Earthlings

Warning: It's graphic.

Since we have such a nice grouping of people here, I'm curious to hear what others think, if anything. It's also an hour long, but interesting enough if you have the time.

Sounds interesting, I'll have to take a look at this later when I have the time, thanks for posting it.

This stuff opens your eyes, really..

I had a hard time getting past the "ridicule" in my 3 stages to TRUTH

Mainly because of the gross oversimplifications, and the absurd comparisons the video was making, as well as the apparent lack of context.

Imagine a video about old age homes, and they showed that some people in the old age home have no memmories of life before that home, or some are blind or crippled. You might be lead to believe that old age homes are the cause of those issues, rather than the fact that they have those issues, being the cause for them to be in the old age home.

No.

Strange, I actually agree with Daganev on this one...

Ok, so, I watched the moive.

It made some really good points and discussed and showed things that I highly disapprove of. Heck, some parts of it made me cry even. But, it was also very obviously a Vegan propaganda fest. I mean, I'm all for reforming animal treatment in farms and so on. I support my local shelter and if I could have a dog or cat, that's where I'd go to get one. It would be fixed too, cause I totally agree that your average joe pet owner shouldn't let their animals breed and produce more unwanted animals. I think rodeos and bullfights suck and I think animal trainers who abuse the animals in their care should be punished with the same ferocity as child abusers.

But I don't think that all human beings are horrible people who go around looking to beat an elephant till it bleeds.

That movie took the very worst it could find and painted it all over every single person and it kind of ticks me off a little. Not all pet owners are irresponsible. Not all animal trainers are cruel. Not all farms are factory farms. Not all zoos are crappy. Hell, the zoo thing especially made me roll my eyes. Zoos are like the #1 resource for animal conservation! Sure, there are some cheap, roadside zoos out there and those are dodgy, but actual zoos help animals.

I like meat, it tastes good and I'm gonna continue to eat it. I have these pointy teeth in my mouth for a reason, ya know?

It's also really funny how they kept showing wild animals running around when they were talking about animals living pain-free, happy lives. I imagine a zebra goes though a heck of a lot of fear and pain when a pride of lions drags it to the ground and starts eating it before it's completely dead. I'm not saying that factory farms don't suck, cause they do, but the idea that animals aren't just as 'cutthroat' as people can be is crazy.

Anyway, that's what I thought of it: Vegan Propaganda whose message was smothered in all the, well... propaganda.

The side of me more attuned to logic knows this was designed to appeal to emotion. The music, the rednecks making jokes while they beat a big, etc. This is very much a worst case scenario (though I can't comment on what percentage the factories and puppy mills actually are) and is meant to make you cry.

In any case, it worked and I found myself crying on several occasions. While the issue was of animal treatment in general, I know it doesn't really apply to me for the most part. I adopt strays. I've adopted 4 strays literally off the street, one from an actual breeder who was not a "puppy mill" and 2 from a shelter. I am not a vegetarian and I know nothing save a mass, and equally unrealistic boycott of meat will never happen thus personal strikes against McDonald will accomplish anything beyond making me feel good about myself. I've done my research and completed several papers on various forms of animal cruelty during my college and highschool career. It is quite difficult to sift through fact and exaggeration.

What hit me is the people in the video. Those some rednecks making jokes while they beat an animal that was screaming in pain, or literally jumping up and down on a room of chickens. I understand this is a minority, but I feel disgusted for being considered a human being like they are. You don't have to have an emotional connection to something to understand that it bleeds and feels pain and suffers. I just do not understand how someone can not care, or joke as they beat a pig to death. These things do happen. That is humanity. To participate in those kinds of acts...and to be okay with it? It's just disgusting. There is no excuse nor reason. It's barbaric and cruel. It is wrong in every way imaginable.

"No matter the nature of the being, that one's suffering can be counted equally with the suffering of any other being"

I'm sorry, but yes. Suffering is suffering. Pain is pain. To separate yourself from this fact is an attempt to separate yourself from your humanity. Life can not be approached with an attitude of apathy. You can not hold humanity to higher standards of intellect and thought, then perform acts of such violence. It's a contradiction. It cheapens the very thing that people claim makes them so superior.

This video is one of the best forms of propaganda I've viewed. It appeals to emotion, and it does a good job at doing it. However, I see several flaws:

Most of the arguments presented in this video apply to all living organisms not just fish and animals. The needs/wants that binds all humans and animals/fish together also bind us with bacteria and viruses. We want to survive. We want to reproduce. Like human, animals, and fish - bacteria/viruses survive by being aware of their environment - by adjusting to it.

I also think this video presents problems with no solutions. If we have a massive overpopulation of stray dogs, for example, what do we do with them? Do we allow them to continue to breed and starve? It's sad that this exists, but there is no solution that's ideal or perfect.

Do we allow other human beings to starve so a pig is saved? Do we let our grandmothers die of cancer because we don't believe in animal testing and therefore the medicines that result from it?

=====+=====

I wonder if the man who is narrating this video uses or has ever used antibiotics for him or his family.

Ugh.

I could not bear to watch this movie all the way through to the end. It disgusts me.

Propaganda makes me sick to my stomach.

No. The suffering should be acknowledged, but it is not equal with that of another human being. Stepping on a spider is not the same thing as crushing the skull of an infant with your boot.

You can't equate a dog to a bacteria cell or a virus. Yes, the video is an appeal to emotion, but you are pressing the logic barrier a bit too far.

You also do a decent attempt at appealing to emotion yourself. Starving people and cancerous grandmothers. My opinion is that while the medication created from the experimental testing may save lives, that does not justify the suffering of another being. I don't believe that is something that can ever be justified. The means don't justify the ends, as they say.

Why not? As far as this video is concerned, they are all Earthlings. Likewise, do you use antibiotics or take medicine when you are ill? If so, you're a hypocrite.

As far as testing on animals goes, my personal viewpoint is: Cosmetic testing (as in spraying hairspray in a rabbit's eyes to see how irritated they get and stuff of that nature) is unnecessary and bad. Medcial testing, however, is unfortunate but needed.

Barbara Bush just had her aortic heart valve replaced with a pig's valve. Clearly, she should have just sucked up her heart crapping out on her and died? What about the pig's rights?

"As far as the video is concerned." I have opinions outside the boundaries of the video, but thanks.

Wrong, I explained that previously. Personal boycotts do not accomplish anything. Making a statement for the sake of making statements is not something a make a habit of. Denying myself a flu shot because, 100 years ago a monkey suffered, does not change the fact that the monkey suffered. It does not fix it. What can be accomplished is that acceptance and understanding of that suffering, so that it does not continue to happen. Progress at the cost of our humanity is not an acceptable price.

Understanding that things need to change, but change is no retroactive, does not make me a hypocrite.

edit: for being so critical towards emotional appeals, you are making a lot of them yourself. It comes down to personal opinion on whether you value one form of life over another. It's a subject people will rarely change their minds over, and as such, I do not argue that particular point. If it had been me, I would have denied the valve replacement, but I do not presume to tell others how they should think.

What this video doesn't tell you is that animal research is VERY regulated. It's also taken very seriously (at least in the United States). It is unfortunate, but it's necessary. It's no act of drama or subterfuge to imply that injecting cancer cells into mice and developing a cure for them is one reason many forms of cancer that would otherwise be 100% fatal are now easily treatable.

And so we shouldn't test on monkeys in the future to develop new vaccines with less side effects that are more effective in the future so long as you get what you need now and someone suffered for it in the past but not in the future?

Suggesting change should be done with no proposed solutions is worse than apathy. I'd rather people didn't care than people sit in ivory towers and cast judgment with no better method or skill.

You can't twist words so easily with me. "As long as you get what you need now" has no place in this argument as it is a blatant misrepresentation of my opinion.

I'm not going to discuss this rather interesting topic if this is the approach you are going to take.

edit: No, I'm sorry. The understanding that suffering of one is an unacceptable cost for the benefit of another is not an "ivory tower." It's just as easy to say it's worse than apathy and demand solutions that you are fully aware can't be provided easily as it is to cast judgment in the first place.

As a final note before I go to bed, I think it's fairly objective to state that people are starving and a lot of grandmothers get cancer. It may be an emotional appeal to some degree, but I don't think I'm on par with a a picture of an obese redneck from god knows where joking with his buddies as he brutally massacres animals day in and day out.

In fact, I bet a whole lot more people are starving and a lot more grandmothers fit my situation than the one they so vividly detailed.