Why do we not apply human ethics and morality to other animals?
Please think about it. We slaughter animals for sport and for food, the way these animals are treated is inhumane.
Most commonly I’ve gotten the excuse that we treat them like this because they act wildly on their own. This is true, but we should not lower ourselves to their standards. And another excuse is because they are not smart enough. Well, what separates them from mentally retarded children then? If intelligence is the factor, how smart do you have to be?
And people who say this often turn around and say people who exploit and mistreat other humans of lower intelligence are unjust and immoral. But why, to the elites you may just look like breakfast.
Generally speaking, moral values are most stringent for yourself; then people around you / close to you; then people more distant, etc. In other words: in general, people believe that the welfare of those closest to them is the most valuable.
For example: most people believe that their own economic well-being is more important than that of others, and so will compete for a better job rather than cede a better job to one of their competitors out of concern for that person’s economic well-being that is above one’s own. When competing for a job, most people place their own well-being first.
The same is true of sports: generally speaking, a sports fan considers the record of their local (favored) sports team to be more important than that of any alternate team, and so will root for their favored team.
The same is true of nations: a person of a nation considers the safety and welfare of people of that nation to be more important than the safety and welfare of the people of a other nations, and so will support military actions in defense of their nation and will desire that the soldiers of their own nation are victorious over soldiers of the enemy nation, or will support economic policies that benefit their own nation at the expense of the economic advantage of other nations.
So a person’s moral values are much like the ripples made by throwing a stone in a pond: highest and most dear near to the person (the stone), less valuable and less dear the farther away from the person. For this reason, people generally morally value the lives of people above the lives of all other creatures. People believe that people adult should have the right to mate – but not pets, who are routinely "fixed". People believe that people should have the right to freedom from slavery – but not work animals, who are forced by indoctrination and pain and food to work at the whim of people. Etc.
In other words, most people consider people to be more important and more worthy and more valuable – from a moral standpoint – than any other species on the planet. It is actually a quite natural outlook, as described above: the well-being of one’s "own" people is always more important than that of others (self more important than immediate family; immediate family more important than extended family; extended family more important than city; city more important than state; state more important than nation; nation more important than world; humanity more important than other species; etc. etc.)
Jim, http://www.bible-reviews.com/
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