In my comment (2010) responding to Liu's post (2010) about the referendum on which Swiss citizens are currently voting, I asked a question in parentheses about asking asking questions. My parenthetic note and what prompted it were:
It's hard to see why pets deserves more concern than other animals used by humans. (Would you have written that last sentence the same way? Why or why not? What is the obvious alternative?) (Peter, 2010)
And my following sentence was "If we care about cruel and painful treatment of pets, shouldn't we care equally about the cruelty or suffering caused to farm animals reared for human food?"
As you probably realise, my questions arose from something which I've commented on more than once when I've reviewed your writing assignments, and which we have subsequently discussed several times over the past couple of terms.
As well as the questions explicitly stated in my parentheses, you might also like to comment on the implied question: which is the better choice of the options available? Why, and when, would we choose one alternative over the other? Would you have made the same choice that I made in my response to Liu's post?
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References
Liu. (2010, March 7). lawyers for animals. Message posted to Class Blog - AEP at AUA at http://peteraep.blogspot.com/. Retrieved March 7, 2010 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2010/03/lawyers-for-animals.html
Peter. (2010, March 7, 3:10 PM). lawyers for animals. Comment posted to Class Blog - AEP at AUA at http://peteraep.blogspot.com/. Retrieved March 7, 2010 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2010/03/lawyers-for-animals.html
I think this is the natural irrationality of human. I have heard a similar story from Chinese anecdotes. There was a king who see his officer pull a sacrifice cow to slaughter. He thought that that cow was very pitiful, so he told that person not to kill that cow. That person asked him if he should not do sacrifice. The king said 'No' and he told that man to slaughter a goat instead. The king saw a cow but he did not see a goat, so he has no pity to a goat.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, people are familiar with pets but not animals in farm. In addition, they think that animals in farm are raised for being food for human. Most people might try to neglect them because they also take part in killing them too. They might treat them as food rather than living creatures, otherwise it would be difficult for them to eat. Therefore they have less compassion towards animal in farm. I think that if we bring the information about how this animals are raised in farm to people and spread this information in the society vigorously, we would become more familiar with them and have more compassion towards them. This could help decrease the consumption of meat as well as the cruel treatment in farm.