I find it very embarassing to be human, at times.
That doesn’t get me out of it.
Perhaps the error was in my wording of the post, or in your reading of it. I’m going to lean towards my wording, as that’s usually the cause for misunderstanding in these sorts of things. But in either instance, I’m not saying that wolves shouldn’t be protected. I’m saying that attacking PEOPLE to protect them is a dick move.
I’m not really sure where you’re getting that I somehow think they don’t need protecting because they’re bigger than herbivores…? Do you actually know what the theory of charismatic megafauna is? I’m guessing you didn’t check it out. So here, let me do that for you.
The theory of charismatic megafauna is essentially that conservation causes will draw more funding and attention by focusing on animals that receive a lot of public attention (because they’re pretty, or ‘noble’, or whatever - the polar bear is an example of this) and can thereby put that towards conserving species every bit as in danger, but not as ~*pretty*~.
Does it mean wolves don’t need protecting? Fuck no, of course they do. Does it mean that their lives are somehow more valuable in the ecosystem that of, say, an endangered prey animal?
Of course not.
Again, likely my error in wording, but where the heck did you get size out of that…?
As for the point of humans being more important to me than animals, I’m really not touching this here. There’s been enough said on it lately on a certain vegan blog, and I don’t care to drag that mess into this at this moment.
So as for my personal, highly speciesist opinion:
Humans and their welfare will always be more important to me than animals and their welfare because they’re my people.
I’m not a dog. I’m not a cranefly.
I’m human. And while advances are being made in the understanding of animal communication, and while it’s very clear that certain species (whales being the most prominent) have developed advanced methods of communication between individuals — I can’t communicate with them.
Humans are the only species that I’m capable of interacting with at a higher level. For all of the meaning and significance I can get out interactions with animals (because don’t get me wrong, that can be some significant shit) they won’t and will never be able to communicate with me in the same way that I can, human being to human being.
Are we the most destructive, angriest, meanest little advanced primates on the planet?
Well, yeah. That’s how our ancestors survived to get us to this point.
But if there’s one thing that enabled that, moreso than our sheer nastiness at times, it’s our ability to adapt without the alteration of our genetic code.
We’re versatile, and we innovate. We change.
Our ability to change our environments is in large part what got us to this point, where the earth’s health and those of our fellows on it is so precariously balanced. But it’s also what can get us out of it.
Maybe I’m just too optimistic, but I think personally that we owe it to the world we’ve fucked up to un-fuck it.
And as fluffy as that wolf puppy might be, it doesn’t have the power to change that at the level that humans are capable of.
So there. My personal feelings towards humans being more important to me than animals are primarily selfish, assholey, speciest ones. I like people.
But they’re also environmental ones.
And trying to distance yourself from your humanity isn’t going to solve anything. Especially as you sit in your human-constructed home typing on your human-constructed computer on the resource-hogging internet. :)
Hey guys, I’m going to be blacking this out for the PIPA thing in a few hours. Just a heads-up.
