Earthlings - Animal Rights Documentary

Saw it about 2 years ago when it came out, its pretty good. Joaquin Pheonix is cool i guess. Don't really agree with the whole specie-ism but still good to watch.

 

great movie!
thanks

 

Yeah I liked it a lot except the use of the word speciesism was a little to much for me. If they would have used any other word to describe that I would have been fine but I don't really like the idea of them paralelling something like animal cruelty with something like racism.

 

the more i know the more i find it is, sometimes u have to admit how horrible u r, its elemants of degrees and u make choices, 'society' makes them for you too but not the way it is now

 

couldn't watch it very long ... pouah !! I agree with the fact that specism is a kind of racism ... when you see what people are able to do with animals, I don't find it irrelevant to connect it with fascism ;;;

 

yes the economic fishing out of oceans that help us breath, mmm, tatamount to a genocide, butttt have hope

 

Earthlings is one of the most important films ever made.

What you have to recognise is that although animal rights activism draw parallels with speciesism and racism etc they don't mean to say that animals are more important than humans, rather that the structure of oppression is the same: one group unjustly dominates and discriminates against another group. Racism is the unjust discrimination of whites against blacks etc, people of different races, Sexism is the unjust discrimination of males against females, people of different sex, Speciesism is the unjust discrimination of human animals over non-human animals, people of different species. It is meant in no way to take away from the horror and pain that victims of human centric discrimination face, rather that there are parellels of discrimination.

We all have the ability to feel pain. It's not hard to not use animal products in your life, even if you don't think that non-humans are as important as humans.

 

I am a vegan of almost 3 months and a vegetarian of 6. I have ethical disagreements with consumption of meat on a personal level. And I understand that the term speciesism isn't meant to compare victims of racism or sexism to animals, but there is one thing horribly wrong in the "oppresive structure" logic, and that is that animals have no comprehension of the fact they are being oppressed. An animal can feel pain but it can not grasp whether the pain is just or unjust. This doesn't make the slaughter of animals at all okay. But the lack of understanding that the oppressed possess makes it an entirely different structure. A woman can grasp the concept of oppression, of justice or of right or wrong. A cow cannot. But as long as the animals can grasp pain, the slaughter will be as wrong as ever.

 

Good point, but the fact that non-human animals do not know that they are being oppressed does not make it morally acceptable to oppress them. There are plenty of humans that are mentally unable to comprehend anything (the severely mentally handicapped), and it would not be morally acceptable to use them to meet the rest of societies ends. Furthermore, although many non-human animals do lack our human concepts of 'oppression' etc, they still share with us many common traits: pain, fear and a bond with their own species. It has been well documented the trauma that cows face when they hear other memebers of their species screaming in pain etc, this is the reason that people like Temple Grandin are developing "humane" slaughter methods (as though the ending of a life can ever be humane), in order to combat this.

 

Excellent point. I guess I could be qualified as anti-speciesest, but i would never call myself such. Just like some folks don't drink or do drugs would never call themselves straight edge.