I have been warning anyone who will listen that ”animal standing” is one of the most potentially destructive animal rights agenda items. Animal standing advocates hope to change the law so that animals can sue their owners in their own names, which of course, is a farce since it would really be ideologues bringing cases in pursuit of their own beliefs. Animal standing has supporters in very high places, as in Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s “regulations czar,” who wrote in support of the concept before entering government service. Lawsuits have been brought in the name of a seal, all the whales and dolphins in the world, and in other cases. Should this advocacy succeed, it would tear the economy apart as countless industries use animals and/or their byproducts.
Now, PETA is suing Sea World in the name of SW’s killer whales, claiming that the facility is holding orcas as “slaves.” From the PETA press release:
In the first case of its kind, PETA, three marine-mammal experts, and two former orca trainers are filing a lawsuit asking a federal court to declare that five wild-caught orcas forced to perform at SeaWorld are being held as slaves in violation of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The filing—the first ever seeking to apply the 13th Amendment to nonhuman animals—names the five orcas as plaintiffs and also seeks their release to their natural habitats or seaside sanctuaries. The suit is based on the plain text of the 13th Amendment, which prohibits the condition of slavery without reference to “person” or any particular class of victim. “Slavery is slavery, and it does not depend on the species of the slave any more than it depends on gender, race, or religion,” says general counsel to PETA, Jeffrey Kerr.
Sure it does. Only humans can be “slaves: and authors of the Amendment–who, after all, used horses for transportation and had used whale oil for lighting before kerosene–would never have conceived that a lawsuit would be brought seeking to apply their efforts to any animal.
This is more than the usual PETA publicity stunt–although it is that too. Rather, animal rights activists keep bringing lawsuits in the name of animals in the hope of finding the one wacky judge who will allow the case to proceed. This nonsense won’t stop until and unless judges start imposing large financial penalties for filing frivolous cases. Let’s hope that process begins with a huge financial sanction imposed against PETA and the other plaintiffs.
This is also a direct assault on human exceptionalism, no surprise there. But it is also insulting in the extreme to compare a whale in captivity to human slaves. (PETA got in trouble with civil rights groups once before when they compared a lynching to a dead cow hoisted by a rope for butchering, in its short-lived, “We Are All Aniamls” campaign.) African Americans should be up in arms, as PETA is comparing their antebellum racial plight in the USA–for which the 13th Amendment was the permanent legal remedy–to the captivity of animals. KKK-style racists used to compare people of color to animals, it is just as odious when it is done the other way around.
October 26th, 2011 | 7:55 am
Wes,
While I agree with you in regards to the inapplicability of the 13th Amendment to this case, I disagree with your use of a statement of alarm about the possible economic impact of animal standing as a reason by itself to resist it. Any number of animal welfare laws, which you support, could be said to have a real or potential detrimental effect on “the economy”. Don’t turn the economy into an idol.
Harryhammer Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 10:38 am
@Peter S,
Mr. Smith
Ya, that’s very scary stuff.
It sounds to me like you need a phobia specialist.
October 26th, 2011 | 10:37 am
Hurting the economy was an argument that was used for people against the abolishment of slavery.
Animals don’t need constitutional rights, but if humans truly are exceptional, we should realize that animals belong in the wild as nature intended. Not imprisoned in cages and tanks and force to entertain the masses.
October 26th, 2011 | 12:49 pm
Animals do not need and should not get “equality” with humans, because there cannot be reciprocity.
But in the case of those killer whales, there should be some acknowledgement that this particular cruelty is unnecessary. There have been too many documented incidents of killer whales hurting themselves, other whales, and trainers (yes, Sea World has a much longer history of trainers being attacked than most people would ever guess). These animals are under too much stress.
Sea World at least could and therefore should relocate those whales to large sea pens, which would be much more appropriate living arrangements for the whales – even if that does make it harder (but not impossible) to fully exploit their entertainment potential.
October 26th, 2011 | 3:07 pm
I wonder if “personhood” amendments and laws would help clarify this, since apparently the legal system seems to think it can define so many things, perhaps making crystal clear who is a direct subject of the law.
I imagine that could be abused or tweaked as well for evil, but it might help keep sanity.
October 26th, 2011 | 4:24 pm
Wow. Animals are about to get the full rights of personhood, but a human baby in the womb is tissue that can be wontonly destroyed at the whim of another.
October 26th, 2011 | 5:31 pm
Keep going down that path, and someday soon PETA will sue so humans can be allowed to marry animals too.
October 26th, 2011 | 7:50 pm
‘Animals do not need and should not get “equality” with humans, because there cannot be reciprocity.’
There can’t be reciprocity with retarded humans, either. Does that mean that such people ought to be outside of the moral community?
Sentience is the only characteristic necessary for the pre-legal right to not be regarded as property.
Having said that, I doubt that this stunt will actually work. In an overwhelmingly non-vegan world, there’s simply no political base for this kind of change.
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
October 27th, 2011 at 3:01 am
@MS, You make an excellent point. I would suggest that those who wish to argue that only humans can have rights, come up with a different criterion for this than the “reciprocity” argument, since this has been shown to be entirely fallacious. (see,for example, Simon Blackburn, in his excellent, and incredibly comprehensive THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHYhttp://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5OTU0MTQzMA==) It’s puzzleing that the advocates of only humans having rights, continue to hold on to this obviously flawed basis, but I suspect that, at least many of them fear that, if it’s conceded that other animals have rights, all hell will break loose, for human rights. I don’t believe that that’s true, at all. I think that we humans are intelligent and moral enought to be able to accept the truth here, and treat all sentient animals, humans and otherwise, with the proper moral respect.
You’re also right that this lawsuit of PETA is going to go nowhere.
Pauld Reply:
October 27th, 2011 at 12:45 pm
@Bret Lythgoe, “I don’t believe that that’s true, at all. I think that we humans are intelligent and moral enought to be able to accept the truth here, and treat all sentient animals, humans and otherwise, with the proper moral respect.”
I find this to be a remarkable statement. In the world in which I live I don’t think it is true that all humans are intellgent and moral enough to treat even all human’s with proper moral respect. That is why violations of well-recognized human rights are pervasive.
If we extend “human” rights to animals, this will not result in the elevation of animal rights, but the dimunition of human rights. If equilency is recognized, I can imagine tyrants charged with violations of “human rights” for imprisoning and killing dissidents replying, “who are you to criticize me, when you allow Seaworld to imprison and enslave whales.”
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 8:05 am
@Pauld, With all due respect, I just don’t see how on earth it follows logically, that recognizing animal rights, will lead to a reduction in human rights. By what mechanism would this work? Certainly, the same reasoning that would prompt one to accept that animals have rights, would prompt one to accept human rights. So, logically, there’s no connection between granting animals rights, and continuing to recognize, fully, human rights.
But, perhaps what you’re really claiming is that, in practice, granting animals rights will result, or contribute to resulting, in a reduction of human rights. After all, humans are often not rational. But this isn’t true either. When one looks, historically, at animal treatment, if granting animals better treatment had any connection at all with human rights being reduced, we would see a correlation: the better animals are treated, the worse humans are treated. But this is not the case. Humans are treating each other, and animals better than they ever were, in history, which makes sense: when you recognize that people deserve better treatment, you’re going to recognize that animals do, as well, since animals and people are similar, in terms of their sentient states.
In fact, based on the fact that human and animal welfare improvement has coincided in history, I believe, contra Wesley, that we will see even better treatment of humans, when we grant animals rights.
Blake Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 10:17 am
@Bret Lythgoe,
@Pauld, With all due respect, I just don’t see how on earth it follows logically, that recognizing animal rights, will lead to a reduction in human rights.
Because the security and entitlement that the left wing takes as its due (and the due of every person, theoretically) is not a naturally-occurring state, but a condition that comes about only when it is paid for.
Parents traditionally make this huge sacrifice for their children, who by this sacrifice gain the ability to grow up in a sheltered environment.
On a larger scale, military personnel make this huge sacrifice on behalf of their society – dying if need be in order to protect the nation from threats.
Every citizen both gives and receives. Since the advent of the 20th century, some people are doing far more taking and others far more giving – the left wing advocates for policies that increasingly break up rights and responsibilities that traditionally “go together”. But just because the left wing does not see consequences does not mean they’re not there.
Giving rights to animals would be the ultimate in dividing rights from responsibilities, since even the most obedient and trainable of animals are not capable of even the basics of citizenship, while it would take massive human effort and sacrifice to provide even the most basic “human” rights to animals.
That effort and sacrifice would have to come from somewhere. Who would pay? Out of what fund? What other services or activities would be curtailed so that we could redirect services to the well-being of animals?
My guess is that the money would come out of the available “do gooder” funds – the money used to improve the life of these animals would come out of the same pool of resources that provides for anti-malaria research and saving 3rd world infants from starvation.
Or – more likely – nobody would do anything at all to increase the plight of animals, except when doing so is politically convenient for their agenda (that has nothing to do with animals per se) or when they’re on emotional crusades (which is what animal rights is really all about IMO: the affluent building a fantasy of a suffering-free world, which means clearing one’s own line of sight and who cares what goes on outside that boundary?)….instead of animals gaining rights, it would merely legitimize human rights violations: suffering is, after all, a part of nature, and we are no different from animals. Is it not normal for animals to eat one another?
If the animal rights advocates realized how much humans would really have to give up if animals were truly made their equals – whether we raise them or lower ourselves – I doubt they’d be in favor of such an asinine form of inequality.
Pauld Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
@Bret Lythgoe, “With all due respect, I just don’t see how on earth it follows logically, that recognizing animal rights, will lead to a reduction in human rights. ”
First, lets clarify one point. I support laws that are currently on the books that prohibit senseless cruelty to animals. However, such laws traditionally are not premised on the assertion that animals are entitled “rights”. Rather, laws against senseless cruelty to animals are justified because senseless cruelty is dehumanizing to human beings. Society is justified in prohibiting such cruelty because it is ultimately harmful to human society.
Next, I think it is straightforward to see how extending human rights to animals could lead to a dimuntion of human rights. Although philosophers have debated for centuries about the proper foundation for morals and ethics, as a practical matter most human beings decide what is right or wrong based on their moral intuition. The vast majority of human beings have moral intuitions that allow animals to be treated differently from human beings. For example, most people’s moral intutions would cause them to believe that it is wrong to murder a terminally ill human being, even though it would be perfectly acceptable and perhaps humane to “put down” a terminally ill pet without its consent. Most people would be aghast to kill a severely deformed infant, but would not have qualms about humanely putting down a severely deformed horse. Most people would recognize that enslaving a human being is morally wrong, but they would have no similar moral intuition against owning a horse as a “work” animal.
If the law extends to human rights animals, it will in the long term cause large adjustments to this moral intuition. It will be much easier for people to adjust their moral intuitions to the new societal norm by lowering the standards for treating humans than by increasing the standards for treating animals–it is much harder to extend the higher standard than to retreat to the lower standard.
Accordingly, if people begin to think humans and animals should be treated the same, I think it is more likely that moral intuitions will change to allow the killing of terminally ill human beings or defective infants, then vice versa. As evidence, I would cite Peter Singer, a prominent proponent of animal rights who argues in favor of infanticide.
padraig Reply:
October 27th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
@MS, re MS’s statement, “There can’t be reciprocity with retarded humans, either,” this is false. Depending on the level of disability most mentally disabled persons are able to contribute to various degrees to their own upkeep and can therefore reciprocate.
So maybe you were talking about the completely disabled, the comatose? (Got a friend that just came out of a coma yesterday, btw.) Well, that shows the problem with your other statement, “Sentience is the only characteristic necessary for the pre-legal right to not be regarded as property.” So comatose people could be property? Obviously not, or they’d be sold off for parts.
The truth is, the only characteristic necessary to be accepted as a part of human society is to be human by birth. And modern human society elects to extend basic protections to humans who are not currently capable of fully reciprocating, including the comatose, young children, the mentally handicapped, the physically handicapped, and many more. You got a problem with that?
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 2:07 am
@padraig, actually, for someone to properly “reciprocate” morally, would require one to understand what was being reciprocated. This requires one to, at a minimum, have a basic undertstanding of moral reasoning. Mentally handicapped people, in general, don’t possess this capacity to reason. They, as well as babies, fetuses, and small children cannot reciprocate morally. Perhaps the mildly mentally challenged could behave morally toward others, but not the more advanced cases.They cannot understand the moral reasoning process, upon which moral reciprocity is based. Therefore, if one wishes to be logically consistent, one must deny these particular people rights.
Of course, no decent person would do this, so he has to ignore the valid arguments against the reciprocity basis for morality. Perhaps the “exceptional species” shouldn’t
ignore valid arguments? Hey, I’m just saying.
What entitles a person (whether human or animal) to moral treatment, is his/her sentient states, or the potential for sentient states.
Blake Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 10:25 am
@Bret Lythgoe,
How do you draw the line between people who are capable of moral reasoning and those who aren’t?
What are the criteria?
Who is the judge?
This is one of the reasons why we do not separate mentally ill people as subhuman.
There are other reasons – starting with lack of motive: classifying humans with defects as non-human gains us little benefit, but great cost.
It is a logical fallacy to argue that if a category of things X has quality A, that every individual unit within category X must have quality A.
A fallacy of composition is when you infer that what is true of the category and what is true of an individual within the category must be identical – whether you’re arguing that because dogs are loyal, all dogs must therefore be loyal, or whether you’re arguing that because this dog is smart, therefore all dogs must be smart.
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
October 30th, 2011 at 11:49 pm
@Blake, The “fallacy of composition”, has no relevance here. If the criterion for rights is the capacity to reciprocate, and we can find beings who do not have the capacity to reciprocate, but we still grant them rights, we have a problem. You’ll have to either find a different criterion for granting rights, or you’ll have to not grant rights to the one’s who don’t possess the criterion in question. It’s just that simple.
padraig Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
@Bret Lythgoe, I did not say that members of human society HAVE to be able to fully reciprocate for their rights. I said that modern human society grants those rights on the basis of the individual being a human being, that is, having had human parents.
In fact my point is that reciprocation, or sentience, have nothing to do with being a member of human society. All that matters is that you’re human.
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 2:20 am
@padraig, also, you state that, we as a country, “decide” to give rights at birth. Is this arbitrary, in your view? In other words, is there a rational basis that the “deciders” rely on, to formulate this conclusion?
If not, and it’s purely arbitrary, then who’s to say that other “deciders” could not arbitrarily take these “rights” away. (not purely hypothetical, by the way. We had “deciders” who, on a purely arbitary basis, conclude that blacks and women did not have the same rights as white men. What moral bas would you have for denying that this was wrong, if it’s arbitrary?) What logical basis would you have for saying they’re wrong?
I’m trying to grapple with what basis you believe we have, for granting moral protection for certain classes of beings, Padraig. you say that society “elects” to grant protection at birth (to paraphrase your comments), but why is “birth” morally relevant? Is it more relevant, than, say, skin color, gender, height, weight, or what?
Since birth is purely arbitrary, (morally nonrelevant) then what basis is there for granting beings rights?
Perhaps those in power may choose, say, to elect granting rights at three years old. Would you object? If so, why?
padraig Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
@Bret Lythgoe, No, I said “modern human society elects to extend basic protections to humans who are not currently capable of fully reciprocating, including the comatose, young children, the mentally handicapped, the physically handicapped, and many more.” Nothing about countries or birth. We could elect to give rights to fetuses if we want, and you’d make many of this blog’s readers very happy. But we do not.
“If not, and it’s purely arbitrary, then who’s to say that other “deciders” could not arbitrarily take these “rights” away. ” Yep, they can and do on a daily basis. Still plenty of human slavery in the world today. My moral basis for opposing it is that they’re making these decisions about humans, and I’m a human, and I do not want human slavery to be a part of human society. I belong to human society so I (like to think I) have some say in it.
BTW, if you think birth is arbitrary, you’d make a lousy geneticist. ;)
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 2:22 am
@padraig, Sorry, you didn’t say “decide” you used the word “elect”, but it means the same thing.
Blake Reply:
October 28th, 2011 at 10:35 am
@Bret Lythgoe,
@padraig, Sorry, you didn’t say “decide” you used the word “elect”, but it means the same thing.
We made the decision that all humans are to be created equal.
We can’t even keep that vow yet.
A family that cannot take care of its own house is not doing any good by volunteering to resettle Borrioboola-Gha….
Betty Boop Reply:
October 30th, 2011 at 1:21 am
@MS, There is always reciprocity with a human being. Always.
October 27th, 2011 | 4:04 am
If the judge grants standing, will the whales be entitled to try the case before a jury of their peers?
October 27th, 2011 | 6:51 am
All this talk about personhood of animals and nothing about the personhood of an unborn child in the womb.
Certainly we need to respect animals but until we start respecting ALL human life, the problem will continue to endure.
October 27th, 2011 | 7:00 am
Man is the only creature whose nature it is to have been created in God’s image.
THAT is why the human person–each one–is unique in nature. And why animals can never have the rights that humans have. And why “slavery” does not apply to anything else but human beings, for example.
We use a number of substitute, non-religious concepts to illustrate human exceptionalism–eg rationality, esthetic sense, moral sensibilities, etc. But all these are illustrations, analogies, substitutes for the real essence of it. The ground of the matter is our created nature–the image of God.
“…endowed by their Creator…” is still the right way to express the roots of our rights.
Anyway, shame on any judge who does not dismiss this case out of hand.
October 27th, 2011 | 3:44 pm
‘Animals do not need and should not get “equality” with humans, because there cannot be reciprocity.’
There can’t be reciprocity with retarded humans, either. Does that mean that such people ought to be outside of the moral community?
There is no reason to change the rules of how things are categorized. The natural order works quite well; the history of man “improving” on the natural order has a history of not only failure, but of destructive consequences on a massive scale.
We categorize kin, allies, neutrals, rivals, and enemies by group, not by individual, for sound reasons.
There is no way to single out certain types of humans for sub-human treatment without suffering grave consequences.
The idea of treating things that are not human as being the same as human is not only stupid, but destructive.
If you are driving your car and you realize you are going to either hit a deer or hit a child, if you don’t recognize why the child is to be prioritized above the child, then I don’t trust you and I will guard myself against you: I view you as a threat. No matter how nice you are as a person, category rules exist because they work.
October 29th, 2011 | 1:07 am
@padraig
“that shows the problem with your other statement, ‘Sentience is the only characteristic necessary for the pre-legal right to not be regarded as property.’ So comatose people could be property?”
Let me re-state what I said: for the pre-legal right to not be treated as property, one need only have been born sentient.
So no, I don’t think that comatose people should be treated as property. They may not be subjectively aware at that particular moment, but they were born with (and still possess) the physiological mechanisms (for lack of a better term) associated with sentience. It logically follows that they therefore have a franchise interest in continuing to live.
@Blake
In a situation of genuine conflict, I’d pick the human over the non-human. But that fact is irrelevant to the animal rights question.
The “conflicts” that we have with non-humans are fabricated ones. We domesticate them and bring them into existence so that we can use them as our resources – and then we sit around and wonder what our moral obligations to them are.
If we took their interests seriously, we would stop bringing them into existence. We wouldn’t have domesticated animals anymore, and we would leave the ones in the wild alone. It wouldn’t be a question of what rights they would have, except for one right – the right not to be our property.
It’s that simple.
“The natural order works quite well”
And what ‘natural’ order might that be? The one of human over non-human, white over black, gays in the closet and women in the kitchen?
I’m not saying that you’re a racist/sexist/whatever, but the appeal to nature fallacy that you’ve made here can be (and often is) used for those purposes. Racists believe that their ideology is based on a ‘natural’ hierarchy between races; sexists claim that women are the ‘natural’ inferiors of men, and so on and so forth.
To say that we’ve been doing something for so long that we can afford to take it for granted does not say anything about the morality of the practice. We’ve been doing many objectionable things for a very long time. If we took the defeatist “it’s natural” attitude every time, we’d never progress as a species.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
October 29th, 2011 at 9:55 am
As I’ve told Gary Francione in debates, a fly is sentient. That is a very low threshold. It’s also made up whole cloth.
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
October 30th, 2011 at 11:01 pm
@Wesley J. Smith, But it’s not. Only animals with a sufficient level of neural complexity, are sentient. This is important. Because if one continues to believe that say, ants, flies, and all insects are sentient, similar to cows and pigs, and we all know that we cannot protect insects, there’s a tendency to throw our hands up, and, well, give up. If we cannot be consistent, by protecting the bugs (and we can’t), then why worry about protecting the other sentient beings, such as cows, monkeys, or pigs?
But, fortunately, things are not so dire. For a being to be conscious, or sentient, it must have neural connections sufficently numerous, for consciousness, or sentience, to emerge, and no insect possesses this. Their apparent teleological behavior is an illusion.
October 29th, 2011 | 2:59 pm
@Blake
In a situation of genuine conflict, I’d pick the human over the non-human. But that fact is irrelevant to the animal rights question.
It isn’t.
Because granting rights to animals would redistribute resources away from humans and in favor of animals, and would thus be a gain for animals at the expense of humans.
Human beings would die if animals had the same rights.
I don’t see any difference between hitting a child instead of a deer, on the one hand, vs. allowing a human to starve so that a coyote can eat.
The idea that we can all simply coexist nicely only exists in a world with infinite resources. This world has scarce resources, and there’s fighting over those resources.
October 29th, 2011 | 10:28 pm
Actually, Blake, we currently feed more than half of the grain we grow to farm animals. If we got rid of the farm animals and ate plants directly, we would be able to use land and resources much more efficiently, and feed far more humans.
As far as animals living in the wild are concerned, our only obligation towards them would be to not directly/intentionally harm them (e.g. no hunting/fishing). We wouldn’t be obligated to feed them, or whatever.
‘Animal rights’ basically means ‘we [humans] leave animals alone’.
October 30th, 2011 | 1:27 am
animals deserve to be treated respectfully, but they are not, and will never be, on level with human beings. They do not have free will (MS, even the mentally challenged have that) and we are over them, whether PETA likes it or not.
It’s okay to eat them as long as they’re taken out mercifully. Zoos and aquariums allow us to learn more about them. Nothing wrong with that as long as their needs are respected and the environment is as close to their natural environment as possible. Not sure about the animal tricks,though.
October 30th, 2011 | 9:10 pm
Actually, Blake, we currently feed more than half of the grain we grow to farm animals. If we got rid of the farm animals and ate plants directly, we would be able to use land and resources much more efficiently, and feed far more humans.
While I agree we should not feed grain to ruminants, that’s totally irrelevant to my argument – and not just because because farms need animals to survive.
Your argument falls apart if you count all the inputs and outputs, including all the fertilizers, textiles, and other inedible products those animals produce more efficiently than they could be grown).
But even if your point had any validity: food isn’t what’s scarce. We could easily feed the whole world if we could deploy our resources efficiently.
But land is scarce, and animals take a lot of land – so I guess you think that in those parts of the world where the most impoverished people in the world are in conflict with the animals in the conflict over land use, you’re in favor of the humans dying? How many is an acceptable loss? Please remember to number in millions.
And many resources that are scarce have to be harvested from the same land that the animals use. Are you willing to give up travel and using your computer because we can’t harvest fuels?
Your knowledge of economics is inadequate to even discuss the problem beyond this point – but rest assured: there are many consequences, all of them unpleasant.
October 30th, 2011 | 9:28 pm
actually, for someone to properly “reciprocate” morally, would require one to understand what was being reciprocated. This requires one to, at a minimum, have a basic undertstanding of moral reasoning. Mentally handicapped people, in general, don’t possess this capacity to reason.
But these people also don’t have full rights under the law.
Consider this New York Times article:
Parents Defend School’s Use of Shock Therapy
Children and incapacitated people are assigned guardians to care for them. Who will be the guardian for the animals, and who will pay for this? With what resources?
Rights and responsibilities are related and must stay together for a healthy social unit (whether we’re talking about a family or a nation).
It is the attempt to break the link that joins rights and responsibilities that is causing the current problems in our society, both economically and politically. There is no way to have the good parts of what you want without also accepting the bad – unless you stick someone else with those: you the rights, he gets the responsibilities. You get the privileges, he gets the obligations. That’s not just.
That is why reciprocity is essential: because giving rights to things that can’t also accept the responsibilities that go with those rights is nonsensical…
…or would be nonsensical except we know there will be (are) people who will take it upon themselves to speak on behalf of the animals and trees, and we know these people will claim the right to manage the world’s resources. Because making decisions about how other people ought to behave is fun. The problem is they’re not volunteering for the corresponding responsibility: they’re going to only want the parts where they get to boss other people around – on behalf of Shamu, of course – while “someone else” will take care of all the costs and the problems and the conflicts….so…the question is always this….who is going to be volunteered to be the “someone else”?
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