Keykeypie
12-10-2006, 08:47 AM
I know a few of you already know Jordan, but for those who don't, keep in mind.....HE'S ONLY 15 YEARS OLD:)
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Here's an essay I wrote at school. I must be good as I got a 7b, which is way above what anybody in my year should get! (Actually it's what most year 9's and 10's strive for, I'm in year 8 ).
Animal Rights
Introduction
Do animals have rights? Do they deserve them? One of the greatest philosophical questions of our time, going back to Jeremy Bentham and the infamous quote “The question is not can they talk nor can they reason but can they suffer?”
Cruelty-free convictions have been around since the dawn of civilisation.
In this essay I will discuss the issues surrounding the aforementioned quote: The use and abuse of animals, the reasons for this, how it cannot be justified and how to start helping animals.
The statistics are incomprehensible, the animals defenceless and the abuse callous and utterly nightmarish at best. Sentient beings are treated as nothing more than machines.
They are murdered, tortured, drowned, starved, raped, mutilated, asphyxiated, skinned alive, experimented upon, electrocuted, abliterated, gassed, bled to death and put through unimaginable horros in endless prison cells, factory farms, laboratories, fur farms and other big industries.
There are five main types of abuse: Food, Entertainment, Clothing, Experimentation and Other Exploitation. Other than by the occasional psychopathic-sadist this abuse is permitted by law, imbedded in our dark history and even encouraged.
These crimes of humanity are commited by pseudo-interllectual Joesef Mengele clones, heartless hunters, faceless workers, twisted farmers and emotionless low-lifes. Generally the only reason for this unspeakable torture is a five letter word beginning with ‘M’ and ending in ‘Y’. I see blood on the hands of the ‘Dominant Species’.
Justifying callousness
“Cockfighting was illegal in Oklahoma until 1963, when a judge ruled that chickens are not animals and therefore unprotected by anticruelty laws.”
Most abusers will tell you of how they are proud of their work, business and livlihoods. How they are the ‘dominant species’, top of the food chain and superior to animals.
The first argument says that since human beings are the ‘dominant species’ of this Earth they have the right to rule over all other animals. Human beings, they say, are more intelligent, due to our advanced cognitive abilities and enlarged cerebal cortex, so therefore animals are inferior and it is justified to exploit them for our own benefit.
This is related to the evolutionary argument about being the ‘top of the food chain’ where humans beings are seen as superior to non-human beings because we ‘fought our way to the top of the food chain’ and have no natural predators. This is used with the ‘animals eat animals, why can’t we?’ argument where people relate their abuse and exploitation of animals to the consumption of prey by predators in the wild. The said arguments are commonly cited by abusers and are summerised in the view that because we are stronger, bigger and more intelligent than animals we have the right to use them to our own advantage.
The above arguments are anthropocentric and speciseist. Speciesism is a term used by philosophers and animal activists to describe the prejudice synonomous with animal abuse.Isaac Bashevis Singer called it the most extreme form of racism. Just as racism is ethnocentric, specieism is anthropocentric. They are closely related, it’s well known that people who kill and torture animals rarely stop there. The link has been made many times between animal abusers and murderers, paedophiles, rapists etc. As Bradley Millar put it “Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.” To prevent these crimes we must stop them at the root.
The ‘dominant species’ argument falls down in the simple fact that the same people who preach that we are better than animals resort to the, scientifically speaking, inferior cerebral cortexes of the said animals. With this logic at heart, it is justified for rape, murder and infanticide to be common among society as this happens among some animals (there are evil animals as there are evil people).
The evolutionary argument, ‘top of the food chain’ as it goes states that because ‘man fought his way to the top of the food chain he deserves the right to rule over all others’ (this argument is generally sexist the uses of the words ‘man’, ‘his’, ‘he’ show an arrogant prejudice, sexism and specieism are very alike which explains the large presence of feminists in the AR movement). This argument lacks any morals and logically, of followed through, justifies every taboo practice imaginable it is ‘might makes right’.
From a scientific standpoint humans are not carnivores but rather omnivores. We used to live of berries, fruits, nuts and occasional lean ‘game’ meats (which we hunted, that’s not driving to Tesco). We possess a long digestive tract, a feature not in found in natural predators and teeth better suited to munch through plants than raw meat. The aforementioned lengthy digestive tract naturally means that food stays in the body longer, this way the healthy, nutritious foods can be sucked-dry of all nutrition. Paradoxically, this means that the not-so-healthy carcinogenic properties of meat can be dumped into the body. It’s no coincidence that people who follow vegetarian/vegan diet live longer, healthier lives and that the rate of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and many other diseases and problems is significantly lower in said people. There are lots of disgusting and dangerous facts about the consumption of animal products here’s an example, whilst an animal is alive the putrefactive bacteria in his or her digestive system are trapped there, once that animal has died those poisonous entities saturate the flesh. Over 70% of beef and 98% of chicken contains fecal matter and putrefactive bacteria. Oh yummy.
Another argument used by the abusers and follows is that it’s vital to the economy and should the industries be shut down jobs will be lost, families will starve, shares will collapse etc. The same was said about the slave trade and the analogy has been made before between the death-industries. Innocent, defenseless beings (be they human or not) are subjugated for profit and self-centered desires. Whether that is the momentary ‘taste-sensation’ of a rotting carcass or the great smell of easy cash from slaves. Another analogy is the Nazi concentration camps and their modern day equivalents. The Jewish, Homosexual, Gypsies, Outcasts and other ‘un-desirables’ were worked to death, raped, murdered and turned into commodities. Well, animals are worked to death for entertainment and farming, sexually assaulted by workers for artificial insemination, murdered by the billions and, as the victims of the Nazis were used, they are turned into seats, coats, shoes, burgers, cosmetics and other useless, anthropocentric products.
Forget about the differences on the outside, all these victims are subjugated because they can be. The same, sick arguments were used to justify the Nazi death camps,
Slave trade, Khmer Rogue regime and the infamous Unit 731 as are used today to justify our equivalents.
The species may be different but the sheer terror unleashed is still wrong.
Changing for the better
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”
It may seem like changing anything in this sytem of oppression and torture is impossible. But it’s not. The companies and the mega-corporations do it for profit, so logically if there is no profit to be made they wont carry on. How so they lose profit? Simple, stop buying from them. Use mock ‘meats’, soya milk, non animal tested cosmetics and household products, don’t go to a zoo, shop that sells fur, circus that uses animals etc.
It may seem to dificult to to do these but in reality it’s very easy once you know how.
You can get your ‘meats’ from health food shops, independent grocers and cooperatives and even supermarkets. Soya milk and egg replacers are easy to get hold of in ‘free-from’ sections and non animal tested products are very easy to get hold of, it may not be the top brand but if there’s blood on your hands change your brands. For more information contact your local animal rights group to talk to people or a national one for information packs (Animal Aid are wonderful for free info packs in the UK).
The transition method is up to you. Wether you will go vegan straight away, or slowly phase out things one-by-one. Just remember you are making a change, their lives are in your hands.
Once you get more info join the national organisation and protest with the local one!
A final word
“Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored”
By the time you have read the end of this sentence five animal’s will have died for their fur to be worn like a luxury, six will have died in EU laboratories for ‘research’, hundreds will have died for their flesh and countless animals will have been tortured for ‘fun’. The out-dated, dangerous and, quite frankly, callous to the extreme methods are out there. So are the alternatives. Their lives now dangle in your hands.
What will you do?
_________________
****************************************
Here's an essay I wrote at school. I must be good as I got a 7b, which is way above what anybody in my year should get! (Actually it's what most year 9's and 10's strive for, I'm in year 8 ).
Animal Rights
Introduction
Do animals have rights? Do they deserve them? One of the greatest philosophical questions of our time, going back to Jeremy Bentham and the infamous quote “The question is not can they talk nor can they reason but can they suffer?”
Cruelty-free convictions have been around since the dawn of civilisation.
In this essay I will discuss the issues surrounding the aforementioned quote: The use and abuse of animals, the reasons for this, how it cannot be justified and how to start helping animals.
The statistics are incomprehensible, the animals defenceless and the abuse callous and utterly nightmarish at best. Sentient beings are treated as nothing more than machines.
They are murdered, tortured, drowned, starved, raped, mutilated, asphyxiated, skinned alive, experimented upon, electrocuted, abliterated, gassed, bled to death and put through unimaginable horros in endless prison cells, factory farms, laboratories, fur farms and other big industries.
There are five main types of abuse: Food, Entertainment, Clothing, Experimentation and Other Exploitation. Other than by the occasional psychopathic-sadist this abuse is permitted by law, imbedded in our dark history and even encouraged.
These crimes of humanity are commited by pseudo-interllectual Joesef Mengele clones, heartless hunters, faceless workers, twisted farmers and emotionless low-lifes. Generally the only reason for this unspeakable torture is a five letter word beginning with ‘M’ and ending in ‘Y’. I see blood on the hands of the ‘Dominant Species’.
Justifying callousness
“Cockfighting was illegal in Oklahoma until 1963, when a judge ruled that chickens are not animals and therefore unprotected by anticruelty laws.”
Most abusers will tell you of how they are proud of their work, business and livlihoods. How they are the ‘dominant species’, top of the food chain and superior to animals.
The first argument says that since human beings are the ‘dominant species’ of this Earth they have the right to rule over all other animals. Human beings, they say, are more intelligent, due to our advanced cognitive abilities and enlarged cerebal cortex, so therefore animals are inferior and it is justified to exploit them for our own benefit.
This is related to the evolutionary argument about being the ‘top of the food chain’ where humans beings are seen as superior to non-human beings because we ‘fought our way to the top of the food chain’ and have no natural predators. This is used with the ‘animals eat animals, why can’t we?’ argument where people relate their abuse and exploitation of animals to the consumption of prey by predators in the wild. The said arguments are commonly cited by abusers and are summerised in the view that because we are stronger, bigger and more intelligent than animals we have the right to use them to our own advantage.
The above arguments are anthropocentric and speciseist. Speciesism is a term used by philosophers and animal activists to describe the prejudice synonomous with animal abuse.Isaac Bashevis Singer called it the most extreme form of racism. Just as racism is ethnocentric, specieism is anthropocentric. They are closely related, it’s well known that people who kill and torture animals rarely stop there. The link has been made many times between animal abusers and murderers, paedophiles, rapists etc. As Bradley Millar put it “Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.” To prevent these crimes we must stop them at the root.
The ‘dominant species’ argument falls down in the simple fact that the same people who preach that we are better than animals resort to the, scientifically speaking, inferior cerebral cortexes of the said animals. With this logic at heart, it is justified for rape, murder and infanticide to be common among society as this happens among some animals (there are evil animals as there are evil people).
The evolutionary argument, ‘top of the food chain’ as it goes states that because ‘man fought his way to the top of the food chain he deserves the right to rule over all others’ (this argument is generally sexist the uses of the words ‘man’, ‘his’, ‘he’ show an arrogant prejudice, sexism and specieism are very alike which explains the large presence of feminists in the AR movement). This argument lacks any morals and logically, of followed through, justifies every taboo practice imaginable it is ‘might makes right’.
From a scientific standpoint humans are not carnivores but rather omnivores. We used to live of berries, fruits, nuts and occasional lean ‘game’ meats (which we hunted, that’s not driving to Tesco). We possess a long digestive tract, a feature not in found in natural predators and teeth better suited to munch through plants than raw meat. The aforementioned lengthy digestive tract naturally means that food stays in the body longer, this way the healthy, nutritious foods can be sucked-dry of all nutrition. Paradoxically, this means that the not-so-healthy carcinogenic properties of meat can be dumped into the body. It’s no coincidence that people who follow vegetarian/vegan diet live longer, healthier lives and that the rate of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and many other diseases and problems is significantly lower in said people. There are lots of disgusting and dangerous facts about the consumption of animal products here’s an example, whilst an animal is alive the putrefactive bacteria in his or her digestive system are trapped there, once that animal has died those poisonous entities saturate the flesh. Over 70% of beef and 98% of chicken contains fecal matter and putrefactive bacteria. Oh yummy.
Another argument used by the abusers and follows is that it’s vital to the economy and should the industries be shut down jobs will be lost, families will starve, shares will collapse etc. The same was said about the slave trade and the analogy has been made before between the death-industries. Innocent, defenseless beings (be they human or not) are subjugated for profit and self-centered desires. Whether that is the momentary ‘taste-sensation’ of a rotting carcass or the great smell of easy cash from slaves. Another analogy is the Nazi concentration camps and their modern day equivalents. The Jewish, Homosexual, Gypsies, Outcasts and other ‘un-desirables’ were worked to death, raped, murdered and turned into commodities. Well, animals are worked to death for entertainment and farming, sexually assaulted by workers for artificial insemination, murdered by the billions and, as the victims of the Nazis were used, they are turned into seats, coats, shoes, burgers, cosmetics and other useless, anthropocentric products.
Forget about the differences on the outside, all these victims are subjugated because they can be. The same, sick arguments were used to justify the Nazi death camps,
Slave trade, Khmer Rogue regime and the infamous Unit 731 as are used today to justify our equivalents.
The species may be different but the sheer terror unleashed is still wrong.
Changing for the better
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”
It may seem like changing anything in this sytem of oppression and torture is impossible. But it’s not. The companies and the mega-corporations do it for profit, so logically if there is no profit to be made they wont carry on. How so they lose profit? Simple, stop buying from them. Use mock ‘meats’, soya milk, non animal tested cosmetics and household products, don’t go to a zoo, shop that sells fur, circus that uses animals etc.
It may seem to dificult to to do these but in reality it’s very easy once you know how.
You can get your ‘meats’ from health food shops, independent grocers and cooperatives and even supermarkets. Soya milk and egg replacers are easy to get hold of in ‘free-from’ sections and non animal tested products are very easy to get hold of, it may not be the top brand but if there’s blood on your hands change your brands. For more information contact your local animal rights group to talk to people or a national one for information packs (Animal Aid are wonderful for free info packs in the UK).
The transition method is up to you. Wether you will go vegan straight away, or slowly phase out things one-by-one. Just remember you are making a change, their lives are in your hands.
Once you get more info join the national organisation and protest with the local one!
A final word
“Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored”
By the time you have read the end of this sentence five animal’s will have died for their fur to be worn like a luxury, six will have died in EU laboratories for ‘research’, hundreds will have died for their flesh and countless animals will have been tortured for ‘fun’. The out-dated, dangerous and, quite frankly, callous to the extreme methods are out there. So are the alternatives. Their lives now dangle in your hands.
What will you do?
_________________