--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 013
+title: On the rights of animals
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+date: December 1, 2013
+tags: cogitatio
+---
+
+**Ante scriptum**: <em>In the last twenty years there have been numerous brief
+yet heated debates on the stray dogs living in Romanian towns. NGOs argue that
+euthanasia, a now traditional practice for the "humane" ending of animal life
+in the so-called "civilized" countries, is not to be used on dogs which they
+claim to be owned by the community, as they have as much a right to live as
+anyone; not to mention other rights. There's nothing peculiar about that, as
+Romania is a young democracy and has a lot to learn on a variety of matters.
+Such a recent event has led me to write this article on the more general
+subject of animal rights, although I believe that the subject is or should have
+been exhausted decades ago by thinkers.
+
+That being said, there is a clarification to be made: it is clear that humans
+are animals. However, for the purpose of succintness, in this post I will refer
+to the set of animals as that of animals excepting humans, since human rights
+are a whole different story.</em>
+
+Thus it has been, and thus it is, and thus it shall be: the rules governing
+life on Earth are set by evolution. It is not entirely clear what evolution
+means, or rather it's perfectly clear that it is, and we can see it happening
+even though we can't, only we have little to no idea what its rules, or its
+algorithm, or its mathematical equation is. We -- that is we, humans -- however
+have a grasp of its nature, and it is this: life flows through nature,
+therefore life exists and grows by consuming life, which in itself also implies
+death. Thus it has been, and thus it is, and thus it shall be.
+
+From this, a variety of concepts emerge, of which those of competition and
+[fitness][1] are more relevant to us. It is clear that, given finite resources,
+life competes with other life for the propagation through time, or survival, as
+they call it[^1]. It is also clear that in an event or series of events that we
+describe as a competition, there are always one winner and one or more losers;
+by comparing the winner and the loser(s), we say that the winner is "more fit"
+than the loser(s), therefore we can start by establishing something such as a
+preorder relation on the set of competitors and go as far as describing fitness
+as a mathematical function.
+
+## Beasts, humans and the food chain
+
+Thus life's (natural) history on Earth has been fraught with killings. Animals
+killed plants by eating them[^2]; animals killed other animals by eating them;
+microbes killed other life forms by infecting them, and so on and so forth.
+Unfortunately, and at the same time fortunately, life could not exist without
+such consumption. They could not just live together as one big, happy family.
+
+From all this, the so-called food chain was established. It is improperly
+called a chain, since this is a circular structure which can be represented in
+many dimensions.
+
+At some point in time, somewhere in this food chain arose humans; an atypical
+species, since their brains amassed so much complexity that they began focusing
+less on adapting themselves to nature and more on adapting nature to their own
+liking, and by nature I mean both living and non-living things. We became so
+efficient that, for example, we managed to cut entire woods so that we could
+build a village, or took a wild plant and genetically engineered it[^3] to make
+it edible.
+
+What's more interesting is that we managed to change more "superior" life too.
+We exploited the habits of other animals and, by using our own superior
+intelligence and resources, made them non-violent, to use them either for
+defending ourselves or for food. And this only helped us pursue our quest for
+comfort and intelligence further. I doubt that we ever knew exactly where we
+were going; fortunately, we arrived somewhere.
+
+Dogs can be found among all these domesticated animals. Some human cultures
+used them as food, yet most of them used them for defense against other animals
+such as dogs' evolutionary ancestors, the wolves. I will take this example
+further in the following section, however without sacrificing the generalness
+of my argument.
+
+## Dogs, nowadays
+
+Nowadays, dogs maintain their status of home defense animals within human
+communities, just as cats maintain their status of mouse killers, just as pigs,
+cows and chickens maintain their status of good food[^4]. In urban
+environments, dogs and cats are also used as "company" animals, which is kind
+of natural, since dogs have developed a good sense of empathy towards humans.
+
+Simple-minded humans have also developed a monstruous sense of empathy towards
+their company animals, most probably due to a lack of purely human emotional
+intelligence. Of course, there's nothing wrong with empathizing with other
+beings, since that's one of the things that makes humans "superior"; however,
+it's unethical, immoral, counterproductive and call-it-what-you-like to
+empathize with other beings in the detriment of your own. Surely, we like to
+own dogs, but we usually put them down when they get old and sick, whether or
+not we like it; it is, after all, the "humane" thing to do.
+
+Thus dogs are, like they have always been, nothing but tools, serving humans
+like they always have. To claim otherwise denotes either hypocrisy, or what
+Americans like to call a "personality disorder", which automagically
+disqualifies the arguing person as an informed debater on the subject.
+
+Thus dogs have no rights. By extension, animals have no rights.
+
+## Post scriptum
+
+It's absurd, no, in fact it's outrageous to claim that "it was the child's own
+fault" or "the old lady's fault" for him being killed by stray dogs. I don't
+think I'd be able to say such things while on LSD, let alone on a normal day.
+In a sane world, the NGOs defending that statement should be expelled from
+society.
+
+Stray dogs are an inconvenience to any so-called "civilized" society. Romanian
+folks tolerate them more out of laziness and their own self-imposed inability
+to do something[^5] rather than out of their love for these animals. Whether
+dead or alive, stray dogs shouldn't exist, for everyone's (including their own)
+sake. If euthanasia is a more efficient solution, then I, as a Romanian
+citizen, am for it.
+
+[^1]: And by "life", I mean "life forms" or "living things". The only purpose
+of this shortening is to make it easier for me to express myself, not
+necessarily for you to understand. But you will, if you take the time and
+patience.
+
+[^2]: That is, fundamentally, why the Buddhist conception of "respecting all
+life" doesn't work. They refer in fact to animal life, when plants and fungi
+and bacteria and other domains and kingdoms of life deserve as much respect as
+any other, right? But they can't get as much respect, because such is the
+nature of life and it cannot be changed, lest that change brought by
+extinction of all life.
+
+[^3]: Cross-breeding is a kind of genetical engineering, why wouldn't it be?
+
+[^4]: Although the "non-civilized" Chinese do eat food made out of dogs, not to
+mention the high-quality gloves they can make out of dog skin. Note that if we
+look at it from a purely *democratical* point of view, the Chinese are superior
+in numbers to all the countries on the globe. Good thing they're not living in
+a democracy, eh?
+
+[^5]: It's a communist thing. It's hard to understand the phenomenon if you
+haven't lived through it.
+
+[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_function
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff