4 ms·

I watched a documentary on chinese zoos. Well, I watched about 10 minutes of it before I wanted to kill myself. There was a zoo where they could buy LIVE chicke

I watched a documentary on chinese zoos. Well, I watched about 10 minutes of it before I wanted to kill myself. There was a zoo where they could buy LIVE chickens and rabbits to feed to pitifully caged tigers. It was soul crushing. Culturally it seems they just don't value animals lives based on the docu.

msie 8y ago
Well, look deeply into any nation’s history and you’ll find the same thing.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  History being a key word.
  - soVeryTired 8y ago
    Look into modern farming practices in the west and you'll see far worse. There may be something to the fact that cruelty is institutionalised and done in the name of profit rather than localised and done in the name of entertainment, but I'm not so sure.
    - msie 8y ago
      Thanks! For example, the mass destruction of male chicks. The horrible conditions that pigs and chickens are raised in in industrial farms. How zoos keep their animals or kill them for no good reason. People feed live bait to their pet animals too. Etc.
yesenadam 8y ago
Culturally it seems to me like no countries that I know of do value animal lives. Except some dogs and cats etc. Humans seem to have a hard enough time not killing other humans. Mostly for me it's depressing seeing westerners protesting Chinese cruelty, while not even noticing it in their own countries, because it's the way they were brought up, I guess; their own country's kind of cruelty is invisible. Where are you, maybe it's somewhere more enlightened?
- mikekchar 8y ago
  When I first moved to Japan I was shocked at some of the food shows (of which there are millions on TV). It seemed that animals are either cute, poisonous, or delicious. In retrospect I think you are right, though. I've never lived in a culture that didn't have those kinds of demarcations. When I was in the UK several years ago they had a horse meat scandal where it was determined that most of the most popular prepared "beef" meals had substantial amounts of horse meat in them. "Finally", I thought, "People will realise how delicious horse meat is". Nope. I once did a workshop on culture and common sense. It was in Japan and 50% of the audience was Japanese while 50% were from an English speaking country. I asked them to split up into groups, again 50-50 and debate what is better: standing up to take a shower or sitting down to take a shower (Japanese people tend to sit on small stools while showering). I had to break it up after less than 10 minutes because people were about to come to blows. Common sense is the thing that people use when they don't actually have a reason for something. It's heavily influenced by culture and sometimes there is absolutely no justification for it. It's just the way you do it. When you ask why you do it like that, the answer is always "It's common sense". If you push and try to get a reason, people will come up with reasons, but are often surprisingly aggressive in their responses. Counter acting that cultural common sense is like a personal attack to many people. Most people I know (from any country) value animal lives. However, they often express that in bizarre ways if you look at it logically. It's that cultural common sense. Would you put a glue trap down for a mouse and have it dehydrate to death (unbelievable suffering)? Would you do it for a kitten? There's no real reason for the difference. Common sense short circuits our reasoning, unfortunately.
  - dan00 8y ago
    > Counter acting that cultural common sense is like a personal attack to many people. Perhaps people need all of this to keep their sanity. You just can not live in a complex world without these automatic cultural behaviours. For same people it seems to be quite hard to be concious about these in a way arbitary behaviours, without literally loosing their minds. So unfortunately there might be a limit for quite a few people how much they can take in this regard, because it certainly would help quite a lot for increasing the tolerance and the understanding of different cultures.

msie 8y ago

Well, look deeply into any nation’s history and you’ll find the same thing.

oh_sigh 8y ago
History being a key word.
- soVeryTired 8y ago
  Look into modern farming practices in the west and you'll see far worse. There may be something to the fact that cruelty is institutionalised and done in the name of profit rather than localised and done in the name of entertainment, but I'm not so sure.
  - msie 8y ago
    Thanks! For example, the mass destruction of male chicks. The horrible conditions that pigs and chickens are raised in in industrial farms. How zoos keep their animals or kill them for no good reason. People feed live bait to their pet animals too. Etc.

yesenadam 8y ago

Culturally it seems to me like no countries that I know of do value animal lives. Except some dogs and cats etc. Humans seem to have a hard enough time not killing other humans. Mostly for me it's depressing seeing westerners protesting Chinese cruelty, while not even noticing it in their own countries, because it's the way they were brought up, I guess; their own country's kind of cruelty is invisible. Where are you, maybe it's somewhere more enlightened?

mikekchar 8y ago
When I first moved to Japan I was shocked at some of the food shows (of which there are millions on TV). It seemed that animals are either cute, poisonous, or delicious. In retrospect I think you are right, though. I've never lived in a culture that didn't have those kinds of demarcations. When I was in the UK several years ago they had a horse meat scandal where it was determined that most of the most popular prepared "beef" meals had substantial amounts of horse meat in them. "Finally", I thought, "People will realise how delicious horse meat is". Nope. I once did a workshop on culture and common sense. It was in Japan and 50% of the audience was Japanese while 50% were from an English speaking country. I asked them to split up into groups, again 50-50 and debate what is better: standing up to take a shower or sitting down to take a shower (Japanese people tend to sit on small stools while showering). I had to break it up after less than 10 minutes because people were about to come to blows. Common sense is the thing that people use when they don't actually have a reason for something. It's heavily influenced by culture and sometimes there is absolutely no justification for it. It's just the way you do it. When you ask why you do it like that, the answer is always "It's common sense". If you push and try to get a reason, people will come up with reasons, but are often surprisingly aggressive in their responses. Counter acting that cultural common sense is like a personal attack to many people. Most people I know (from any country) value animal lives. However, they often express that in bizarre ways if you look at it logically. It's that cultural common sense. Would you put a glue trap down for a mouse and have it dehydrate to death (unbelievable suffering)? Would you do it for a kitten? There's no real reason for the difference. Common sense short circuits our reasoning, unfortunately.
- dan00 8y ago
  > Counter acting that cultural common sense is like a personal attack to many people. Perhaps people need all of this to keep their sanity. You just can not live in a complex world without these automatic cultural behaviours. For same people it seems to be quite hard to be concious about these in a way arbitary behaviours, without literally loosing their minds. So unfortunately there might be a limit for quite a few people how much they can take in this regard, because it certainly would help quite a lot for increasing the tolerance and the understanding of different cultures.