Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee
It gets a bit weird for me though how humans basically just categorize different species essentially based on how cute they are and then in some instances seem to prioritize them above humans. It’s actually super weird when you think about it.
Shooting ducks and hunting deer? AOK! Grizzly bear shot? The horror, because look at how beautiful they are? Weird. Step on ants? Who cares! Rats? They’re gross! Pheasants? Shoot ‘em up!
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That’s why I offered the caveat of butchering the bear earlier, because while different cultures place different animals in different places on the arbitrary value order, the general rule seems to be that if you want to eat it or use it to survive you can kill it.
The western cultural animal valuation seems to mirror the same values we like in each other. Smarter, more attractive, more powerful animals at the top, dumb, ugly, weak ones at the bottom. People (most) don’t walk through the meat aisle thinking “tragedy, tragedy, tragedy,” nor do they swat a fly and think the same. Animals that didn’t do anything to us but annoy us at best, but need to die so we’re less annoyed or to feed our insane level of animal consumption. But we have to kill a bear because it killed some people and somehow that is a tragedy.