Books promoting AW, AR, and Vegetarianism/Veganism

[TheNoNamedOne]

From the conversations people have engaged me in here, it comes across, or seems to come across that most here are not really familiar with some basic phylosophy of animal advocate/protection groups and their leaders. Perhaps I am the first person that has ever stayed around long enough to debate in depth on these poinst with some of you here. I am not sure. Also, I quite understand that many probably just are not interested enough to pay for or invest one's time in reading on these topics. That is fine, too, but if one were not interested in the topic, it does cause me to wonder why one spends so much on those topics trying to discuss them with me.

Anyway, for what it is worth and for those of you who may be willing to read a book about these topics, I am creating this thread to discuss and recommend books on animal protection movements.

Though before I list any specific ones, I first want to ask Eelecurb to recommend a book dealing mostly with Animal Welfare, since he has for the most part described himself as being concerned with that. I respect that and am interested in any book that has caused him to think more deeply on the topic.

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Working with lab animals in university is what first got me into these issues. I continued to work with animals for a time after school. This was the bible for those in the field back then:

GUIDE TO THE CARE AND USE OF EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS (http://www.ccac.ca/en/CCAC_Programs/Guidelines_Policies/GUIDES/ENGLISH/TOC_V2.HTM)

What got me to consider AR more was this book (http://www.jeffreymasson.com/animal-books/pig-who-sang.html), which I came across while browsing through the new acquisitions cart at the local library where I used to live.

[TheNoNamedOne]

E, thanks for that first link. I am going to check that out more later. Looks pretty exhaustive.

I just read your second link, The Pig that Sang to the Moon" about 6 months ago. I liked that. Lots of individual stories and facts and figures. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it was not footnoted. It would have been much more useful if it had been, because sometimes I like to track down and confirm what is put forward.

Hold on. Soon I will post a book on AR that I suggest and hope you (or anyone else) would look into and consider purchasing.

[TheNoNamedOne]

This is the book that kick started the modern animal rights movement in the early 70's, Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation."

http://www.petacatalog.org/images/200-BK390.jpg

He updated it just about 5 years ago. This is also the book that caused Ingrid NewKirk to leave her job as an animal welfare case worker that prosecuted abuse cases and launch PETA.

There are a few things that ARists take issue with it as the movement has evolved, but it still forms one of the most basic phylosophies and foundation for animal rights. It mostly uses utilitarianism in support of AR.

I highly recommend this book as a good place to start for those wanting to understand a little bit more about the movement from one of the most influential persons of it. In some future posts in this thread, I will quote a few things from it.

E, have you read this? Undoubtedly you have heard and are aware of it. If not, sorry for that presumption.

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

I haven't read that one yet, though the author is really famous. I recall he gave positive reviews to Masson's work.

[TheNoNamedOne]

Here is an excerpt from ch. 1 (http://www.harperacademic.com/catalog/excerpt_xml.asp?isbn=0060011572) of Mr. Singer's "Animal Liberation." He starts off with addressing the oft heard absurdity directed at animal rights and puts into historical perspective with a comparison of the ridicule that former demands for rights in society be extended to other members:

"Animal Liberation" may sound more like a parody of other liberation movements than a serious objective. The idea of "The Rights of Animals" actually was once used to parody the case for women's rights. When Mary Wollstonecraft, a forerunner of today's feminists, published her Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, her views were widely regarded as absurd, and before long an anonymous publication appeared entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. The author of this satirical work (now known to have been Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher) tried to refute Mary Wollstonecraft's arguments by showing that they could be carried one stage further. If the argument for equality was sound when applied to women, why should it not be applied to dogs, cats, and horses? The reasoning seemed to hold for these "brutes" too; yet to hold that brutes had rights was manifestly absurd. Therefore the reasoning by which this conclusion had been reached must be unsound, and if unsound when applied to brutes, it must also be unsound when applied to women, since the very same arguments had been used in each case.

...The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups. Whether we should do so will depend on the nature of the members of the two groups. The basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. Equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights.

Follow the link above for an extended excerpt that this one is taken from.

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Easy there, TP. A careful read of that single extended excerpt will nullify practically all of the arguments against AR we've seen on this forum...

[TheNoNamedOne]

Specifically what, E? Did you click on the link to read the extended version?

However, like I mentioned previously, there are a few things that today's ARists take issue with with Mr. Singer.

Anyway, I am interested to hear what point you feel is damaging to his argument or AR in general.

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Huh? I was saying that extended (yup, read it) excerpt was so lucid & logical that it nullifies most of the arguments against AR. <<<i.e. it makes a powerful positive case for AR>>>

Absolutely nothing I've seen on the against side around here can stand up to that single exerpt. Not one person who disapproves of animals rights on this forum has written anything at all that can counter that.

I'll have to read the whole book to find out where he and other AR activists differ.

[TheNoNamedOne]

Oh, E! Sorry about that. My bad. lol. Had just eaten lunch and that sleepy feeling must have just caused me to pass over a few key words of your post.

[Fonze]

:barf::barf::barf::barf::barf::barf::barf::barf::b arf::barf::barf:

[TheNoNamedOne]

What and why are you barfing at, Fonze? Try to be articulate so that we are clear on what exactly you are referring to. Thanks.

[Fonze]

this proves the only 2 people who give aREAL shit about the issues you bring up. The rest just comment on your comments. Please please no lecture, keep up the good fight.

[TheNoNamedOne]

Ok, I see, Fonze. You were not talking about the books being discussed here or the content of their excerpts, what they relate to, or how they can affect others, like what the topic of this thread was discussing, and instead you were talking about just 2 people who have similar interests in the topic and that others do not care about them or the topic.

Read the OP and get back on topic if you would like to post again in this thread. I would appreciate it. Really isn't that difficult for you to ignore if you can't stay on topic.

No biggy, though. Everyone once in a while here and there jumps in with an off topic comment. But it is a courtesy to not make multiple posts doing so in the same thread -- particularly when asked to let the topic get back on topic. Thanks.

[Fonze]

fine i'll leave it alone.

[TheNoNamedOne]

Looking further into Mr. Singer's Ch.1 of Animal Liberation (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060011572/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex/102-9892502-5229711?ie=UTF8&p=S00S#reader-link) with another excerpt:

Thomas Jefferson, who was responsible for writing the principle of the equality of men into the American Declaration of Independence, saw this point. It led him to oppose slavery even though he was unable to free himself fully from his slaveholding background. He wrote in a letter to the author of a book that emphasized the notable intellectual achievements of Negroes in order to refute the notion of the then common view that they had limited intellectual capacities:

Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I myself have entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding alotted to them by nature, and to find that they are on a par with ourselves.... but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superiour to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property of persons of others.

Similarly, when in the 1850s the call for women's rights was raised in the United States, a remarkable black feminist named Sojourner Truth made the same point in more robust terms at a feminist convention:

They talk about this thing in the head; what do they call it?["Intellect," whispered someone nearby.] That's it. What's that got to do with women's rights or Negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?

It is on this basis that the case against racism and the case against sexism must both ultimately rest; and it is in acccordance with this principle that the attitude that we may call "speciesism," by analogy with racism, must also be condemned. Speciesism -- the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term -- is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species. It should be obvious that the fundamental objections to racism and sexism made by Thomas Jefferson and Sojourner Truth apply equally to speciesism. If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Interesting TP. I think it's in human nature to exploit. Those who have a way with words exploit those who don't. Those who are strong exploit those who are weak. Those who are rich and powerful exploit those who are poor and downtrodden. Those who are sober exploit those who are drunk. Am I too cynical, or is this not some sort of defining feature of homo sapiens?

[TheNoNamedOne]

I agree, E, it is most definitely our nature to exploit. But it is also our nature to philosophize and build laws that seek to do away with exploitation that piques at our intuition that suffering is wrong and we are bothered by it -- despite whatever profit we are making and benefiting from at the moment, or prior to a change in the status quo.

NOt only do the laws that have come about to protect humans rest on this notion, but also those that have crept in to protect animals as well. Our intuition cringes and tells us something just is not right about bear baiting, dogfighting, etc... albeit, different societies and their institutions like those that banned slavery in different countries, march at different speeds.

[TheNoNamedOne]

To add, I would like to say I think it is human nature to subvert/affect human nature -- hence our laws to affect our will and passions at any given moment.

[TheNoNamedOne]

Dominion, The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, is a book that focuses on animal welfare and the Christian obligation toward the treatment of God's creatures through the act of mercy. Though mainly AW, it also touches on AR and vegetarianism. It also takes issue with Peter Singer's Animal Liberation on some points.

This is more of an argument from the emotional point rather than the phylosophical and legalistic approach of the leading AR works.

http://www.prijatelji-zivotinja.hr/gif/dominion.jpg
Check out other reviews here (http://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Power-Suffering-Animals-Mercy/dp/0312319738/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3809792-7832021?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190991325&sr=1-1).


http://www.lanternbooks.com/blog/images/matthew_scully.jpg
Mr. Scully was a speechwriter for President Bush, and many of his speeches were written for Bush up until and right after 9-11. Then he took time off to finish his book and to promote it.

[TheNoNamedOne]

From here I will list some excerpts from Dominion:

I know that vegetarianism runs against mankind's most casual assumptions about the world and our place within it. And I know that factory farming is an economic inevitability, not likely to end anytime soon. But I don't answer to inevitabilities, and neither do you. I don't answer to the economy. I don't answer to tradition and I don't answer to Everyone. For me, it comes down to a question of whether I am a man or just a consumer. Whether to reason or just to rationalize. Whether to heed my conscience or my every craving, to assert my free will or just my will. Whether to side with the powerful and comfortable or with the weak, afflicted, and forgotten. (p. 325)

Here he is denying the appeal to tradition and refuting the phylosophy of hedenism.

I do like to think of myself more than just a consumer at the whim of my cravings.

[kombu_kid]

I always wonder, and this may be off-topic, why so many preach, ponder and read books about the rights of animals, many in Hollywood too, because it's the hip thing to be involved in, and why you don't see anyone other than religious folk concerned about the millions of babies being aborted. I mean, it seems to me that the same liberals who scream about animal rights, even to the point of refusing to eat dairy products, usually are adamantly pro-choice, even to the point of approving of partial birth abortions. It's totally insane and the ultimate in hypocrisy in my opinion.

Maybe the reason there aren't more people willing to read books on the subject of AR is because their mind has already formed an opinion about it and they look at some of the more hardcore followers as borderline psychos.

Did YOU, TP, need to read a stack of religious books to form an opinion about religion before you gleefully slammed Mother Teresa with the moniker of "atheist"?

It makes me wonder how "liberal" all the AR people would be if we could suck cute, living baby seals out of their mother's tummy. Baby seals that could live on their own at that point. I'm not against being humane towards animals, it's just gotten so trendy and overblown, while to me, we're in the midst of a modern holocaust as far as abortion goes.

[ja_Patriot]

kombu_kid

Perhaps you'd like to create a thread called Liberals, Animal Rights and Abortion.

Since Roe v Wade, guess how many babies have been aborted?

Over 40,000,000. In 35 years.

Our growing economy shouldn't being needing migrant workers to prosper. But of course you won't hear about it in the main stream media.

You're on the right track. How would these activists handle the slaughter of 40,000,000 animals (3,000 puppies, cubs, ponies, kittens per day) because their owners find them undesirable? They'd go lunatic and berserk.

And, ironically, doesn't PETA kill over 85% of animals entrusted to its care? (The number aborted above wouldn't include the adult animals killed by PETA.)


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[TheNoNamedOne]

kombu_kid

Perhaps you'd like to create a thread called Liberals, Animal Rights and Abortion. ...

You're on the right track. How would these activists handle the slaughter of 40,000,000 animals (3,000 puppies, cubs, ponies, kittens per day) because their owners find them undesirable? They'd go lunatic and berserk.


I will answer this real quick on the new thread created for it so that this thread can get back to mainly focusing on the OP and book excerpts and points from those excerpts listed here.