Can you "prove" they aren't? Dolphins, whales and elephants show countless indications of being on our level in every way other than tool building ability and knowledge of science that we gained with our tool building ability. Some seem to exceed us in common sense and compassion. Our shortcomings at being able to communicate with them shouldn't give them a death sentence. They grieve extensively over the loss of loved ones, thats all we need to know in order to realise killing them is pure evil, at least as sinister as killing a human. And then there is the aspect I personally find overly disturbing due to my respect and admiration of evolution. The move from land to water would have been an intense struggle for the ancestors of whales. Having to learn to sleep in water when they lost their legs, they have learned to sleep half awake out of necessity, from this we can gather the stressful lives the whales ancestors had to endure were extreme, but they struggled through and only the absolute ultimate individuals who put everything they had into surviving would have lived to pass on their genes. All this struggling and over coming of adversity and for what? These multi million year old rich and noble lineages that required so much effort and pain and struggle get stomped on so bald apes can make money? The whale holocaust was the the pinnacle of tragedy in earths history. Its the event an impartial outsider would select as the most disgusting and depraved injustice this world has ever known. And the worst part is whales like us, they are kind animals that seek our company to befriend us. The sperm whale moby dick was based on defended his family from ruthless violent attackers and risked his life, knocking himself unconscious by ramming the assailants boat in half with his head to thwart their attack Who is the overly diabolical villain in this scenario and who is the hero? Keep in mind if that same sperm whale wasn't having his family brutally murdered in front of him he would have frolicked with those people and made an attempt to have a peaceful interspecies connection. Really think about that, even though it is incredibly depressing. Who's the more admirable creature? Only recently have a certain few homo-sapiens reached that level of reverence. Where they will meet another animal and want nothing more than a "firm handshake" out of respect for the fact they are both experiencing life. Thats all whales have ever wanted from us, a peaceful acknowledgement and showing of respect for eachother, we've wanted their oil and their parents and children to bleed infront of themPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I'd say whales are far more advanced than us in many ways. I don't think killing them for any reason whatsoever is anything less than baby-rapingly disgusting and it takes away any doubt as to who is the more admirable animal.
Is kindness a sign of intelligence? Certainly not in this case, if the whales continue to be "compassionate" towards us while we kill them. I'll put it this way: the only reason whales don't kill humans for food is that they can't, and have no practical need to. They don't feel any selfless love for us...and elevating them to becoming virtuous is unbelievable, because it cannot be proven that a whale does anything other than for survival or out of ignorance. That is crap. You are enshrining your own passivity as some sort of advanced cognitive function. Can you prove that compassion is a sign of extreme intelligence? Have whales never killed anything for food? How about the majestic tiger? Is it depraved like we are? The fact is, every carniverous animal is a murderer. Humans are just more complex, and thorough, with their murdering. Their murdereing also contains certain risks that most other carnivores do not have to deal with. Yet I am sure that it is not altogether rare for a wild animal to depopulate an area due to migration, so we are all most surely in the same boat. And thus I return to the value of an animal. If a whale is more advnaced than a human because a whale blindly shoves trust behind a rival, the entire precedent of human morality should be rendered obseolete. Every carnivore kills to live. If it can kill for fun, it kills for fun, and it is up to the person, or its government, whethr that is right. I'd say in terms of compassion, we are far more advanced than whales, not because we sacrifice ourselves, but because we can assign a whale a right that it will never assign us. Not that assigning animals rights that they can not acknowledge is right; seeing as our own rights will never be respected by an animal, because they only exist in our sphere. If a whale had fangs, it would probably eat one of us. And what about corn, chicken, beef, wheat, rice, or wheat? The sustaining of human life is derivitive from killing, so it surely can't be the intent that is the problem. The 'problem' is that the whale suffers, and this somehow makes us unjust. I don't care if a whale suffers, because a whale never meant anything to me. My dog, for example, meant something to me, which is why I was upset when he died, but that doesn't apply to every living creature, at least by my book.
While I don't personally agree with this, I can respect it, because it is honest. As for you above post, I agree with the observations of muder, death, survival, etc. However, our greater abilities allow us the advantage of being able to remove ourselves form the normal cycles of life if so desire. Accepting them is one thing. Exploiting them because it 'natural', is another. There are enough methods for food/goods production that I don't feel that whaling is a current nessesity for survival. Even in Iceland, there are other fish to be caught, however, that only shows my prejudice against non-mammels. We do need to kill to survive, however, we don't need to kill indiscriminantly, nor do we need to kill to a degree which possibly endangers the long-term survival of our prey. Nor do we need to kill species whose size requires a slow and painful death.
I really can't disagree with most of your argument, except for one major moral point that is best illustrated by the above quote. Whale fishing is a non-essential enterprise, yet in truth, most business is. Following the precedent against uneccesary fishing, we can divine that most of our global economic system shouold be dismantled right now. In reality, we are certainly allowed to overfish whales, and if we do, we should be the ones to recieve any consequences. However, if we have no need for whales, what consequences are there? Fishermen make that choice, and to a broader degree, the markets. Ok, then reserve the right to not buy whale products. But also let others make up their own minds, and if the rest of the world disagree, let them be boorish and kill the whales. If whales are really all that valuable to us, we'll all put that ahead of profit, right? -Jon
Because you deprive your grandchildren the opurtunity to see a magnificent creature, and deprive them of the choice to hunt them or not. edit: also the possible problems associated with an unexpected explosion of the krill population, such as clogging boat engines, depleating the local ocean environment of available oxygen (see Red Tides, not krill, but similar basic principal), or producing toxic chemicals in levels which the local ocean environment is unable to deal with (again, see Red tides), resulting is population drop offs of other species - in turn resulting is a crash of alternate sources of goods/food/monitary income like fish.
Get rid of the sperm whales and what will you do with the billions of giant squid? Feed them to the japanese? You would need a nuclear sub to go fishing.
Do we really need the japanese? I'm sure we could compensate by starting up our own sweatshops. And we could make good use of all those bodies; organ transplants, petfood, hotdogs, cooking oil etc. We could use their land for agriculture, the natural environment over their has already been cleared so we wouldn't have that on our conscience. Fish stocks would improve drastically all over the globe and we could loosen the fishing laws that are restricting us. We could let the cute ones live and be our slaves, we could breed them so the resource never dissapears, petfood forever! I can definately see how killing asians would be beneficial for the rest of us, not till they go extinct, as congrats pointed out thats irresponsible as long as there is resource left to be gained, but we should control and cultivate them for all they're worth for as long as possible. Makes sense doesn't it congrats?
So much anger, just waiting to be let out. Throwing in as many insults as one can come up with. All this towards someone eles' "horribly wrong" opinion. i'll be waiting for your reply...
