He Speaks! "Why Being Human Matters"
I am often asked where people can see recordings of my speeches. The Discovery Institute just posted online one I made there last year, called "Why Being Human Matters: Bioethics, Animal Liberation, and the Threat to Human Exceptionalism." Hit this link, and I will appear after a very nice introduction from Bruce Chapman, the head of the DI. In the speech I address the importance of human exceptionalism, personhood theory, animal rights, transhumanism, and the all that jazz. I only have one question: When did I get so gray?
Labels: He Speaks
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 1:39 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
From a loyal SHSer:
"Will be listening to the interview later today. But regarding your question:
"When did I get so gray?"
Here's one answer: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2005/01/03-gray.html
The answer seems to fit perfectly for someone who does what you do for a living!"
Silver, actually. Your highlights shine; they're not dull.
Now, off to watch the show!
Tactful, Tabs. Thanks.
I like Chapman - he reminds me of an uncle I have who's a bit nervy in public. Just have to get that out because it's something I noticed right away.
"His picture also appears on post office walls across the country."
Snerk.
Yes, silver, not grey, sorry. And it's not tactful, it's honest - your hair shines in the highlights.
I like your representation of Animal Welfare vs. Animal Rights.
Now - the statement made about why we're not special (we're no more special than an elephant is special for its trunk) leads to a question that bugs me: if we're not special, then why do most people who say we're not special hold themselves in some kind of special esteem? You talk about how some scientists want their votes to count as ten of my votes in an election, or how scientists want to create a new form of government where the specialists run things. But if they're no more than dust (same as us joe blows) then where do they get off thinking that *they* are special enough to have a greater say in what happens to *my* life?
Come to think of it, if a scientist is nothing more than a dressed up monkey, without any exceptionalism in him, then where does he get off thinking that his assumptions about his exceptionalism are any better than mine, and why should he want to impose his feelings on me?
I have seen some philosophical materalists who are pretty out there in their feelings that anybody who isn't an atheistic philosophical materalist is a fool, an idiot, is wrong, is dangerous. But here's the deal - a man is telling me that he feels human beings aren't special at all. I say, what makes his reasoning better than mine if all he is, is a pile of organs with electricity running through his brain in a different pattern from mine?
How can anyone who believes that humans aren't exceptional really feel that their philosophies are better than anyone else's? It's silly, because he's negating his own theories by saying that they don't matter!
Isn't the philosophy of materialims a self-defeating philosophy?
Likewise, if PETA says we're all animals just like pigs and dogs, then aren't they negating their own crusade to separate animals from humans? If we're just animals, then why is it that we, unlike other animals, must be separated out? Becuase of our intelligence. Hmmmm... but we're just monkeys. So our intelligence doesn't count for anything, so we should live like other animals, and as Koko showed, animals act a lot like people.
Ridiculous.
I had to actually watch your little presentation before I could formulate this kind of thinking, which is something that's been nagging at me for a long while. Unless you accept that human beings are somehow exceptional, you lose the ability to argue *anything* because all arguments suggest that you have to apply exceptional behavior to make the "necessary" changes in your behavior.
You got it, Tabs. The very conversation is an act of human exceptionalism.
Animal rights' claim we are the moral equals of animals, while at the same time trying to make it so we have no domestic animals and stay far away from wild animals, is also an acknowledgment of our special natures. Animal rights would flow from humans to animals, but not from animals to animals, or from animals to humans. One way street, baby. Meaning it isn't really about rights but obligations, of which we are the only species that have any.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15853_6-cutest-animals-that-can-still-destroy-you.html
Behold! Cracked.com does community service - animals that look cute but are really deadly.
**WARNING!** The site I linked to doesn't just drop F-bombs, it has entire fields of F-flowers in bloom throughout, so read at your own risk if you don't like profanity.
Here's the one that I wanted to comment on the most, though (the *** are my editing out language and are not in the original article):
Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)
How cute!
These guys are practically people. No, *** that, they're practically better than people. Chimps have done everything from fly jet planes to sleep in the same bed as a former President of the United States. If you put a chimp in front of a camera with an action star, you have no choice but to prepare for a wild, wacky romp that will tug your heartstrings and tickle your funny bone until you vomit your entire digestive system in pure laugh-a-minute glee. And then, at the end, we all learn a valuable lesson: usually that Burt Reynolds can be consistently outwitted by lesser primates.
It's that grin. That huge, toothy grin they flash for the cameras, it makes them look like devilish little scamps, like they have some great and hilarious secret they cannot wait to share. And then they put their arms around the action star and snuggle in and everybody goes awwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Then they pucker their lips and make fart noises and everybody just laughs until they die.
OH ***! RUN!
That is not a grin. What that is, see, is a mouthful of very large teeth being bared. Right at you.
The chimp is attempting to inform you that you are invading his space. If you do not understand this, the chimp would be happy to further elaborate. With that mouthful of very *** large teeth. While smashing his very long and extremely strong arms about your head and shoulders, grabbing your hair and slamming your head into things. All the while shrieking a vicious symphony of noise that is calling all his buddies over to beat you until you cannot grow anymore. Following which, they will pelt you with feces.
It's sort of like a fraternity initiation, only they don't give a *** if you survive. For instance, look how the adorable monkey treats his "friend" the zoologist, who's been coming to his island and feeding him bananas for years.
(There's a YouTube video in the original article showing a "friend" to the chimps getting the snot beat outta him - you should watch, it's very educational. --Tabs)
If that clip reminds you less of Ross's adorable pet monkey on Friends and more of Stephen Seagal "taking out the trash," that's because you watched it. Now imagine what that monkey would do to your goofy, non-banana bringing *** if you tried to make him wear a funny hat and a necktie.
Oh, here's something to make that mental image even worse: On four recorded occasions in the last 50 years, chimpanzees have abducted, killed and eaten human babies. That's human with an H, as in Homo Sapiens, as in a human baby getting wrenched out of its mother's arms, dragged off into the forest and devoured by a chimp. We are not making this up.
(For the article about chimps eating baby humans, go to: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0304/feature4/online_extra2.html)
I recommend reading the entire article about these six sweet animals that Animal Right's Activists would say are on par with humanity. You'd be amazed at the atrocious behavior these "sweet, gentle creatures" are capable of. If nothing else, our human exceptionalism allows us both to understand that these animals are acting in their nature and that we, as human beings, must never engage in these kinds of activities. That's the real mark of our humanity.
This comment has been removed by the author.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com
/ngm/0304/feature4
/online_extra2.html
You'll have to take the spaces out but that's the full URL to the article about chimps eating babies - sorry, I had a time trying to get the URL to fit in the window.
Tabs. Thank you. This is very helpful. I am going to have a riff about how animal rights activist romanticize animals and claim that only we act malevolently Purposes torture other pod members, whales torture seals. And chimps hunt and kill monkeys and humans.
And the response of the "scientists" was to give the killer antibiotics and not euthanize him even though he had killed and consumed a human infant. Unbelievable.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home