As longtime readers know, I was pretty outraged over Michael Vick's cruel ideas about the sporting life. Now The Cranky Professor finds a new outrage: cricket fighting. Unlike him, I'm actually kind of icked out by this. Even bugs shouldn't get poked with sticks for sport--shades of the proverbial boys pulling wings off flies. Yes, I know, I'm an oversensitive pansy. If I wanted to be part of nature red in tooth and claw, I'd be running around naked on the veldt.
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First thought upon learning that betta fish will become violent if more than one is in the same tank: "We could totally bet on which one will win"
Of course, I was in college at the time, which might have had something to do with it.
My issue with Michael Vick was less the dog-vs-dog fights (which weren't terribly worse than what dogs do when left together in the wild), but rather how he treated the losers.
Tall urban educated women running around naked on the veldt. I sense an underserved market niche.
Excuse me, but I've got to go register some domains...
Only little-dicked cowards get a kick out of hunting, fishing, rodeo, animal fights, etc? Those are not fair sports.. shooting a bullet at the speed of sound into the back of an animal is the bottom of the ocean in terms of backbone development. Disguising a hook as food in order to kill is nothing short of lying. etc.
What ever happened to real sports? Man against man? Boxing, wrestling, tennis, football, basketball, etc? The Olympics were a Greek achievement. Nobody used games and play as well to avoid needless destruction and suffering? Combined with the Tragedy - it fulfilled the lives of citizens far more than the numbing Gladiator games that the Romans later introduced?
The development of insults can be regarded as progress compared to applying direct violence. The development of empathy and diplomacy was yet another progress compared to insults.. Survival of the fittest is rarely about those who compete the most - but those who can cooperate the most. (you compete too much and there will be nothing left to sustain you. a strong individual is helpless against numerous weak ones, etc.)
every time we get a kick out of needless physical suffering we digress and move down the ladder? That Vick made a fortune with sports and applied his money to torture is like Bill Gates investing all his money in a new typewriter business? It is more stupid than amoral?
I can at least think of some positive externalities in case Megan did decide to run naked around the veldt.
Albert Schweitzer:
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.
...
If he [an ethical man] goes out into the street after a rainstorm and sees a worm which has strayed there, he reflects that it will certainly dry up in the sunshine if it does not quickly regain the damp soil into which it can creep, and so he helps it back from the deadly paving stone into the lush grass. Should he pass by an insect which has fallen into a pool, he spares the time to reach a leaf or stalk on which it may clamber and save itself.
That's my private ant. You're liable to break its legs. (Albert Schweitzer to a ten year old boy.)
It's hard for me to get outraged over cricket fights simply because I don't believe that crickets have much in the way of self-perception. Insects seem to me to be as close to automatons as biology can produce. In terms of moral cost, I'd put it on par with making remote control robots fight one another.
Dog fights upset me because there's no doubt that dogs can, and do, suffer and that they understand that they are suffering. Forcing them to fight one another is cruel.
That said, I'll agree that there's something about the psychology of cricket fighting that gives me pause.
There's plenty of pain in the world already. Why go out of your way to add to it?
Andrew Lias
I don't believe that crickets have much in the way of self-perception.
Study hints that fruit flies have free will..
"Findings could shed light on human choices, neurobiologist says"
If history teaches us anything (religious wars, racism, sexism, ageism, etc) - it is that we generally underestimate our similarities and overestimate the differences.
Not long ago we have assumed that blacks and children feel less pain than adult whites.
Why do we continue with our "in doubt chose violence" paradigm?
Like Andrew, I am not outraged over cricket fights because crickets have self-perception.
However, I do think that cricket fighting is a bad idea because it desensitizes us to suffering.
Not that a religious argument can persuade, but to give a footnote for my own thinking on the matter, I quote:
For the record, I'm not a bleeding heart - I'm a lifetime NRA member, have a hunting license, etc. I just believe that the universe is as cruel as it already is, and it is immoral for us to create more cruelty.
TJIC
I just believe that the universe is as cruel as it already is, and it is immoral for us to create more cruelty.
Why do you have hunting license then?
Megan, running naked around the veldt. I think I need a cold shower