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version seven. http://demongin.org |
Shelter
Animal rights versus human rights...and puppies!
Thursday, 2009-10-01 | Philosophy, Social Studies
| Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm. |
| Friedrich Nietzsche |
My very low opinion of "human nature" and the human project in general--which are so copiously documented on this website that they demand little additional introduction--suggest, to some, that I am probably some sort of animal lover.
And while that's slightly off the mark, it is, in fact, true of me in a slightly unusual or different sense than it is true of others. I, for example, am no ASPCA campaigner and I, like all thinking people, am seldom able to pass up on an opportunity to lampoon the stupidity and hypocrisy of PETA, but I do have a sort of general sympathy for animals that I do not have for people.
For example, on a recent trip to an animal shelter in Upper Marlboro Maryland, I noticed, while walking a gauntlet of sheltered animals living in temporary housing, that such a walk has the potential to be genuinely morally afflicting. In the past I have, unfortunately, had several occasions to take similar walks down rows of temporary housing for humans and the contrast was startling: where walking among disenfranchised humans fills one with contempt for human society in general, human self-interest in particular and individual humans in specific, walking among homeless dogs and cats fills one with something more like compassion.
And, of course, this should come as no surprise. Whereas a row of dogs in cages, in desperate need of human affection and attention, practically ooze optimism and friendliness, humans in similar situations generally want neither affection nor attention--they generally only want money or to be left alone--and thus put off either a subtle hostility or are overtly threatening. Additionally, when one walks among rows of animals in temporary housing, one has certain assurances about the destinies of these animals that one can never have about the destinies of the destitute. Namely, when one walks the rows at the animal shelter, one can know for certain that, no matter what happens, these creatures will never, under any circumstances, be able to mug him, hold up the line at the Giant due to a massive failure to comprehend the automatic checkout or send stupid fucking emails to the whole office.
And so, all of that being the case, it is difficult to resist human pleas made on behalf of animals. Extremely difficult. When, on the one hand, a sufferer of mental illness panhandles on the street or when some hapless volunteer panhandles on behalf of street-walking victims of mental illness, it is easy to keep a firm grasp on your coin purse: greasy, toothless vagrants and smarmy, poorly-groomed do-gooders are both easy to resist on account of the fact that their only interest or concern or capacity is the basest form of self-interest (or the collective, and therefore baser, self-interest of a group of other raping, murdering, nuclear-weapon-building homo sapiens sapiens). When, however, on the other hand, the woman from the animal shelter lets it slip out that the shelter needs blankets for the dogs and cats so that they don't have to sleep with their elbows on the pressure-wash-eroded, hastily-epoxied concrete floor...
One recognizes, in advocacy on the behalf of neglected or disenfranchised animals, advocacy on behalf of an interest that is, to put it mildly, less offensive than human interest. While you can certainly make the case that an animal only cares about its own survival ("it's a dog-eat-dog world") and its needs therefore represent a baser interest, there are the thousands of documented years of rank cruelties and abuses--committed with full benefit of a conscience and some form of judicial apparatus--weighing against humans in need.
Basically, puppy dog eyes are legitimate cause for charitable action.
The sunken faces and protruding ribs of the homeless are the literal and figurative mirror of the only legacy and the guaranteed future of the doomed race of Adam: Waste, Corruption and Death.
