A couple weekends ago, a few people and I had the privilege of taking care of two adorable six-week-old yellow labs for about six hours. They were so precious, it was unbelievable.
My brother's friend, part of the puppy team, posed a question that reminded me of some of our discussions in TOK1. "Would you snap one of these puppy's necks for a million dollars cash?"
It's awful. It pulls at your heart, and your immediate answer is NEVER. But then somebody in the discussion mentioned, after lots of thinking, that they might. They thought of what a million dollars could do - solve all paying for college/getting established in life fees, and also be donated to charities. This person valued the dogs life as less than a human's life, and if many human lives could be significantly improved, then in might be worth the life of the animal. After all, they said, this puppy had no family, nobody attached to it. Although it might haunt them for a while, weighing the positives and negatives they would chose the money and didn't feel that killing a dog would be immoral. It was an interesting thought.
How do you feel about judging the worth of an animal's life vs. a human's? Would you kill a puppy for $1,000,000? What about a horse... deer... rabbit...bug? If you answered "no", where do you draw the line in the animal kingdom? It's a tough question, I think.
"I would kill for that. You know, something small, like a carrot. But not spiders, they're icky!"
ReplyDelete-Patrick Star
We all get greedy at times, but when do we cross the line? I would say that you could kill a puppy for a million dollars ONLY if you plan to use the million dollars to stop more puppies from dying. :)
On a related note, why do we consider baby animals cute? Excluding maggots and some species of bird, baby animals are so endearing we could never kill them as long as we care about anybody. There's likely a reason for that. It's a difficult thought.
I think that's for the same reason that human babies are adorable. When they wake you up for the fifth time that night at 1:45 AM and you're about ready to stab something as you head to deal with the crying child, you peek over the edge of the crib to see a cute pudgy baby face that just melts your heart, thus protecting them from your impending wrath. It's a survival strategy, and a darn good one at that.
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