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The cognitive dissonance you cite disappears completely if we accept the uncomfortable elephant in the room: we value the remaining animals far more than we val

The cognitive dissonance you cite disappears completely if we accept the uncomfortable elephant in the room: we value the remaining animals far more than we value human life. And isn't that normal when there are 7 billion of us and 30 000 of them?

skylan_q 11y ago
I'd say it isn't. How many is the right number of either of those?
- vegabook 11y ago
  The right number is the one which nature will support, and sadly, that probably means we'll push out the wildlife entirely. My point was that there is a contradiction between a) our stated desire to protect remaining wildlife, and b) our failure to master our own instincts. Our strongest instinct is survival, closely followed by resource appropriation. Both are the enemy of wildlife, yet we love wildlife. To remove the contradiction we'd have to dominate our survival instinct and reduce our own population, with all the awful moral and ethical consequences (for humans) that that would entail.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
How many humans do there need to be before I can own one and keep it in a cage (even if regulations require it to be a big cage)? I'm thinking of putting the cage on display and calling it something. Maybe a yoo. My point being, we seem to value them more in our actual interactions, but when it comes to discussing rights and laws, we still value them less. So my actual question is why do we have this discrepancy. We cry on the death of a lion more than a human, yet putting another lion in a cage for our own amusement is allowed but doing the same with a human is considered extremely wrong.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I suspect that those that cry on the death of lion are pretty much opposed to caging them (in anything smaller that a national park) as well.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    For those most opposed, I would agree. But I suspect that most of those involved in this outcry are not so opposed (they may be opposed to any caging, but they would be fine with some level of caging).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- vegabook 11y ago
  You have correctly identified the contradiction. We love animals but our instincts are even stronger. The only rational conclusion is that we are not rational creatures - we are creatures of instinctive survival/domination. Therein lies the dissonance, because we refuse the rational conclusion which would be explicitly to value human lives less than those of animals.
- VLM 11y ago
  "I'm thinking of putting the cage on display and calling it something." We call that an open office working environment. It's not very humane, but no one cares.
angrybits 11y ago
No, I value any 1 human over all 30000 remaining lions. How could you not do otherwise?
- gharial 11y ago
  Because, over the long term, a single lion is infinitely more important to the survival of our own species/planet than a single human or even several million of them.
  - wetmore 11y ago
    ...? How?
  - refurb 11y ago
    Please explain. Millions of species have gone extinct over the course of history, yet the world continues on. What is it about the loss of lions that will result in a catastrophe? I'm not saying that avoiding the extinction of a species is not a noble endeavor, I'm just questioning the impact of not doing so.
  - angrybits 11y ago
    That is total bullshit and you know it. This whole culture of self-loathing was cute at the beginning, but it's descended into absolute absurdity. You are patently out of your mind if you actually believe what you wrote. You don't, of course, but what's a little hyperbole when you're posturing for imaginary geek cred points on a website amirite?
  - Nadya 11y ago
    We could kill off nearly every other species on the planet, including many of which we have domesticated and breed for product (bees, cows, etc.) and humans would be just fine. The only sad thing about a species going extinct is it is one less species for us to study and learn from. It's a drastic loss for science and the only hypothetical loss for people at large is if there was something of value lost (e.g. discovery of a gene that cures a disease that only the now-extinct animal naturally produced) You can especially kill off most apex predators without issue. Which is why the loss of a lion isn't a big deal. Now if all producers were to go extinct and the bottom feeders of the food chain(s) such as plankton were to vanish from the Earth? Most, if not all, life as we know it would die from starvation. The animals with the most adaptive and most abundant food sources would live the longest, but eventually they would also run out of food! A lion isn't a producer nor is it the bottom of the food chain. So a lion dying or lions going extinct really doesn't matter outside of scientific studies.

skylan_q 11y ago

I'd say it isn't. How many is the right number of either of those?

vegabook 11y ago
The right number is the one which nature will support, and sadly, that probably means we'll push out the wildlife entirely. My point was that there is a contradiction between a) our stated desire to protect remaining wildlife, and b) our failure to master our own instincts. Our strongest instinct is survival, closely followed by resource appropriation. Both are the enemy of wildlife, yet we love wildlife. To remove the contradiction we'd have to dominate our survival instinct and reduce our own population, with all the awful moral and ethical consequences (for humans) that that would entail.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

How many humans do there need to be before I can own one and keep it in a cage (even if regulations require it to be a big cage)? I'm thinking of putting the cage on display and calling it something. Maybe a yoo. My point being, we seem to value them more in our actual interactions, but when it comes to discussing rights and laws, we still value them less. So my actual question is why do we have this discrepancy. We cry on the death of a lion more than a human, yet putting another lion in a cage for our own amusement is allowed but doing the same with a human is considered extremely wrong.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
I suspect that those that cry on the death of lion are pretty much opposed to caging them (in anything smaller that a national park) as well.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  For those most opposed, I would agree. But I suspect that most of those involved in this outcry are not so opposed (they may be opposed to any caging, but they would be fine with some level of caging).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
vegabook 11y ago
You have correctly identified the contradiction. We love animals but our instincts are even stronger. The only rational conclusion is that we are not rational creatures - we are creatures of instinctive survival/domination. Therein lies the dissonance, because we refuse the rational conclusion which would be explicitly to value human lives less than those of animals.
VLM 11y ago
"I'm thinking of putting the cage on display and calling it something." We call that an open office working environment. It's not very humane, but no one cares.

angrybits 11y ago

No, I value any 1 human over all 30000 remaining lions. How could you not do otherwise?

gharial 11y ago
Because, over the long term, a single lion is infinitely more important to the survival of our own species/planet than a single human or even several million of them.
- wetmore 11y ago
  ...? How?
- refurb 11y ago
  Please explain. Millions of species have gone extinct over the course of history, yet the world continues on. What is it about the loss of lions that will result in a catastrophe? I'm not saying that avoiding the extinction of a species is not a noble endeavor, I'm just questioning the impact of not doing so.
- angrybits 11y ago
  That is total bullshit and you know it. This whole culture of self-loathing was cute at the beginning, but it's descended into absolute absurdity. You are patently out of your mind if you actually believe what you wrote. You don't, of course, but what's a little hyperbole when you're posturing for imaginary geek cred points on a website amirite?
- Nadya 11y ago
  We could kill off nearly every other species on the planet, including many of which we have domesticated and breed for product (bees, cows, etc.) and humans would be just fine. The only sad thing about a species going extinct is it is one less species for us to study and learn from. It's a drastic loss for science and the only hypothetical loss for people at large is if there was something of value lost (e.g. discovery of a gene that cures a disease that only the now-extinct animal naturally produced) You can especially kill off most apex predators without issue. Which is why the loss of a lion isn't a big deal. Now if all producers were to go extinct and the bottom feeders of the food chain(s) such as plankton were to vanish from the Earth? Most, if not all, life as we know it would die from starvation. The animals with the most adaptive and most abundant food sources would live the longest, but eventually they would also run out of food! A lion isn't a producer nor is it the bottom of the food chain. So a lion dying or lions going extinct really doesn't matter outside of scientific studies.