinct.

 

[HoneyVision]

What exactly is the defense of people who think that animals rights come before human rights?

Not even a trick question, I genuinely want to know.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

It's like when millions are spent on pandas. If they are too lazy to fu... I mean "mate", why are we even forcing them and spending so much money on them to make sure they don't go extinct.

Some animal species evolved to breed slowly. In the absence of predators, that slow rate of reproduction is what kept them from depleting their nutritional base. Panda's are an oft-quoted example, but the kakapo is probably an even more extreme one.

We then destroyed the environment they live in (not on purpose, in most cases), depriving them of the nutritional base, and suddenly that slow rate of reproduction is not enough to keep the species going. So we're kind of "paying for the damages".

And panda is also an example of an umbrella species. You want to have resources and public support to protect a fragile ecosystem? The best way to do this is to find a cute-looking species you can paste all over billboards and people will throw money at you because "OMG so cuuuute!" That's why we're making a big deal about pandas. That's also why "dolphin safety" is emphasized for fishing. So yeah, your average panda might be too lazy to get jiggy wit' it, but without those programmes, the bamboo forests they inhabit might go the way of European lowland forests.

ANYWAY, back OT: animals are seen as innocent, incapable of conscious wrongdoing. Humans are seen as having agency. So reports on animal abuse often follow the same pattern as those of child abuse - and elicit similar emotional reactions. The world collectively didn't give a fuck about the Darfur genocide, because it was seen as a group of humans doing something to another group of humans. It's assumed that there are "valid reasons" in those cases, that both groups have agency. Pretty much the only large-scale genocide in history which doesn't get this treatment is the Holocaust, and it took decades before it started to become recognized as such.

But when it's a human doing something to an animal, it's immediately recognized as a perpetrator and an innocent victim. Hence the ease of getting an emotional response.

As for PETA, others have already said it - PETA is a vocal minority, and those always get media attention.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

What exactly is the defense of people who think that animals rights come before human rights?

Not even a trick question, I genuinely want to know.

I don't think it's a question of them "coming before", but of animal rights abuses getting more extreme reactions than human rights abuses. And therefore those reactions being more visible.

 

[Stephen St.]

What exactly is the defense of people who think that animals rights come before human rights?

Not even a trick question, I genuinely want to know.

Playing a bit of devil's advocate here: What exactly is the reson people put human rights before animal rights?

 

[Strazdas]

What exactly is the defense of people who think that animals rights come before human rights?

Not even a trick question, I genuinely want to know.

Playing a bit of devil's advocate here: What exactly is the reson people put human rights before animal rights?

Ok, ill bite.
YOu are human, i am human, the poster is likely human as well.
As a egoistic being, which we all are, i obviuosly care about my own rights. In this particular human that is me, as well as in many others, this care about my own rights outweighs care about other creatures rights, in this case animals. Therefore we put our own rights before that of other animals.
Another spin is that without human rights animal rights wouldnt exist to begin with, for if we cant take care of ourselves there is noone left to care for animals anyway, unless you get those godlike koalas to start interfering.....no, bad reference.....

 

[Bertylicious]

What exactly is the defense of people who think that animals rights come before human rights?

Not even a trick question, I genuinely want to know.

Playing a bit of devil's advocate here: What exactly is the reson people put human rights before animal rights?

I think it stems from the impression that animals are somehow innocent, perhaps even spiritually pure, whereas humans are these big lumpy things who're all complicated and also some people are bastards. Furthermore animals are far more helpless in the face of human power than other humans.

Of course, as Accursed theory rightly reminds us, all animals are actually bastards but dolphins in particular. We should put all the animals in cages and concrete over everything.

 

[CriticalMiss]

It's like when millions are spent on pandas. If they are too lazy to fu... I mean "mate", why are we even forcing them and spending so much money on them to make sure they don't go extinct.

Part of it is guilt and part of it is that people like cute fluffy things and of course profit shows up too. Humans caused the Pandas to reach such low numbers through hunting and capturing them for private collectors, now we want to bring their wild numbers back up to show that we are so much better than we were in the past. It's also because China makes something like $1 million loaning a single panda to a foreign zoo for one year on top of the money they get from tourism etc. And because pandas are an enigmatic species (read: cute) people love to help them out. Next to no one would pay to set up a mosquito sanctuary and breeding programme if they were near extinction even though they are an important part of the ecosystem. They're annoying, small and not cute so people don't give a shit.

And never listen to a word anyone from PETA utters, they are hypocrites of the highest order. They violently protest outside animal shelters because they put down animals for various reasons, yet they do it themselves and try to justify it as somehow completely different. They fund domestic terrorists (ALF) who firebomb research labs that are testing on animals. They also condemn guide dogs for the blind, household pets of any kind and the use of animal derived insulin even though one of the cofounders uses it. I'd recommend watching the P&T Bullshit episode on PETA and you can make up your own minds, but they are in no way an ethical organisation and you don't have to support them to stand up for animal rights.

As for why we hold human rights above animal rights, I guess it's because we want to protect ourselves and our families before animals. Plus trying to hold humans and other animals as legal equals would be a monumentally difficult and expensive task.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Another spin is that without human rights animal rights wouldnt exist to begin with, for if we cant take care of ourselves there is noone left to care for animals anyway

Oh yes, I'm sure the animals would be utterly distraught about THAT one. We've been such gentle, loving stewards of the planetary ecology...

Playing a bit of devil's advocate here: What exactly is the reson people put human rights before animal rights?

Anthropocentrism.

 

[IndomitableSam]

Eh... I'm of the mind that unless you're someone I care about, animals are more important. There are 7 billion people on the planet, we can spare to lose a few (including myself - I'm not bettering the world in any way). But an animal goes extinct? Things get pretty messed up.

Consider wolves in the US and Canada. In some places where we wiped them out, because they killed a few livestock, there are now (and have been for decades) so many deer and other herbivores that the land has been decimated by too much grazing. Even livestock can't get enough to eat because there are too many things like deer around. Forests have been destroyed by deer eating all the low foliage that the ecosystem simply couldn't survive and now the land is useless for everyone, animal and human.

I'm sure there are other examples in other parts of the world. The UK used to have bears and wolves and other predators... but they simply don't exist anymore and I"m sure that's caused issues.

And, yeah... don't bring up PETA. They don't care about animals at all. Do some research and you'll find they enjoy mass murder. ... Seriously.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

If animals has the same level of rights as humans then no more bacon. :-(

 

[Maze1125]

I remember seeing somewhere that give 5 times the amount of money to animal charities than human ones.

Well, where ever you heard that from was wrong, completely.
http://www.forbes.com/top-charities/#page:1_sort:0_direction:asc_search:_filter:All%20categories
Not even a single animal charity appears in the top ten most funded charities in the USA.

 

[omega 616]

snip

To be honest, I never really believe stuff like which charities get more money 'cos things like that can be manipulated so easily. Just watch a video called "8 billion dollar ipod", I did a bit of voluntary work for the British heart foundation and it's quite sickening what other charities try to get away with... Like it will say on the collection bag "only 1p in every pound goes to charity".

I just echo what I've heard without putting too much stock into it, my bad.

 

[runic knight]

snip

To be honest, I never really believe stuff like which charities get more money 'cos things like that can be manipulated so easily. Just watch a video called "8 billion dollar ipod", I did a bit of voluntary work for the British heart foundation and it's quite sickening what other charities try to get away with... Like it will say on the collection bag "only 1p in every pound goes to charity".

I just echo what I've heard without putting too much stock into it, my bad.

Well, when one of the most well known faces of animal rights is PETA, I think that is a bit of a moot point. Even what goes to the organization itself is quite likely being wasted.