>Animals don't kill for "pleasure"?  Ever seen a cat play with a mouse for
>half an hour or so?

Besides domesticated animals please Chris.

As for gunpowder, is the tiger unfair because of its
>claws, teeth, quickness and extra strength?

You may have missed out on a previous line of questioning of mine Chris.  It
seems that many of the pro-hunting contingent (and let me digress for a
moment.  I'm not against hunting per se.  In fact one of my theories is that
every person who eats meat should have to kill their own animals.  Basically
I'm against killing to eat meat, which includes but is not limited to
hunting.  Being omnivores, we have the ability to choose a vegetarian diet.)
on this list missed it as well, or just didn't choose to answer.  The tiger
is not wrong for killing with his claws, teeth, speed and strength.
Obviously nature gave the tiger these means of finding food.  My question
was/is this:  At what level of our means of killing the animal is it not
hunting?  Hand grenades?  Missiles?  Infrared?  Machine guns?  Flame
throwers?  Biological weapons?!  Extrapolating from your analogy between
gunpowder and a tiger, you would say all of these ways are acceptable?

>Sorry, I know that is somewhat of a red herring, but I think all this
>obsession with the motivation and (by association) the morality of hunters
>has the scent of a red-tinted kipper about it as well.

So you're saying that you think there's a more real issue at hand?  What
issue would that be?

If a hunter gets a
>kick out of being a predator, couldn't this be some genetic urge, some
>deeper yearning to leave the supermarket aisles and get back to roots.  It
>doesn't mean he is bad or mean.

It's not *necessarily* mean.  And again, I'd rather see someone shoot,
clean, cook and eat a deer in his or her back yard than to see that person
buy venison in a celephane package in a supermarket.  I believe in not being
separated from nature.  I think that is the cause of much sickness and
denial in our society, much like I think Chris was aluding to.  So in some
strange ways we agree, and yet I feel there is more discord than agreement
on some issues.  I'll explore that further.

The moral issue is not death, but sadistic
>pain - and we ALL AGREE that if a person (I won't call them "hunters", to
>avoid association) takes sadistic pleasure in prolonged pain of another
>animal then any moral code will condemn him.

Yes, agreed.

But to judge the act of
>killing (and therefore hunters) is a little too precious,

I think "too precious" is a redundancy.  Precious means "excessively
refined" in Webster's.  And I think it does take an excessively refined
awareness to look upon the killing of animals as somewhat of an anachronism.

and too fraught
>with hypocrisy and myth for my blood,

What is the hypocrisy?  What is the myth?  What does your blood have to do
with it?

especially if we take a perspective
>out to the way this universe and its life support systems have been working
>for the past 4 billion odd year.

I think the universe is much older than that according to scientific
theories.

>WE ARE ANIMALS,

Please Chris, I prefer biological organism.

not purely rational automatons somehow separate and lying in
>judgement on the rest.

Not purely rational, but partly rational.  Not completely separate, but
separate in some ways.  While I don't think we have any reason to judge the
"rest" of nature, we do well to judge our own behaviour from time to time.

We don't become somehow superior if we eat meat
>substitutes and mung beans.

"Superior" is so relativistic.  How about kinder, more compassionate, and
heck, even healthier?

For what it is worth, I don't believe there are
>many hunters at all that are motivated simply by the act of "killing".  It
>is far more complex than that, and may not involve anything "rational" at
>all, because it's clouded by - I don't know - emotion, a sense of being a
>part of the world and its processes, some primeval (NOT prim-EVIL) genetic
>drive to stalk (much like a pointer who will literally quiver with emotion
>and anticipation when it senses a bird), who knows.  Trying to objectively
>rationalise (the two great myths?) why humans do what others judge
>(prejudge?) as irrational (or cruel) is always a little suspect - like an
>anthropologist who tries to describe the importance of peyote to some
people
>without undertaking the experience and cultural immersion themselves.

I think I hear what you're saying here Chris.  First of all that it's
something akin to instinctual.  And then that it's very hard to explaing
because it is an experiential matter.  I'm having the same problem in trying
to explain that animals can be truly identified with in an experiential
manner.  But anyway, back to you're point about it being an
emotional-instinctual (my interpretation) kind of thing.  Well, there are
plenty of human behaviors that are historically emotionally fulfilling and
instictually "natural" that we have outlawed in our societies.  Need I say
more?  That argument alone is insufficient.

>I don't think it is easy for anyone set apart from nature in some urban
>cocoon to EVER appreciate how ecosystems functions.

Again, agreed.  This is a problem.

I fear that my son and
>daughter will judge the Inuit who kill those "cute" harp seal pups, or the
>Maori who harvest fat fluffy muttonbird chicks, as "bad",

I'll tell you, they'd do better to judge the chicken farmers and pig farmers
that stack these animals one on top of the other in tiny little cages and
feed them all these growth hormones so that their legs break from too much
stress, ect.  Take them to that kind of farm sometime.

>If the whole of the world population grasped that then an ethical shift
>toward the environment might be a little easier.  Dare I say that most
>hunters might be a little closer than the rest?

I think both hunters and vegetarians are closer to that than the other 95%
(my estimate) of people who eat meat and buy it in the store...

Bryan H.


-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Perley <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>; [log in to unmask]
<[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, April 02, 1999 7:52 AM
Subject: RE: Enviroethics and the Problem of Suffering [was
Re:Hunting[wasRe: Utilitari


>
>L. Dangutis ([log in to unmask]) wrote
>
>
>In nature an animal does not kill for pleasure,  for example a lion kills
>out
>of nessicity also keeping nature in some state of balance. Now despite the
>argument as Bryan was trying to make. I don't think we could relate or ask
>the animal
>if it enjoys killing its pray. But the problem with a man killing for
>pleasure is man has much more gun powder then an animal. Which
>other then for laws which were implemented for the protection of animals)
>He could  have a tendancy to kill much more and quicker if he enjoyed it
>that
>much. At the level of "enjoyment" who is to say the person for enjoyment
>won't just go out and shoot 10 deer and leave them there to die. Rather
then
>a hunter who kills a deer for venisun and appreciated the fact that this
>deer
>died for
>his supper table would most likely be less likely to go out and shoot 10
>deer.
>
>Chris Perley here
>
>Animals don't kill for "pleasure"?  Ever seen a cat play with a mouse for
>half an hour or so?  As for gunpowder, is the tiger unfair because of its
>claws, teeth, quickness and extra strength?
>
>Sorry, I know that is somewhat of a red herring, but I think all this
>obsession with the motivation and (by association) the morality of hunters
>has the scent of a red-tinted kipper about it as well.  If a hunter gets a
>kick out of being a predator, couldn't this be some genetic urge, some
>deeper yearning to leave the supermarket aisles and get back to roots.  It
>doesn't mean he is bad or mean.  The moral issue is not death, but sadistic
>pain - and we ALL AGREE that if a person (I won't call them "hunters", to
>avoid association) takes sadistic pleasure in prolonged pain of another
>animal then any moral code will condemn him.  But to judge the act of
>killing (and therefore hunters) is a little too precious, and too fraught
>with hypocrisy and myth for my blood, especially if we take a perspective
>out to the way this universe and its life support systems have been working
>for the past 4 billion odd year.
>
>WE ARE ANIMALS, not purely rational automatons somehow separate and lying
in
>judgement on the rest.  We don't become somehow superior if we eat meat
>substitutes and mung beans.  For what it is worth, I don't believe there
are
>many hunters at all that are motivated simply by the act of "killing".  It
>is far more complex than that, and may not involve anything "rational" at
>all, because it's clouded by - I don't know - emotion, a sense of being a
>part of the world and its processes, some primeval (NOT prim-EVIL) genetic
>drive to stalk (much like a pointer who will literally quiver with emotion
>and anticipation when it senses a bird), who knows.  Trying to objectively
>rationalise (the two great myths?) why humans do what others judge
>(prejudge?) as irrational (or cruel) is always a little suspect - like an
>anthropologist who tries to describe the importance of peyote to some
people
>without undertaking the experience and cultural immersion themselves.
>
>I don't think it is easy for anyone set apart from nature in some urban
>cocoon to EVER appreciate how ecosystems functions.  I fear that my son and
>daughter will judge the Inuit who kill those "cute" harp seal pups, or the
>Maori who harvest fat fluffy muttonbird chicks, as "bad", especially when I
>cannot get into my daughter's room for fluffy toys!  They live in a city
and
>have never seen a horse, cow or sheep give birth (sometimes in great pain
in
>some cold wet hole) or die.  They think sheep shit is distasteful, whereas
I
>used to take great pleasure in throwing the stuff at my brother (and he at
>me!!).  They want everything to live, preferably forever and without any
>pain.  I desperately need a 100 acre wood so they can witness the hawk take
>the rabbit, or the eel pluck the duckling from the murky bottom.  Meanwhile
>I try to teach them (perhaps with futility without the intuition that only
>comes from experience) that providing life for one entity REQUIRES the
death
>of some other entity.  Life requires death (killing).  Evolution requires
>killing.  Biodiversity requires it.  Homo sapiens isn't "above" all that.
>We're part of the predation process, and rely upon it and all the other
>ecological processes, whether we want to deny it or not.
>
>If the whole of the world population grasped that then an ethical shift
>toward the environment might be a little easier.  Dare I say that most
>hunters might be a little closer than the rest?
>
>





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