Why do you all waste time protesting against speciesism?

[Guest]

Check out his post history, he attempted to use a trolling style to fuck with us. I presisted in responding to him calmly and rationally and he got bored and left. Works every time.

(To the guy who thought I was crazy for giving him a reasonable response, it was merely to get him to stfu. I didn't really take him seriously.)

yeah on second thought that does look like it can be taken is a joke, i am a first time poster here killing a bit of time where nothing more worthwhile is happening so i am not familiar. all the same i have heard people say shit just as stupid as this (and this includes other anarchists) in all seriousness so it can be hard to tell.

one thing though: rights is not the way to look at it in my book. rights are part of the rhetoric of the state, as in your rights on the one hand and your responsiblities to a society you didn't necessarily feel like being a part of on the other. in a non-sate concept this would still be a highly leagalistic formulation that is assuming quite a bit: namely that billions of human beings have enough in common with one another, or at least lack any sort of fundamentally serious and irreconcilable conflict, to live as part of the same basic social unit...this isn't even true of millions and i would go so far as to say thousands of us. rather than rights i would subtitute the rehtoric of desires, that lets us know how irrelevant and relative each of our own visions ultimately are but at the same time gives us all the justification we need to fight for our visions and prefered forms of association (or lack there of) because they are, of course, what drives us. i don't know how clear this sounds so i hope people get my point, if not i guess i'll flesh out the details based on the responses i get, assuming i get any and i got nothing better to do.

-lord rambler

-lord rambler

[Guest]

shit, didn't mean to sign my name twice

-lord rambler

[Guest]

[quote="Francois Tremblay"]What I mean by "rights" is nothing more and nothing less than the existence of a moral justification for some forms of violence (which can be demonstrated logically, as for instance the Kinsella estoppel argument). For example, a human being is justified to use violence when defending his own life or livelihood against aggression.

Using this definition, I have no objection to the notion of non-human animals having rights. I have no objection in saying that everyone, including non-human animals, have such rights. It's the notion of statist rights- that we should control other human beings because of what they do to non-human animals- that I object to. I don't think anyone has such rights, human or not. I don't think the fact that a human being is mistreating a pig gives us the right to control that human being and tell him what to do.

Of course, in an ideal world we would not be arguing about this because non-human animals would be treated better than they are now. But I blame the capitalist system of factory farming, not human nature. I think the Anarchist programme would probably be the most important step in ending the issue.

To be clear, my position is that AR activists are using the statist definition of rights- they believe that someone else's rights (non-human animals) gives THEM the right to control other human beings. I think that's a very immoral attitude: as Anarchists, we are fighting against systemic control, not for it. Just because this control is used under seemingly good intentions does not make it desirable. We don't want a society where the capitalist hierarchy is replaced by a Greenie hierarchy, with AR as the excuse to intrude on everyone's lives and forbid them freedom.[/quote

might i offer one nihilists opinion? i don't want any sort of preplanned society for everyone to be part of no matter how humane, i want free association, that why i call myself an anarchist. the thing about morality and moral justification is, like beauty, it doesn't exist apart from the eye of the beholder: anyone can come up with a morality to justify anything and in the end it all comes back to those justifying the morality: they are doing this either cause they are writing large a particular desire of their own, whatever gets them wet or stiff, they have gotten carried away and generalized something thats really personal, in other words, or they are doing this out of fear, generally of god but sometimes of other things. thus why an overall system for the "common good" will always end in some form of dystopia rather than the originally longed for utopia. that being said, my desires involve relationships, at least with those i personally care for (i am very introverted beyond this, i had a bad childhood at school and have major trust issues with strangers, i am pretty quite till you get to know me if you do but that being said when that happens i never shut up), a basic generosity to people i meet in general as far as what i can muster (though obviously this generosity no longer applies in the case of me having beef with someone), and certainly do not include systematic oppression of animals even for humanitarian ends (that would be better dealt with by doing something about the fact we live in a poisoned environment, you know, destroying what destroys us). thus where i find my motivation on this issue.

-lord rambler

[Francois Tremblay]

Anyone can come up with any moral system they want to justify anything, sure. Just look at the doctrine of "just war."

That's not what I believe in. I don't give a shit about trying to justify any evil. I just want to figure out the truth.

I believe in rationality as the only standard of truth. If it exists and can be defined, it's true. If it doesn't exist or can't be defined, it's rhetoric or propaganda. I arrived at Anarchy through a long process of reasoning and examining data that took many years. I take it very seriously.

Nihilism is nice but in my perspective it, more often than not, ends up being a justification for "might makes right" ideologies, a sort of reverse-fascism: "we can't figure out anything for ourselves, therefore we have to bow down to those who can kill us and follow what they say." The belief that we can't figure out truth for ourselves is very anti-individualist.

[birthday pony]

Anyone can come up with any moral system they want to justify anything, sure. Just look at the doctrine of "just war."

That's not what I believe in. I don't give a shit about trying to justify any evil. I just want to figure out the truth.

I believe in rationality as the only standard of truth. If it exists and can be defined, it's true. If it doesn't exist or can't be defined, it's rhetoric or propaganda. I arrived at Anarchy through a long process of reasoning and examining data that took many years. I take it very seriously.

But say someone came to different conclusions than you with just as much thought and reasoning. People just might differ in what is good and evil.

[Guest]

Anyone can come up with any moral system they want to justify anything, sure. Just look at the doctrine of "just war."

That's not what I believe in. I don't give a shit about trying to justify any evil. I just want to figure out the truth.

I believe in rationality as the only standard of truth. If it exists and can be defined, it's true. If it doesn't exist or can't be defined, it's rhetoric or propaganda. I arrived at Anarchy through a long process of reasoning and examining data that took many years. I take it very seriously.

But say someone came to different conclusions than you with just as much thought and reasoning. People just might differ in what is good and evil.

thus the rejection of morality in favor of desire. the thing is there is nothing that is reasonable with capital R (also, when people try to implement this historically, it has pretty much always resulted in genocide and slavery, resulted in an ideological violence worse than any violence that can be found in nature including massive storms and volcanos). rationality and reason are intimantly bound up in the emotions, they are tools we use as means to get ends that are based in our emotions. other than this rationality can be used to sift through contradictory urges we might have or to priroritize various desires. however i fail to see how rationality can exist as anything that isn't secondary to desire: in all visions of a rational life i have heard no matter how intolerably dry, sterile and boring, i have been able to pin point where the emotions seep through and hand the so-called objective observer their bias. the problem you mentioned is not one i deny but it also only becomes a problem when peoples desires are based on lording it over others. as for myself i have no such desire.

-lord rambler

[Francois Tremblay]

But say someone came to different conclusions than you with just as much thought and reasoning. People just might differ in what is good and evil.

So what? People disagree on pretty much everything. This does not mean that rationality is flawed, just that people have different pieces of the puzzle, and most of us have been heavily indoctrinated in various areas. Anarchists of all people should understand how little freedom of thought we have.

[Francois Tremblay]

Francois Tremblay, I think you need to get over the fact that no one is claiming "exacting neural analog."

Words are not literal manifestations of the universe, they're generalizations. In no way does the word 'happiness' relate only to human beings. "Human happiness," is not "happiness."

By calling a dog fucking happy I am not irrational.

So when you are saying "happiness" you mean something that is not happiness that you call "happiness" because it's kindof the same.

By that standard, I should call a chair a "table" because it's kindof the same (they both have legs and a flat surface, they are both used to hold up things in a similar weight range). Are you ok with that?

[birthday pony]

So when you are saying "happiness" you mean something that is not happiness that you call "happiness" because it's kindof the same.

By that standard, I should call a chair a "table" because it's kindof the same (they both have legs and a flat surface, they are both used to hold up things in a similar weight range). Are you ok with that?

But I can tell you specific differences between tables and chairs. I might have harder time telling you a difference between human happiness and canine happiness.

[Yarrow]

i think what the pony is saying is happiness is happiness. in a human it's specifically human, and in a dog decidedly more canine.

but if morality is inherent, and only humans have 'real' emotions (whatever that means), then your not wanting to see a man kick a dog is irrelevant if i think it's moral to do it? i hope i have this right.

[Francois Tremblay]

I never said "only humans have real emotions." That is your interpretation. What I am saying is that "only humans have human emotions." Happiness is an emotion experienced by humans, expressed by specific brain structures, and experienced by specific sensory and mental points of reference.

Furthermore, whether dogs can be happy or not has no bearing on whether they have rights. I have no idea where you got that. I never said "dogs cannot feel human emotions, therefore they don't have rights."

Instead of twisting every post I make, Yarrow, can you just read them?


"but if morality is inherent, and only humans have 'real' emotions (whatever that means), then your not wanting to see a man kick a dog is irrelevant if i think it's moral to do it?"

Give me a scenario where you think it is moral to kick a dog, and then I'll be able to answer you. Otherwise, this is all purely hypothetical and irrelevant to morality.

[birthday pony]

If a dog is kicked is it not justified to bite the kicker? Why or why not? If it does, doesn't that fit your definition of rights?

I think if someone kicked a dog and it bit them most people would say "What did you expect? You fucking kicked a dog." And if by your definition rights are a moral justification to use violence then how does the dog not have rights?

[Imnaxus]

The urge to kick a dog means you respect violence and dominance, so you'll draw that same behavior to yourself. You'd probably live around people who also respect violence and dominance. This means you'll spend your life being kicked by people just like you - metaphorically or literally. Someone stronger than you will push you around, or someone from a stronger country may drop some bombs on you. If your arms and legs were blown off in a war, there's no reason why anyone should care - it's your own behavior in action.

It would have been easier on yourself if the dog had bitten you back. You might have learned your lesson sooner.

[Yarrow]

Instead of twisting every post I make, Yarrow, can you just read them?

just read them? no. i like to digest and respond. my point about emotions was that i found it incredible that you seem to deny the presence of happiness in dogs. as in, joy. not an exact analogue, obviously. just the expression of joy.

and if i come up with a dog-beating example, and you refute the justification, will not that show we have different views on morality?? and if we do, how can morality be inherent? and if it's because one of us is wrong, how can we ever find inherent morality? if it changes with each culture, it's not much of a constant is it? not as much as happiness in different animals, anyway.

i really do hate to showboat. but sometimes it can't be helped.

[ambi]

francois, i think you have been evading an answer to the question that's been posed to you by me and b.p. ...

if "rights" revolve around moral use of violence, and you feel that it is ok to use violence to stop someone from savaging a dog, but not a rock or a carrot, then you are saying the dog has a right that rocks and carrots do not share. otherwise, it is you who will be acting immorally by using violence against someone who is acting well within their rights.

in short, what gives you the right to stop someone, including the use of force, from savaging a dog?