Elephants Destroy Village: Not an Immoral Act
A herd of Indian elephants has destroyed a village. From the story:
If humans had done this to the village, it would rightly be condemned as an evil act of aggression and lawlessness. But elephants are amoral. They are just being elephants. They are indifferent to the suffering they are causing to another species.About 100 wild elephants have converged on a river island in northeast India, demolishing homes, feasting on sugarcane and panicking residents, officials said Saturday.
Thousands of villagers were using firecrackers and bonfires to scare away the rampaging animals. "Dozens of houses have been destroyed in the past three days by adult elephants entering human settlements to look for their wandering calves," said the local magistrate, L.S. Changsan.
Up to 50 families have moved to a local school being used as a refugee camp, Changsan said...Officials say the elephants swam to the island from a nearby hill region, beginning their rampage nearly a week ago.
This illustrates one of the crucial differences between human beings and animals. Only we are truly moral beings understanding of right and wrong, good and evil. And we have a unique capacity to empathize with "the other." We care about them, even if they can't care about us. That is one reason we try to save elephant habitats and protect these magnificent beasts from poaching, while they will destroy villages, kill the unwary, and generally disrupt human life without a moment's hesitation. And that is a distinction between us and animals with a huge difference.
Labels: Elephant Rampage
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:57 AM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
While I agree that the magnitude of our intelligence enables a sense of morality that is not shared by elephants, I do not think it is accurate to say that elephants are indifferent regarding the actions they are taking. To the contrary, I am confident that these elephants are quite emotional, ranging from anger to fear, about this situation. It seems that my son, a toddler, sometimes acts like these elephants; and, correspondingly, I do not consider his tyranny to be immoral as I would if an adult were to behave similarly.
Based on what? They don't care that they are hurting people because they are solely concerned with their and their calves' wellbeing. It isn't a tantrum. It is indifference.
They just don't know any better. All they're thinking is, "Scary predator!" and attacking as they would a tiger stalking their babies. They're beautiful, deadly creatures, who deserve our respect and appreciation, but they can't be allowed to go off and kill people.
That's another way of putting it. They are solely concerned with their own wellbeing. That's not wrong. It's one aspect of animal life that we often, but not always, are able to rise above. No point in getting angry. If human safety requires, you take action.
Uplift those elephants, and give them suffrage!! :)
Amen, Brother!
This is just a thought that makes me wonder sometimes, but supposing there's someOne who put animals on the planet for His own enjoyment and shared them with us humans. We've got stewardship over them - we can eat them or use them in research, but we're also responsible for them. Would this mean that animals do have some limited rights, not because of inherent morality or whatever in the animals themselves, but because they're borrowed property of someOne else?
I will never vote for elephant suffrage, so don't get me wrong. I'm just throwing a thought out there, given the above senario.
Would this "someOne" allow James Hughes to uplift those elephants and give them the capacity for complex decision making?
He'd *allow* it if He wanted us to have free will, but as to whether it would be right or not, I'd have to say no. Then again, I get my reasons for saying "no" out of the Catcheism of the Catholic Church, so I'm probably biased. ^.^
But given your statement, yeah, I'm thinking that even if they belong to someOne else, then they still don't have "rights" in that regard. Kinda like how my computer belongs to me and I don't want anyone to destroy it because it's valuable to me, but it doesn't have a "right" to life, per say.
I guess it's less about "rights" of animals and more about human responsibility.
Why would the Catechism forbid animal uplifting? I think it would be salutary to humanity as it might help teach us empathy.
But remember, your computer is not sentient. It hasn't woken up... yet!
What it forbids is putting animal life above or equal to human life, but it also forbids cruelty to animals. We're allowed to kill and eat animals, for example. Uplifting an animal makes it impossible to eat or use for scientific research, which is perfectly acceptable as such research will help both animals and humans medically. And it says very clearly that it's perfectly fine for a person to love an animal - having pets is not a crime, and it's fine to care for your four-legged children. Uplifting an animal would make it impossible for us to own them as pets because they'd have the same rights as humans and therefore unownable.
Personally, having two cats, I think it's the animals that own *us.* I go to work four days a week to feed these cats, buy them the kitty box dirt they like the best, get them their shots and plenty of toys, treats and catnip, and they get to lie around the house, beat up on me when I'm dead asleep, demand the good sofa seat for themselves, and lounge to their heart's content.
And according to my father, they can do no wrong, too. Amazing animals these cats.
As to my computer, I know my computer. Even if by some miracle someone were to write a program that writes its own algorhythms, thus "waking up" my 'puter... mine would be as stupid as a post and would never wake up. So there's no yet on this one - my computer refuses to be smart. I sneeze too close to it and I get the Blue Screen of Death.
But yeah, that's why I wonder about animal "rights." Acknowleding that as someOne else's property, aniamls have certain rights, we might take better care of them than we do while still doing ethical research on them and eating them. It's good not to be cruel to *anything.*
On the other hand, maybe it's that kind of thinking that got folks spray-painting other people's fur coats and trying to blow up research facilities. Someone thought like I do and then took it too far. So therein lies my delima. I do want to believe that animals have certain rights as they're not technically our property, but I don't want to go so far as to put them above humans. We are exceptional.
"Based on what? They don't care that they are hurting people because they are solely concerned with their and their calves' wellbeing. It isn't a tantrum. It is indifference."
To that, I would ask "based on what?" How do you know that elephants are NOT moral creatures? As presented in this post, the only evidence is that they destroyed the habitat of another species...hmmmmm that sounds awfully familiar.
I'm actually inclined to believe that elephants are not, and their indifference is the result of the same biological processes that gives them life. This would contrast another theory, that they are not ammoral, but their actions are the immoral result of a devil causing havoc in a fallen world.
However, if there is proof or a way we can deductively prove that elephants are or are not moral, that would be interesting.
That gave me a bizarre thought:
The animals are acting in an immoral way because Man fell and dragged the earth with us, and therefore our exceptionalism is not just that we're the ones made in God's own image, but also because we're exceptionally stupid in that we turned down a good thing when we had a chance for it, and God Himself had to fix everything for us because we certainly couldn't fix it ourselves.
So we're exceptional for our greatness and our stupidity.
But to my own thinking, the animals had to learn to cope and adjust to a fallen world and eventually instincts showed up in them that makes them do "immoral" things, because they had to learn to protect themselves and pass that down to their kids. So in that sense they are ammoral because they're trying to survive in a fallen world, and therefore aren't having a tantrum, they're just doing their best.
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