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Sex With Animals; Legality Of.

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neverborn

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I'm curious as to what the consequences would be for 'interfering' with another person's animal in a society based on Objectivism, and also what the consequences actually are nowadays.

And while we're on the subject of weird sexual practises, what about necrophiliacs? Would they be permitted to do what they do as long as they have the property rights to the graves of their uh... partners?

This would lead to a "Don't f*** my grandma"-T-shirt. :(

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I wonder what David Odden has to say to this. :D
I have the normal instant reaction: revulsion, horror, empathy. I can't recall if The Sun also ran stories about Martian vampire babies attacking the Empire State Building. Meaning: it ain't The London Times. For yucks, let's assume that this story is real and not somebody going off the deep end over a sad accident where the dog stuck his nose where it didn't belong. Now, I have done something sort of analogous, myself: I have used live herring as bait when fishing for salmon. Once you get past the emotional impact of using cute cuddley puppies as bait vs. using cute cuddley herring as bait, I don't see this as a wrong, in any sense. It certainly falls in the category of "benefits mankind", or at least particular people. FYI, fishing for shark as a means of survival is common on the East Africa end of the Indian Ocean, where Reunion is. I'm pretty sure I couldn't bring myself to use a hound, even a stray, as bait if I were fishing for shark; but then, I don't live in Reunion, so I don't know how easy it is go find politically correct shark bait. But there isn't any rights violation going on there.
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David Odden's remarks reminds me of a George Carlin quote

"have you ever been to one of those restuarants where they have the tank where you can pick which lobster is going to be boiled alive? I mean, you can't boil puppies alive, because puppies are cute. But lobsters look like science fiction monsters, so it's ok. I think they should give the lobsters cute names. I defy anyone to drop a creature named "fluffy" into a vat of boiling water"

:D

this is one of those extremely emotional issues that people have. For most, the idea of living in a society where people are legally free to torture animals is incredulous, which is an incredulousness that "social ostracism" is not a valid recourse for torturers.

I don't think about it, to be honest. I live my life rationally, which includes not torturing animals... or sleeping with them for that matter... :/

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Once you get past the emotional impact of using cute cuddley puppies as bait vs. using cute cuddley herring as bait, I don't see this as a wrong, in any sense.

I think the big difference between the two is their level of consciousness. A herring is a pretty stupid creature with a very limited level of conscious awareness. Obviously when you put a fish hook through it, its nerves have an immediate reaction - but whether or not it has a consciousness advanced enough to be actually aware that it is in pain is, I suspect, quite questionable (I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to know for sure one way or another).

On the other hand, anyone who has had and loved a dog or cat knows that they are very intelligent creatures and are very much aware of what is happening when they suffer. They are also capable of having emotions - or, if anyone objects to that on technical grounds, I will cover myself that they possess something that is very easy and appropriate to anthropomorphize into emotions. I have heard of cases where a dog owner has died and the dog went into mourning to such a degree that it stopped eating and eventually died itself. There is a reason that people develop a bond with their dogs and cats that they cannot develop with their goldfish or pet snakes. Over the past several years, I have had to put 3 of my cats to sleep. It was very painful each time and I still miss them despite the fact that I currently have three wonderful cats. I could never feel that way about a fish.

Now, I don't have a problem with using animals to benefit humans. I eat meat and I wear leather. I am all for using animals for medical research in order to enhance and prolong human life (and the life of our pets, as well, by the way). But there are ways of doing all these things so that it minimizes any needless suffering on the part of the animal - and the people who work with such animals for a living are often the very first to recognize this fact. To put a higher animal through needless pain and watch it suffer in the name of sport - I consider that to be quite depraved, actually.

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To put a higher animal through needless pain and watch it suffer in the name of sport - I consider that to be quite depraved, actually.
I take it you're utterly opposed to cock and bull fighting. This potentially raises questions about taking dogs hunting or camping, which you can say something about if you're interested. Anyhow, we also need to remember the context of the supposed dog-fishing incident: I know that big-game fishing in the US is usually for sport, but this would have been fishing for food -- basic existence.
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I take it you're utterly opposed to cock and bull fighting.

I don't think they should be illegal or anything. So in that sense, I am not opposed to either.

I don't have an opinion as to whether cock fighting is cruel. My understanding is that the birds are pretty stupid creatures. But I do seriously question the sense-of-life and possibly the psychology of someone who would get a kick out of watching two helpless and frightened creatures going after and senselessly destroying each other to the death. What is the point, exactly?

As to bull fighting, I don't know enough about what goes on to have an opinion as to how cruel it is. But I can at least understand why a person might find the sport interesting to watch.

This potentially raises questions about taking dogs hunting or camping, which you can say something about if you're interested.
Are you kidding? Most dogs would LOVE to go hunting or camping. Perhaps Fifi The Neurotic French Poodle might not like it - but most dogs would find themselves in their element.

Anyhow, we also need to remember the context of the supposed dog-fishing incident: I know that big-game fishing in the US is usually for sport, but this would have been fishing for food -- basic existence.

Was it? Was it some local primitive tribe or something that was doing it? I don't recall the article saying. Was it in some place where the locals had no alternatives but to get their food from the wild? If this were merely a long traditional proactice of a remote region, I somehow rather doubt that it would be considered newsworthy. For example, in some parts of the world, it is considered a gourmet experience to have a live monkey brought to a special table with a hole through which the monkey's head is placed. The monkey's skull is then cracked and opened and people begin eating the contents. I don't know to what degree the monkey suffers - but most people in the West would find it to be incredibly gross. But since that practice has been going on for a long time, it rarely makes the news.

When I was a kid, one of the very few occasions when I wanted to "be like everyone else" centered around hunting. I had never been hunting. But most of the other kids I went to school with went regularly. I thought it sounded like such a cool thing to do. My father grew up in a rural area so when he was a kid he went hunting a lot. But I could never talk him into doing it as an adult and taking me along. I did go fishing quite a lot when I was a kid and really enjoyed it. I butchered and ate all the fish I caught and thought nothing of it. As an adult, I, of course, can go hunting anytime I want - and I have approximately zero desire to do so. If I were hungry and that was my only way to get food, I wouldn't have a problem with doing what was necessary. But I am not starving and can get whatever food I need from the grocery store - so for me to go hunting, even if I ate what I caught, it would be nothing more than sport. I don't have a problem with people doing it as a sport and I can understand why people enjoy it in a way similar to the way I enjoyed fishing. But I would get no pleasure from killing and watching some animal die. Since I do eat meat and wear leather, I, of course, am essentially participating in such killing by proxy. But when I eat a pizza, I don't think, "gee, I am about to ingest pieces of dead bulls and pigs." Growing up in an urban area, I am about as far removed in terms of experience from what goes into a sausage as I am from knowing how the processor in my PC was made and how it works. I turn on my PC and it enables me to do all sorts of neat things. I order a slice of pizza and it has all sorts of little tidbits on it that taste good. People who grew up in a similar context as I did in this regard tend to have a certain level of ignorance and squeamishness that would have been regarded as quite bizarre in earlier eras when people lived "closer to nature." And it is this ignorance and squeamishness that the animal rights crowd clearly seeks to exploit as part of spreading their evil anti-human agenda.

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Was it? Was it some local primitive tribe or something that was doing it?
Man only moved to Reunion a couple of hundred years ago, and it has been used as a prison colony and a stopover point for voyages in the Indian Ocean until the Suez Canal was opened, at which point the reason for people living on the island became pretty much nonexistent. It was populated by various African, Chinese, Malay and Indian laborers -- you can decide if they are primitives.

The facts surrounding this issue are pretty much unknown. The Sun is not one of the most reputable papers in the business, so we can't know if this was a staged hoax, staged either by the paper for its sensationalist value, or staged by anti-human terrorists who would prefer to ban all shark fishing and eliminate humans from the planet. It is also far from certain that live dogs are used as bait (and I suspect that dead dog gives off more sulfurous stink that could attract sharks). Thus the whole discussion is hypothetical in extremis. As for the ease of life on the island, I don't really know. Sugar and shark are apparently their only two significant sources of cash for islanders at this point. Shark would thus be about the only practical cash crop for a person living at the margins of the economy.

On the third hand, as a department of France, perhaps the French State will pillage the wealth of those living in real France, in order to improve the life of their Reunionaise bretheren. There's probably an EU law that requires them to do so.

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On the third hand, as a department of France, perhaps the French State will pillage the wealth of those living in real France, in order to improve the life of their Reunionaise bretheren. There's probably an EU law that requires them to do so.

Hmmmm. Did you hear that the French government recently banned the firework show that EuroDisney held every night at its park in Paris? You see, not far from the park is a French Army barracks and every time the fireworks went off, the soldiers came outside and tried to surrender!

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