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News Bribery scandal sparks animal welfare debate

Fortunately we don't have to do our homework when others have. So we don't need to debate what Gandhi meant with regards to something he didn't actually say.

Mahatma Gandhi Hoax Quote Greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way that its animals are treated

N.B. The following text in this blog-post Mahatma Gandhi Hoax Quote Greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way that its animals are treated is Copyright © 2013 Philip Joh…
animalsmattertogod.com
 
mdchachi said:
Fortunately we don't have to do our homework when others have. So we don't need to debate what Gandhi meant with regards to something he didn't actually say.
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Thanks for the enlightenment! So even if not based on the authority of Gandi, it still holds true. Posterity will judge us by the way we treated animals and the environment. (Not to mention how we treat each other.)



The "Nutshell" videos ("Kurzgesagt" in their original German title) are all animated, fact-based (with tons of references and links), and aimed at children. Whoever gets radicalised by science, facts, and logic (and topics like astronomy, medicine and biology, futurism, anthropology, and philosophy) should seek medical attention.
 
Hey Thomas

Can't have it both ways.

When you use a purported quote from Gandhi because of the moral authority he brings, it is not really about "truth", but a moral claim.

So even if not based on the authority of Gandi, it still holds true.

I do not know if it was "true" even when attribute to him.

Cheers
 
tomoni said:
Can't have it both ways. When you use a purported quote from Gandhi because of the moral authority he brings, it is not really about "truth", but a moral claim. I do not know if it was "true" even when attribute to him.
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Fair enough. Let me rephrase:

I claim that future generations will hold us responsible for the industrial carnage committed in abattoirs and the blatant disregard for the life and the welfare of other sentient beings.

You can quote that.
 


The Wall Street newspaper seem to know who the major polluters are. And we know if you see it on the internet , it must be true , LOL.
 
thomas said:
Fair enough. Let me rephrase:

I claim that future generations will hold us responsible for the industrial carnage committed in abattoirs and the blatant disregard for the life and the welfare of other sentient beings.
Click to expand...
End quote.

Haha. Fair enough.
 
thomas said:
Fair enough. Let me rephrase:

I claim that future generations will hold us responsible for the industrial carnage committed in abattoirs and the blatant disregard for the life and the welfare of other sentient beings.

You can quote that.
Click to expand...
They can try to hold us responsible but we'll be dead so they won't be successful.

 
Here's a picture I took three years ago that FB just reminded me about. Made me think of this thread. I would have much preferred one of those anti-fur protests with naked women making their point but oh well this was still interesting to come across.

 
This is an interesting topic and one I've always felt very conflicted about. Speaking generally, I love animals, and it breaks my heart to think of chickens, pigs, etc. being subject to cruelty and inhumane conditions. Going further, I could never kill an animal myself, and if (for example) there was a law that you could only eat meat you killed yourself, I would almost certainly become a vegetarian (or at least a pescatarian) overnight. Personally speaking, I love vegetarian (and vegan) dishes and I think there's some truly delicious stuff out there.

That said, I haven't given up eating meat completely, somewhat against my better conscience, in part because I enjoy good food/drink and don't want to limit my options (if I go to a famous restaurant/izakaya/whatever, I want to enjoy their specialties, and not turn down every other dish because it uses katsuo broth), and because I also do food/drink writing and translation from time to time and I feel like I need to be able to taste/enjoy things for myself to write about them.

For what very little it's probably worth, I try to tell myself I'm at least minimizing the damage by eating zero fast food (which I've never enjoyed anyway), cheaply-produced convenience store meat, etc., and limiting my consumption to ingredients we purchase ourselves, or when eating at independent restaurants where the owners are transparent about where the ingredients come from (and doing so in modest quantities, which isn't really a problem as I'm a very, very light eater).

That said, I have great respect for anyone who's made the decision to go vegetarian or vegan, particularly enlightened types like Thomas and Lothor who don't pass judgment or force their views on others. (I have less love for the militant "death to carnivores!" types )
 
Hi everyone,
I think the real questions are rather :

- Are animals sentient beings or do they feel pain?
- What are their needs (depending on their species, of course)?
- Why do we (as a species) need to benefit from another species' pain / misery / slavery?
- How come we value a human life over a non-human animal life?
- How come we simply don't respect life?
- How come we can't peacefully live among other livng beings?
- Is being a human being enough; can't we go further? Should it matter to behave as a human being (and not just be one, just because we were born a human being -- or perhaps lucky enough to be one?)
- Why does it matter to care for and love other living beings?

So basically I really don't understand the "false" debate on cute animals VS ugly animals. The 1st deserve to live and the latter don't... I don't think it's the point. If we tend to act ethical, then we should leave all animals (both humans and non-human animals) alone.

The fact remains : It's difficult to be a vegetarian (or a vegan) person since we live in a meat-eating society. Same issue when for instance you're a woman, an LGBTIQ person. It's a question of majority VS "minority"; it's a matter of "codes", conventions...
It's so easy to kill, to persecute that it's even cheaper and easier to do so than to preserve life and to save a life (have you noticed how cheap it is to buy a glue trap rather than to have access to a no-kill device)? Adopting a no-kill policy / behaviour is much more complicated, costs more and is not encouraged...

Someone mentionned fishes : Have you ever noticed that they're not even numbered (as individuals), they're numbered in tons... How many fishes are there in a ton of fish? Nobody knows, apperently... That conveys how much we disregard and just don't care about life itself...

A figure that stroke me when I learnt about that one : 20 billions. Do you know what it stands for? It's "just" the number of animals killed every year worldwide, for meat (only for meat)... That's 3 times the human population... I think it's food for thought...
 
Considering that humans don't even respect human life, it's hard to imagine getting them to give animal life much respect.
 
I know that Japan is not unique in this respect, but something badly goes wrong with the socialisation of children in Japan regarding animals.

A couple of weeks I was walking along a wide path through a park in Tokyo with lots of bicycles whizzing by. It was one of those occasional mild late winter evenings and there had been some rainfall, encouraging frogs to come out. There was a frog on this path that was vulnerable to being run over. Nearby there were a couple of girls (perhaps late teens) who kept pointing at this frog in fascinated disgust, saying kimoi! etc. I paused my walk, picked up a piece of cardboard nearby, and used it to gently manoeuvre the fog onto the soil at the edge of the path while the girls gawped, wondering what the hell the gaijin was going to the frog. As I left, I heard one of them mutter shinsetsu! to the other, so perhaps I showed them in a tiny way that animals that are not cute are worthy of kindness.

However, it was a depressing experience. I'm sure that 15 years ago those girls would have been singing along to that kaeru kids song and were probably fascinated with all forms of life. What went wrong? How did they become so repulsed by another harmless living creature? Any ideas?
 
Sorry, that's an interesting (and unfortunate) anecdote, but I don't think it's anywhere near illustrative or a universal representation of some "problem" with the socialization of Japanese children vis-a-vis animals.

I've encountered plenty of children in Western cultures who find the less cute variety of animals repulsive, and plenty of Japanese who feel fond of even traditionally repulsive or off-putting animals like insects, reptiles, etc.

I'm not sure what happened with those particular girls, but the idea that Japan/Japanese culture/Japanese people are uniquely and disturbingly heartless toward "uncute" animals is not something that really rings true with my experience.
 

Kudos for saving that little creature!

My better half would utterly disagree with the notion of frogs not being cute. I cannot tell you how many frog figurines we have scattered in our house, from 2-cm-tall versions to a half-a-metre "objet d'art".

Seriously though, as you implied, it all depends on your socialisation (urban vs rural). I have often been intrigued to witness people's reactions to insects invading their comfort zone. It took me a while to implement an insecticide ban at home. Nowadays, all creatures encountered indoors are saved and relocated, except for mosquitoes and cockroaches. Apart from that latent insectophobia, I concur with @bentenmusume that most people treat animals very kindly, an attitude that seems to be fostered at nurseries and schools.
 
Thanks for the replies but I'm going to stick with my interpretation on this one (which I'll admit entirely depends on my own experiences) - I've seen similar things too often. Another example was being on a crowded train in which a moth was fluttering around the carriage above the standing people. Every time its altitude dropped near one of the women, she flinched violently in terror, while all the men pretended not to notice anything. This went on for a few minutes. Once again, it was supergaijin to the rescue. I found something in my bag to trap the moth with and managed to do so, which received looks of pathetic gratitude from the nearby women. The moth was released unhurt but slightly shaken at Ikebukuro station. As I said, something is going wrong for people to develop such an adverse reaction to a harmless creature that they would have marvelled at as a small kid.

Thomas - cockroaches can also be saved and relocated, although they are a challenge because of their speed! I'm glad you take a similar approach to me with indoor animals though. Our house is filled with penguin-related stuff rather than frog-related stuff.

Bentenmusume - I was trying to stress this abhorrence toward uncute animals rather than heartlessness in my example - I don't think those girls were planning to do anything heartless with the frog!
 
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Hello everyone since this post or somehow revived, I have re-read through it and I would like to add the following:

I would agree that there is animal prejudice that exists which is often based on the animals' appearance. I don't know why this would be surprising to anyone since one way that prejudice manifests itself self among humans.

I would disagree that there is some sort of moral imperative not to eat meat. Recently, some research has shown that plants may have some sort of basic cognition as well rather than just reactions to light such as phototropism, or outside stimuli, such as allopathy. One might even say that there is a judgment that plant lives or somehow less worthwhile than animals lives because of a lack of cognitive activity. This is certainly a moral judgment about who deserves to live or what deserves to live. I do not want to go down the street however I just wanted to point out that the absolutism of these moralisms may fall apart under scrutiny.

I think that there is certainly something that could be done about how meat is harvested, and the damage of the meat industries to the global environment. If you want to look for a real moral argument in my opinion, that is the argument, not the effect of eating meat but the effect of humans on the rest of the global environment. Then that would really require humans to evaluate Lifestyles, sharing of resources, political activity, and so on. Sadly I don't think that's a realistic possibility.

Have a great day everyone
 
My wife behaves that way when it comes to bugs. She even hates butterflies because, after all, they are flying bugs. But she thinks frogs are cute and doesn't hesitate to pick one up. (They are good luck after all.) She handle toads as well although they are arguably less cute than frogs. She'll even catch a garter snake that may be sliding through the garden. Not to kill it but to move it out of the way from the road or lawn mower.
 
Just to conclude the original story: today, former minister of agriculture, Yoshikawa Takamori, has been found guilty of receiving bribes and received a prison term of two years and six months, suspended for four years, and a fine of 5 million JPY.


 
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