Month: January 2019

Yes, our limitless creativity in inventing and executing moral abominations will go on.

But what has to stop is the needless, heartless hurting and killing of innocent, feeling, suffering victims just to satisfy our tastes in foods, fashions and entertainment that are essential for neither our survival nor our health.

And that is the overwhelming majority of the moral abominations and suffering on the planet today (and perhaps the impetus and inspiration for all the rest):

As to waiting and gradualism. I can wait to stop smoking, because there the only one I am hurting is myself. But if I treat my meat-eating, fur-wearing and bull-fighting habits the same way, it is like leaving my neighbor under whip and chains while I contemplate whether I’m ready to give them up.

It’s often said that it is not religious principles that are at fault but their practice (or rather their non-practice).

On dit souvent que ce n’est pas les principes religieux qui sont fautifs mais leurs pratiques (ou plutôt leurs non-pratiques).

Although that already makes me somewhat uneasy, calling to mind the slogan of the US National Rifle Association (“Guns Don’t Kill, People Do”), I’d say that with the religious principles on the treatment of animals — unlike the principles on the treatment of humans — it is the utilitarianism and permissiveness of Judeo-Christianity that I find horrifying.

Bien que ça m’inquiète déjà un peu, faisant penser aux dictons de la National Rifle Association américaine (“Guns don’t kill, people do”), je dirais qu’avec les principes religieux pour le traitement des animaux — contrairement aux principes pour le traitement des humains — l’utilitarisme et la permissivité du judéo-christianisme m’horrifient.

My non-belief is empirical, based on the observable, objective facts. But I have to say that even if there were empirical evidence for the truth of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, I would never, ever become a practitioner. Instead of being an atheist I would then be an anti-theist, not just because of the treatment of animals approved by an omnipotent deity but also because of the treatment of humans — not approved, but not prevented either — in the name of a divine game, capricious and psychopathic, called “free will,” which would not only be immoral, but the apotheosis of immorality (rather like breeding pit bulls so as to watch them fight it out).

Mon incroyance est empirique: Elle est basée sur l’ensemble des faits observables et objectifs. Mais j’avoue que même s’il y avait des preuves empiriques de la vérité des écrits saints judéo-chrétiens, je ne serais jamais, jamais adhérent. Au lieu d’être athée je serais alors anti-thée, non seulement à cause du traitement des animaux approuvé par une déité omnipotente, mais à cause du traitement des humains aussi — non-approuvé, mais non-prévenue non plus — au nom d’un jeu divin, capricieux et psychopathe, intitulé le « libre arbitre », qui serait non seulement immoral mais l’apothéose de l’immoralité (comme élever les pitbull pour s’amuser à les voir combattre).

(On the other hand, I would immediately become a faithful follower of any creed that really did put an end to the horrors.)

(Par contre, je serais adhérent fidèle de n’importe quel culte qui mettait fin aux horreurs pour de vrai.)

I did not read the entire exchange entitled “The Limits of Discourse As Demonstrated by Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky” verbatim, but I read equal portions on both sides.

Professor Chomsky was indeed rather impatient, as Sam Harris notes, yet on matters of substance he was quite to the point. Harris was concerned about erroneous judgments he thought Chomsky had made about him and his views; Chomsky was concerned with errors of substance (not “misreadings”) and agreed to try to sort them out in a private exchange with Harris. Harris was evidently from the outset aiming for a public exchange, for their respective “readers.” Chomsky is remarkably generous in private, one-on-one communication, but he is clearly impatient with grandstanding (exhibitionism), as he notes. And although Chomsky notably neither expects nor demands it, it is evident to an onlooker that Harris did not show him the respect that he has most assuredly earned, if anyone has. Harris seems to think the exchange makes Chomsky look bad; perhaps that was Harris’s intention. I think the exchange makes Harris look extremely bad.

Chomsky’s main point, as is often the case, is that defenders of power often overlook or minimize the wrong done by their side, reckoning only the wrongs done by their enemies. And that the Western powers often inflict a far greater scale of carnage than their enemies. All this without reference to who is in the right or the wrong, nor what their intentions — actual or avowed — are. Chomsky is uncannily skillful in detecting and providing evidence of these double standards and imbalances, and the moral blindness they represent. Harris does not seem to show understanding of that, nor the motivation to discuss it head on. He seems too concerned about Chomsky’s having done him wrong (whereas it’s Harris who wrote a not too courteous critique of Chomsky, not Chomsky of Harris: “Leftist Unreason and the Strange Case of Noam Chomsky“).

Harris’s is not an unusual reaction toward someone of the intellectual and moral stature of Professor Chomsky. See “Chomsky’s Universe”

Despite Chomsky’s generosity with his time, this was yet another opportunity missed.

(I do not, by the way, think that benign intentions are irrelevant, and that only quantity of carnage caused counts; but I don’t think Chomsky thinks that either… He’s right, too, that self-righteous nationalism can be every bit as monstrous as any other creed or credo.)

Plutôt réaliste que sexiste

C’est plutôt réaliste que sexiste
D’admettre que les horreurs
Sont plus dues aux testoïdes
Qu’à la trypsine

More Realist Than Sexist

It”s more realist than sexist
To admit that the horrors
Are due more to testoids
Than trypsin

From the heartless streets
of Tel Aviv
you found haven
in Becky’s heart.

Bound for Toronto,
but a murmur of doubt
from your own heart,
so ravaged by its outcast past.

Now it’s cheated you
of all but the first 7 days
of your would-be
forever home.

knargles2.mov

Filming instead of rescuing is despicable. How many of those hasardous moments that end well end ill (so never make it to WIMP)? — and we just keep filming, for fun, without regret, without remorse, without shame?

Images and evidence of atrocities are extremely important to sensitize people, but to film when one could intervene to help the victim is unpardonable.

De filmer au lieu de venir à la rescousse est odieux: Combien de ces moments hasardeux qui terminent bien terminent mal (donc ne paraissent jamais sur WIMP, etc.)? — puis on continue à filmer, à s’amuser, sans soucis, sans regrets, sans remords, sans vergogne…

Les images et preuves d’atrocités sont extrêmement importantes pour sensibiliser les gens, mais de filmer quand on pourrait intervenir pour aider la victime est impardonnable.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=n4tgkyUBkbY

One way trip to Mars
No return
No provision for aging or medical problems
No test of sustainability (though I certainly don’t want them to try it first with animals!)
Huge cost
No point in doing it at all

And all those resources utterly wasted at a time when there are so many problems on earth that need them.

Companies making their charity contributions to create the “World’s biggest media event ever” rather than to remedy the worst humanitarian, environmental, social and geopolitical disasters ever…

It may be potentially “fun” the way joining ISIS is (and deciding to do it no doubt involves a similar depth of reflection, as the three people in the video sample with the Onuzu article illustrate):

Chibundu Onuzuis right on every point:

It’s Reality TV for the Me generation and the Lost.

It’s based on superficial, empty, pop hype stereotypes, kleped “science” or “progress.”

And for people who think they are seeking the “meaning of life”: that’s really much simpler and closer than they think, but they are actually only thinking of themselves.

(Nobel Laureate Gerard t’Hooft seems to have gone senile, venal or loco…)

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows the following results about attitudes toward animal research:

“The general public is closely divided when it comes to the use of animals in research. Some 47% favor and a nearly equal share (50%) oppose animal research. Support for the use of animals in research is down slightly from 52% in 2009. By contrast, there is strong consensus among AAAS scientists for the use of animals in research (89% to 9%). Among the general public, men and women differ strongly in their views about animal research. Six-in-ten men favor the use of animal research. By contrast, 35% of women favor animal research while 62% oppose it. College graduates, especially those who studied science in college, tend to express more support than do those with less education for using animals in scientific research.”

Of course opinion and attitude polls are useful, but they cannot be decisive for, say, public health questions.

It’s good to hear that people’s attitudes on animal research are negative, but it would take so little to destroy completely the credibility of that opinion, by pointing out that of that 50% of people who say they oppose animal research, 99% of them do not oppose the far more widespread horrors of slaughterhouses, but rather sustain them, by eating meat.

And that they do that because they think (incorrectly) that meat is necessary for their health.

And that they think (also incorrectly) that the breeding and slaughter of animals for food is done more humanely than what is done in research laboratories.

And they haven’t even asked themselves whether, while not ready to give up meat, at no cost to their own health, to protect animals from needless hurt, have they really asked themselves whether they are ready to give up any health benefits that come from animal research?

I’m an abolitionist, but most people are still fur-wearing meat-eaters. So the reason fur is a good one for activists to concentrate on first is that — unlike meat-eating, which many people still believe (wrongly) to be necessary for their health, and animal research, which many people believe (mostly wrongly) to be necessary to save lives — everyone knows that fur is not necessary for their health; nor does it save lives. So that’s the strongest entry point for awakening them to the horrors they are supporting and sustaining for no vital reason. Once they see that, then the next step is the evidence that meat is not necessary for their health. And after that, the evidence that much (though not all) animal research is just curiosity- or career-driven, not life-saving. There’s no way to get most people to see all of that at once.