I'm an adult female and a mild Aspie. I could understand Temple's reaction during her teacher's funeral (I would react the same) but I couldn't understand her lack of feeling towards animals. As they seem to mean so much to her, why would she not have cried after the horse's death? I would have been devastated. And why would she not advocate vegetarianism?
I don't understand...
I wondered why she would not advocate vegetarianism or veganism, but nobody on this board has really explained that in a way that made sense.
Life may throw sh*t at you. Dignity is about how you deal with the sh*t.
I don't have a mind like Dr. Grandin's, but I get the impression that she understands that cattle and other food animals are mostly here because of us. Her character in the film correctly points out that there would be nowhere near as many of them if we didn't eat them. Yes she cares about their feelings while they are alive and strongly believes that we owe them as decent treatment as possible and certainly not unnecessary abuse. I think she equates raising cattle with raising corn. She clearly doesn't believe in a soul for these animals or even humans.
shareWell according to my own Aspie brain, it's because dying and being eaten is all part of the circle of life. I remember reading that 99.9% of all rabbits in the wild are killed and eaten by another animal. If everything else stopped eating them, in only months there'd be 1000 times as many wild rabbits out there, all diseased from overcrowding and starving.
Cows would be the same thing, only on a bigger and slower scale. If humans didn't exploit them, as Temple said in the movie, "there'd only be a few left, in zoos." It's a truth that many people shy away from, but every living thing is born under a death sentence.
It's easy for me to decide between two types of death-by-predator. #1: I'm a wild cow, happy within my herd and surrounded by infinite food growing beneath my feet. But I'm getting old (or sick or injured), and so am slower and less maneuverable than my kin. One day, I'll be jumped by lions, dragged to the ground, and torn apart while desperately struggling.
Or, #2: I'm a domestic cow, happy within my herd and surrounded by infinite food growing beneath my feet. One day we're all walking thru a comfortable and safe looking passage. There is rock beneath my feet instead of grass, but it feels solid and there's good footing, so I'll keep moving forward until there's more grass. At some point it gets narrow enough the walls are squeezing me as I walk. It's a nice comforting feeling, like I'm safe in the middle of my herd. An instant later I'm dead, without fear or pain.
I'll take #2.
There's also a #3: I might have been a cow, but was never born. I never experienced...anything at all. And a #4: I'm a cow, but we have no large predators. I'm always so hungry! Mom was always hungry too, and so I was born sickly. After a short miserable life of constant struggle, one day I'm just too weak to get to my feet. I hope I get lucky, and the hot sun finishes me off before the bugs eat me alive.
I'll still take #2.
Every living thing ends up being food. Apex predators like humans typically don't get eaten until after they die. That's comforting, but it also prolongs our suffering when the end is coming. I can wish for a kinder world, but I can't change the life-eats-life nature of this one.
I want my food animals treated well, so buy appropriately and also support the efforts of researchers like Dr. Grandin. I assume vegetarians believe #3 is a better choice than #2, But I grew up with cows, and have seen firsthand that they seem to mostly enjoy their lives, as do I. Someday they're going to die and be eaten. So are you. So am I.
Very, VERY well said. The circle of life really sucks when you dwell on it, but dwelling on it isn't going to change the existence of it, so we might as well work towards making it as pleasant and pain-free for ALL of us. This is what Dr. Grandin has done, and bless her for it.
shareWell according to my own Aspie brain, it's because dying and being eaten is all part of the circle of life. I remember reading that 99.9% of all rabbits in the wild are killed and eaten by another animal. If everything else stopped eating them, in only months there'd be 1000 times as many wild rabbits out there, all diseased from overcrowding and starving.
Cows would be the same thing, only on a bigger and slower scale. If humans didn't exploit them, as Temple said in the movie, "there'd only be a few left, in zoos." It's a truth that many people shy away from, but every living thing is born under a death sentence.
It's easy for me to decide between two types of death-by-predator. #1: I'm a wild cow, happy within my herd and surrounded by infinite food growing beneath my feet. But I'm getting old (or sick or injured), and so am slower and less maneuverable than my kin. One day, I'll be jumped by lions, dragged to the ground, and torn apart while desperately struggling.
Or, #2: I'm a domestic cow, happy within my herd and surrounded by infinite food growing beneath my feet. One day we're all walking thru a comfortable and safe looking passage. There is rock beneath my feet instead of grass, but it feels solid and there's good footing, so I'll keep moving forward until there's more grass. At some point it gets narrow enough the walls are squeezing me as I walk. It's a nice comforting feeling, like I'm safe in the middle of my herd. An instant later I'm dead, without fear or pain.
I'll take #2.
There's also a #3: I might have been a cow, but was never born. I never experienced...anything at all. And a #4: I'm a cow, but we have no large predators. I'm always so hungry! Mom was always hungry too, and so I was born sickly. After a short miserable life of constant struggle, one day I'm just too weak to get to my feet. I hope I get lucky, and the hot sun finishes me off before the bugs eat me alive.
I'll still take #2.
Every living thing ends up being food. Apex predators like humans typically don't get eaten until after they die. That's comforting, but it also prolongs our suffering when the end is coming. I can wish for a kinder world, but I can't change the life-eats-life nature of this one.
I want my food animals treated well, so buy appropriately and also support the efforts of researchers like Dr. Grandin. I assume vegetarians believe #3 is a better choice than #2, But I grew up with cows, and have seen firsthand that they seem to mostly enjoy their lives, as do I. Someday they're going to die and be eaten. So are you. So am I.
That seems to be an example of rather naive thinking. You will die one day, but that does not mean that it is alright for me to end your life for my convenience. Nor is it accurate to depict the lives of wild animals as having to constantly flee predators. A scientist named Paul Colinvaux wrote a book called "Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare", which explains why.
Maybe wild cows would rather suffer some hardships in the wild than being made to produce an unnatural amount of milk, have their calves taken away and be killed (not necessarily as instantaneously as you suggest) when they are no longer of use.
Penelope is a full-grown horse and today happens to be my half-birthday!
OK, when I said predator, maybe I should have said carnivore? Or maybe predators/scavengers. In any case, I wasn't singling out large hunting predators. How about, "99.9% of wild animals will die with another animal's teeth in their flesh"? Is that any better?
Regardless of my "naive thinking", that is still how practically all wild animals end their lives. They get progressively weaker and sicker, until one day they can't get away from whatever predator is handy.
Picture an elderly gazelle on the savannah. When he eventually gets too sick to get to its feet one more time, and its protective herd moves on, do you think it magically drops dead without violence? No, the vast majority of the time the poor creature gets to lie there suffering while whatever predators/scavengers are handy start eating it alive. It doesn't matter if those predators are lions, hyenas, birds, ants or even bacteria the result is the same, and it's cruel.
Nature is a vicious eating machine, and humans are powerless to change that. Even that lucky 0.1% who avoid being eaten alive by breaking their necks or something have their bodies eaten immediately afterward.
Each of us chooses where we draw the line on exploiting animals. Personally I have no problem with steaks and burgers, but won't touch veal, foie gras and such. You go ahead and draw your line elsewhere. But don't ignore the costly side-effects. If Americans stopped eating meat today, what's supposed to happen to all the domestic animals? If you aren't going to kill them, kindly note their breeding rate and feeding costs and let me know who's going to pay for it all as their numbers double every couple of years...forever.
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While I was watching the film this occurred to me as well. I saw an intensely focussed visual thinker but also a pragmatic one. In the scene where Temple visits her science teacher for the last time she talks about her view that cattle will die because people their will be people who want/need to eat meat so we need to respect them for that by giving them the best death we can. She could see how to do that and that is a way to be kind to cattle.
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Actually, predators are known to start eating an animal they've brought down before it is killed. I've watched on TV a bunch of hyenas start eating the back end of a live buffalo stuck in mud. And I watched a show once about a pride of lions in one area that were known to start eating their prey before it was killed. Of course the intention is to kill the prey in order to eat it, but often in pack animals, as soon as the prey is immobilized by one or more animals the rest of the group will start to feed while the prey is still struggling. And you DON'T want to be killed by orcas if you're a seal or sea lion, as they will toss the seal back and forth between themselves in what looks like play. Do not be fooled. Nature is often cruel.
We're playing house.
The boy is all tied up.
Roman Polanski's house.
She's not unfeeling toward animals. She cares quite a bit about them. But she's also a realist. She sees things as they are.
Cows were created and continue to exist because humans have a use for them. One of those uses is as food. Cows bred for consumption exist for that reason alone. That doesn't mean, however, that they don't deserve humane treatment up until they are dead. Like Temple said, we (humans) don't have to be cruel. You don't have to be a vegetarian or vegan to still care deeply about animals. Many aboriginal cultures had great respect for nature, including animals. Yet many of them still hunted and ate meat.
As for the horse that died, she was obviously upset by its death. Just because she didn't cry doesn't mean she wasn't upset. At least in the film (I can't say for the real life Temple), Temple didn't come across as the kind of person to cry much. She was in tears at times, but that seemed to be mostly from frustration or stress. She just wasn't an emotionally demonstrative person.
We're playing house.
The boy is all tied up.
Roman Polanski's house.
In Temple's own words:
"I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect."
She is basically a realist, cattle are produced by humans with one purpose, to provide us with food and other products such as milk, leather etc. Killing something for food that has only been brought into the world for that purpose is ethical, however doing it in inhumane ways is not.
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Shouldn't have been cancelled..
-Firefly
-New Amsterdam
-Journeyman
-terriers
Killing something for food that has only been brought into the world for that purpose is ethical
You can't compare human beings to farm animals. Although judging by the tone of your post you are probably somebody who thinks you can.
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cancelled too soon:
-Firefly
-New Amsterdam
-Journeyman
-Life
-terriers
Ooh, getting a lil defensive are we?
Defensiveness aside, if you can continue the discussion rationally, exactly why are different species held to different standards of respect in your mind? And do you also differentiate between different races by the same rationale?
I don't particularly want to argue with you, although in the two posts you have directed at me so far you have compared the killing of farm animals for food to the killing of human beings, and have then inferred my being able to differentiate between humans and animals, is in some way comparable to being racist?
I'm a proponent for the humane treating of animals. Just a week ago somebody showed me a video on youtube of an American farmer flying around in a helicopter and gunning down wild hogs with an automatic rifle. It disgusted me. The needless slaughter and inhumane treatment of animals perpetrated by humans is a disgrace.
All that aside however, animals are food for humans, animals are neither as intelligent of as sentient as humans, when animals get together and start producing scientific theories then perhaps I'll stop eating meat.
Tell me, are you a vegetarian? and if so why do you see no problem eating living foliage? It is a living thing after all. Do you care more about how a dog is treated, than a paddy field worker living far below the poverty line who produces your rice?
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cancelled too soon:
-Firefly
-New Amsterdam
-Journeyman
-Life
-terriers
I've been a fruitarian for 7 years, so no, I don't personally eat plants either. That's all beside the point, and I'd rather not derail this thread with personal details.
Whether you believe humans are superior to animals, or Mexicans are superior to Eskimos, or whatever, I'm just trying to understand how you arrived at these statements of fact.
My point is that nobody can dictate which lifeforms are "better" than others, so we should try to adopt a set of ethics that can apply to all. For example, we can probably agree that it is unethical to wantonly torture any lifeform, whether it's a human or a puppy or a cow. But what if someone said "but it's ok to torture the Irish because you can't compare the Irish to other lifeforms." I'm hoping you would want some clarification on that.
Because humans have the capacity to inflict violence through tools, in particular mechanised tools of war, and/or the capacity to direct said violence through the means of voting. Animals do not, with very limited exceptions and only to very limited extent.
That is literally the clear distinction you are looking for.