JackMagist;1591500 said:
Those people in Eastern Europe would laugh at our outrage over the dogfighting because they have very real Human Rights issues to be outraged over; it is a matter of perspective.
True enough, Jack, and the North American perspective on pets is probably unique in the history of mankind. I've known folks from other cultures who run the gamut from bemused to horrified over pets with diamond studded collars, PETA activists who'd rather see humans die than monkeys and lab rats used for animals experiments, and statistics on child malnutrition vis a vis the lives of pampered pets.
From the perspective of much of the world, our 'tudes about animal life is flat out wacky.
Added to the cultural divide is the range of perspectives on the treatment of animals, from absolute vegans to those like myself who have no quarrels with animals used for protein sources, be it dogs in China or guinea pigs like my own pets on dinner tables in Peru..all the way to those who feel animal life holds no sanctity whatsoever. Added to the individual confusion are the cultural norms, so that I could come home absolutely SICK a few weeks ago because I accidently ran over a squirrel, then a few hours later have a hamburger.
And you're right, imo, about the home values, be they rural or urban, that have traditionally supported animal fighting. We are all socialized as children and it often takes sustained conscious effort to retrain our values. For every person who instinctually feels it is savage and inhumane to fight animals, you will find many more around the world who have no compunctions over it.
So it's a conundrum all right, fraught with charges of hypocrisy and inconsistent appliciation of life-valuing.
As aborrhent as the practice of dog fighting is to me, I can understand it's cultural context, whether it's inner city bad dude enterprising, or rural entertainment for a dead Saturday night. Too many people from too many backgrounds have engaged in it over the years for me to feel superior, or willing to tag it as the vice of any particular culture. Of course, it's an illegal enterprise but that doesn't necessarily put the stamp of illegitimacy on it for everyone.
But I cannot see the actual execution of dogs, or ANY animals, by brutally, hands-on repellant means such as hanging, electrocution, or head slamming as anything less than pathological behavior of the most extreme sort. The sort of behavior, in fact, that shrinks say separates sociopaths from folks with normal human empathy, and which is supposedly a dead giveaway for serial killer tendencies. The torturing of animals by children is a base clue that Johnny has problems....BIG ones. And when it is done by adults, I think we are seeing the full flowering of outright depravity, an insensitivity to pain so profound that it would mark an individual as seriously lacking in normal feeling.
I guess whatever one thinks of pitting animals against one another to fight to the death for sport/monetary gain, the slaughter of animals in highly 'personal' ways makes just about anyone shudder.
It's sick...and to imagine Michael Vick is that depraved is hard to fathom.
