Accidental animal crueltyI once invented a brilliant game - I'd sit at the top of the stairs and throw cat biscuits to the bottom. My cat would eat them, then I'd shake the box, and he would run up the stairs for more biscuits. Then - of course - I'd throw a biscuit back down to the bottom. I kept this going for about half an hour, amused at my little game, and all was fine until the cat vomited. I felt absolutely dreadful.
Have you accidentally been cruel to an animal?
This question has been revived from way, way, way back on the b3ta messageboard when it was all fields round here.
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rob, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 11:13)
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honing the debateI'll admit that genocide and slavery are two very different examples that can be created by specific societal and historical factors, but cruelty is cruelty - it's the willful ignorance of pain caused to another animal that shows its pain. The cruelty towards a cat in the name of fun is the same cruelty towards a persecuted minority. It comes from the same place, whatever motivates it. You can throw in some moral relativism but I think certain facts have to be accepted, namely: causing known pain or discomfort to another sapient being because you can and because there will be no consequences is the same thing, no matter what the being or the circumstances. We know what we are doing is 'wrong' but we do it anyway.
This of course raises the question of a mind that simply does not recognise the guilt or wrongness (perhaps because a society at large has a collective morality). But I think there's evidence from ancient Greece of an uneasiness about the position of slaves. And an entire nation had amnesia about the Holocaust.
(, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 14:13, Reply)
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