December 07, 2004

• Dude, we can't even agree to give homos equal rights. How about we work on those of us that's Sapiens for now, huh?
• Great Apes tend to vote overwhelmingly democratic, due to their interest in rainforest preservation. Studies estimate there are as many as 210,000 great apes living in Ohio, yet they were ALL disenfranchized in this past election!! Go to www.countTheApeVoteNow.com to find out why apes made kerry president! (the red states are in denial because they think counting the ape votes means endorsing evolution)
• I have to agree with js on this. altho I would be happy to see a more comprehensive level of respect and protection extended to our furry co-inhabitants of the planet (except tarantulas!) I think we are tragically far from "basic moral and legal protection" being enjoyed by all human beings. or "darfur, anyone?"
• This is simply fuzzy-brained, ill-thought out nonsense. Chimps, for example, routinely beat up on each other in dominance struggles. Will this "state equal to humans" involve charging them with domestic abuse or assault? Or will they be getting a bunch of rights and no responsibilities? If the chimps at my local zoo are freed, what happens if they decide to break into someone's house? Are they going to be charged for food they don't grow themselves, like I am?
• I am totally for this. If three-year-olds get human rights, chimpanzees certainly deserve them. This was what prompted one of my few Mefi posts.
• Holy crap, I didn't know you were joe's_spleen over there. Makes sense, now that I think about it.
• That's harsh, rodgerd. "Basic moral and legal protection that only humans enjoy" seems capable of a minimal interpretation to me - encompassing such things as not being eligible to be killed except in self-defense, for example. Three year olds get a pass on whacking each other too. The chimps at your local zoo are unlikely to be freed, because they are incapable of looking after themselves, just like severely handicapped people. I imagine they'll live in a home run by the Department of Anthropoid Welfare. tracicle, that remark makes me very paranoid. :-)
• With man gone, is there hope for gorilla? With gorilla gone, is there hope for man?
• It's the orgnz/spleen thing. And the fact that I tend to agree with what you say on both 'filters. So by equal rights here, we mean the right to live and let live, I guess.
• I'm not sure I'm comfortable with giving apes "basic moral and legal protection that only human beings currently enjoy", but if they want to give them driver's licenses, I'm all for it.
• ...the right to live and let live... /waiting for the day
• I long for the day when all humans can recognize that we're animals, too, and that there's nothing inherently superior about us. I think this would this lead to greater compassion for other animals, and a greater understanding our species, as well. Unfortunately, we're probably a long way off from that, at least in the States. It's alarming how many people resist the theory of evolution in the US. College educated people! Biology students (like the one I sit next to at work) in absolute denial about being primates. Acknowledging that other animals have feelings, thoughts, and a will to live and avoid suffering as strong as our own is problematic. It can lead to empathy, and it forces some of us to re-evaluate everything from eating meat to vivisection to how we protect the environment. It's much simpler to pretend that our species--our behavior, motivations, feelings--are essentially different; to imagine that we
• In no way does our failure to accord equal respect and protection to all humans preclude affording animals those things - I'd say the reverse. Only when we stop making distinctions in compassion do we have a hope of creating a world fit for anyone or anything. On the other hand, I'm not convinced by the utility of stating a set of innate rights as the best way of ensuring maximum good. The universe is morally neutral, humans may live or die, thrive or suffer, and the same with other creatures. But we have choices. For me, it's situational and about processes. Living in a way that affords compassion and respect to any living creature ought to have cumulative benefits for us all. So why the hell not?
• I long for the day when all humans can recognize that we're animals, too, and that there's nothing inherently superior about us Bullshit. Our big brains and our opposable thumbs make us way better. When a dolphin writes a book or a monkey lands on the moon and comes back maybe I'll agree with you. Until them I'm going to shoot and eat as many of the bastards as I can.
• I am so craving a pork chop right now.
• The courts will be flooded with Public Masturbation and Poop Flinging misdemeanors. And yeah, sorry but we are the smartest animal. The dolphin thing always irks me. yes, they're smart- COMPARED TO OTHER ANIMALS. If dolphins could talk they would say things like "me like fish! you give fish now!" and the mystique would evaporate instantaneously.
• "If dolphins could talk they would say things like "me like fish! you give fish now!" and the mystique would evaporate instantaneously." Like the Farside where the dogs all just say "Hey!" "Hey!" "Hey!" Abeizer- While compassion is a nice thing, the difference between humans and other animals is pretty distinct, and grows more so with our continued advancements in technology. We're altering our environment and socially evolving to live in that environment at a rate that no other animal is. Further, what sets us apart in the realm of consideration is our capacity to suffer, and to communicate that suffering. It's not a matter of absolutes
• I probably made my points badly js. Like you, I don't think animals share similar capacities to understand suffering as humans. And you saw the second bit where I say granting of a priori rights seems flawed some how - I suspect it's based on a surviving belief in some transcendent law to the universe I just don't see. What I meant by processes was I think that the behaviour of compassion will be good for us, humanity - I don't think the animals would care or know, but we are able to choose how we are in the world, and how we are has consequences. Even when advocating compassion, I tend to do it not because it's 'good' in itself, but because it seems to be the strategy most likely to tend towards human survival and prosperity in a world worth living in. But as you have no doubt noticed, I'm a very amateur philosopher.
• DrPresAmerica, have you written a book or built a rocket ship and flown to the moon? If not, is your life worth less than the lives of those who have? I value intelligence and creativity, too, but it's not all that I value. I should have been clearer. Our big brains and opposable thumbs are useful adaptations, it's true. You think these things make us better than other animals. I don't think so. Big brains make us smarter, of superior intellect, but not worth more, not any more or less deserving of suffering or superior in any ultimate sense, than any other creature. Our brains and thumbs make us the animals that we are, like stripes and claws make tigers the animals that they are. You may argue that thumbs and big brains make us better because these are the things that make us the dominant species on planet earth today (Woohoo! We're number 1!) but I don't know how successful the big brains will really be. Homo sapiens sapiens hasn't been around for all that long, and at the moment we seem hell bent on our own destruction
• DrPresAmerica, have you written a book or built a rocket ship and flown to the moon? Well no, but like most monekys I don't do much besides eat and masturbate. I also don't think our big brains are such hot shit either, but that's because I read Vonnegut and don't like humans very much. I would also disagree with your idea (via Sagan, who I admire greatly) that we are merely different by degree. We're a pretty unique species. We alone are able to dominate and subjugate every other species. We alone can annihilate just about any species on the planet if we really wanted to. Our advanced minds make us what you jokingly refer to as number 1 on the planet (while I disagree about our status, I think we agree about how meaningful it is). What are the whales going to do to us? Capsize boats? Beach themselves en masse and stink us out? In the end, I really do agree with you that we do need to be better stewards of what we have power over, and that we won't be better about it for a long time. At the same time I would disagree with Abiezer's view, and think we should do it simply because it is the right thing to do. But when was the last time that happened?
• Ape protection and human needs have to go hand in hand - apes are threatened because poverty is pushing people into their homes and towards eating bushmeat. We have to think about ways we can aleviate that poverty and still protect ape habitat and lives.
• A plant is made of fluid protoplasm that directs the the plant towards sunlight and searches for water and has all of these complicated processes going on at the same time. This has nothiing to do with intelligence. This is consiousness. An animal eating another animal is consciousness. It is acting out it's life purpose. when i look the energy of life rather than intelligence, i know that there is no hierarchy to this existence. Life is. Humans are not above any other life form. (this is also the first thing my basic anthropology teacher said to us back in my university days). i dont' necessary think morals have anything to do with the issue of apes. apes don't need moral protections. morals have to do with what is right and wrong in the human mind. in existence, there is no right and wrong -- only what is. What apes need, as does every other species, is simply the freedom to live. how ludicrous it seems to me that we must draft up legal protections and moral equality to ensure this. but. . .if that's what it takes -- let's make a law stating that all life is equal. Wait a second! that already is a law --- it just wasn't drafted by bush and his cronies. . .so fox news doesn't recognize it and if fox news doesn't say it --- ain't nobody paying attention.
• Humanity's inability/unwillingness to control our reproduction means we're expanding into all the space on the planet. Which leaves less and less habitat for other species. Hungry people living marginally will find the easiet and quickest ways to feed themselves. To house themselves and make a living, even if it a temporary fix. So bushmeat is marketed -- and meant-handlers get diseases and spread them. So they practice slash and burn techniques or cut the jungles down in order to plant crops. To cook food, so they fell the trees in the Himalayas and then have to deal with the consequences of mass flooding in Bangladesh. And so on.. Species expand to fill a niche -- and then they die from overcrowding. We are no different in our animality than lab rats, or the rabbit populations of Australia, and once our environment is exploited to the maximum, we will suffer the same fate as other over-crowded omnivores. And a fig for our brains and opposable thumbs.
• Very good points, beeswacky. But I think one has to ask why we in North America live in plenty, and in low density, when those in central Africa are pushed to extremes. It is not simply overcrowding, but the disparity we allow to continue. People will head to marginal land (which is not as good as the already farmed land) in many regions of Africa because the good land has already been taken by the rich and powerful. But I do have to say that most people misunderstand slash and burn, more properly called swidden. In some places, it is about getting new territory, but in most places it is a very sustainable technique of farming, especially appropriate for mountainous areas were plough agriculture would cause erosion. Traditional swidden farmers use land which has been cleared before and allowed to grow over again (actually new land is too difficult to clear) - thus it is not a using up of land and moving on, but a 20 year fallow. Also, in several places in Africa, western observers have made assumptions about forest depletion that have turned out to be erroneous (it was believed that African farming depleted forests in the woodland-savannah border area, but close research has demonstrated that human activity actually makes it possible for the forest to spread. Books to check out on these issues: Hanunoo Agriculture, and Misreading the African Landscape. This does not mean that destructive slash and burn, and the movement into new territory is not a problem for apes - it is very likely it is. But the problem is the fact they are moving into new territory, not the farming technique, which has been misunderstood both by experts and by popular imagination. I'm just trying to work against the myth a little.

• Spain urged to grant rights to apes Madrid - Spain's governing Socialist Party is promoting a controversial parliamentary initiative to grant rights to great apes on the basis of their resemblance to humans, news reports said on Wednesday. If the initiative is approved, it would make Spain one of the first countries to officially protect the rights of apes, said a spokesperson for the animal rights association Adda. The socialists want to prohibit the "enslaving" of gorillas, chimpanzees, orang-utangs and bonobos. Spain would thus adhere to the international Great Ape Project, granting the animals the rights to life and freedom and to not being tortured. "We are not talking about granting human rights to great apes," but about "protecting (their) habitat, avoiding their ill-treatment and their use in various circus activities," environment minister Cristina Narbona explained.

  more i haven't found many sources for this. and several of those i've found are quite dodgy.
• A couple of other links - the second in Spanish.
• thanks. can you explain what the bishop is saying about granting bullfighting rights?
• Sorry I missed your further comment. I think the bishop says monkeys get monkey rights and humans get human rights: to give monkeys human rights would be as ridiculous as giving men bull's rights (I'm guessing there's something in bullfighting which a Spanish audience would recognise as "bull's rights" - but I'm guessing).
• British woman applies to Austrian court to become chimp's legal guardian.