DRes82 said:
The presumptuousness and self-righteousness has reached a new high in this thread with this post. Just based on the fact that you attribute the poll results to the possibility that "there are a lot of mentally challenged people' that have participated lets me safely assume that I, at least, have much more life experience and social ability than you.
I'm not going to go over my thoughts on this ridiculous topic again, but if you're interested, there are quite a few posts I've made here that summarize how I feel (which you should be, because my values are absolute and if you don't agree with them, you're mentally disabled). If not, suffice it to say, that I completely disagree with you. Again, the presence of such moral self-importance and arrogance here is astounding.
edit: I should grade you on your debating skills, Slayer. I doubt you would even get the 3 out of 15 that you gave to your opponent.
Nice work twisting my words and making vague assumptions. Would you like a medal? I'd like you to point out where exactly I said that if you chose the dog you are mentally challenged? I said it's probable that there are
more mentally challenged people (such as aspergers, autism, etc). Your hasty response of "lets me safely assume that I, at least, have much more life experience and social ability than you" does nothing to help your case, but in fact damages it further. You know nothing about me, and your assumptions are baseless, as is your stance.
How dare I act like a human's life is worth more than a dog! I should be shot, no, drawn and quartered! I think I know who I believe is the monster here, as do you. Of course I sound self-righteous, people who would choose the dog are people who deserve to drown, in my opinion. The world is better without scum like that. It's hard not to sound like I'm on a high horse when I'm talking with a bunch of borderline murderers. This argument is futile, and I suggest we waste no more time with it. Clearly you want to stick to your ideas of right and wrong and me to mine. Nothing will change. I have zero tolerance for this kind of thought, that an animal should be granted equal or better rights than a human, call me what you will.
LifeCharacter said:
I agree that I would choose my mother over my dog. That doesn't mean that I would choose someone else's mother over my dog. If you would choose a family member over a stranger, it seems perfectly reasonable to choose what I consider a close family member over a stranger. I don't know what relationship you have with your pets, or even if you have pets at all, so I'd appreciate if you didn't assume to know what my relationship with my pet is like.
You missed the point. Your dog is NOT A FAMILY MEMBER. Yes it lives in your home. Yes you see it almost every day. No you will not be nearly as effected if it dies (which it will in 10 years or so no matter what), no it does not share any blood with you. No it is not legally a family member. Terming it a family member makes people think that it's death will hit the same as a real member of your family, which (and let me assume this) is completely false.
Who says you have to donate your money to a charity? If you sold off all your luxury goods you could probably afford to go to some shithole in Africa and use your money to directly help them. And even if you do donate to a charity, wouldn't paying overhead costs mean that money that's not going to overhead thanks to you is now going where it needs to? While I will agree that it is generally a direct/indirect thing, that doesn't mean that the direct suddenly has magnitudes of importance over the indirect. If sacrificing most of your luxury goods to save someone from starving to death is extreme, why do you consider sacrificing a living thing that happens to be considered a family member by some and apparently a luxury good by others such an easy decision?
Really, and what "shithole in Africa" would you choose? Just pick a map up and throw a dart at it? Fact is, you couldn't do much to help directly. Neither could I. If they aren't already managing to eke out an existence, I'd give you a few days till you died or ran home. You might be able to improve living conditions, but the likelihood of you doing any good is minimal, more likely you're a burden.
As for donating to a charity, we're only human, we can't all be Jesus. Unless a person is faced with the result of their actions (or lack thereof), they are
less motivated. I still donate, but I'm not gonna sell everything I own and donate it to the Red Cross. Be realistic. It's not black and white, you don't either have to be an evil human-killing dog saver, or a freaking white Gandhi, there are many shades between. Acting like it's either black or white is unrealistic and not too mature, either.
While the first half is assuming a bit much, I'll accept that it's incredibly probable most people would save the stranger over their pet. And again, my feelings about my pet are obviously different to yours. Since drowning is not a peaceful way to go, why is the pet's drowning such an easy thing to just gloss over? I've admitted that I would feel guilty after making my choice to let the stranger die; I made the selfish choice and I shouldn't feel good about that. But you know what helps to get over your guilt, your pet. What's gonna help you get over your pet violently drowning, the gratitude of the stranger, his family, and maybe the community for a relatively short time? And as for killing a dog, I'd probably feel worse than you about it, but killing a person would likely bring out more emotion from me. The thing is, that only applies if it's just some random dog. Here, we're talking about my dog.
Either way, I think you can agree that a poll of under 1,500 people from one tight-knit
internet community is hardly indicative of the world as a whole. Plus I have a feeling that outside of 1st world countries (where pets are most common), you'd get much different answers.
Do you eat meat? Have you ever worn leather? Chances are you've consumed some animal products in your life. Now, have you been in a slaughterhouse before? Animals die all the time for us, yes they aren't
your animal, but animals tend to have far, far less value to us than people. As they should. If your dog drowned, I think it'd be bad, but you WOULD recover in a few weeks, maybe even get a new one in a month or two. I'm sure the gratitude of humans would help ease the pain till it passes.
Say you backed over your dog, would you feel worse about that or if you ran your car into a stranger and pinned them against a telephone pole killing them minutes later.
Have you ever seen a human die? I hope not, you don't want to. You will NEVER get it out of your mind until you lose your memory from Alzheimers or die. I didn't even directly or indirectly cause a human death and it haunted me for years. If I'd let someone drown, even indirectly to save my dog... I'd shoot myself. You wouldn't sleep properly for months, years maybe, every few hours it'd pop into your mind and ruin your whole day. Nothing would be as enjoyable again. Even thinking about it now is bad enough, and it's been 6 years. It's easy to sterilize it, trivialize it, say it happens every day. But those words won't stop your nightmares.