Paddyjohn said:
Your analytically objective way of deconstructing everything is starting to ring hollow with me, Obyvatel. You objectify the life out of everything. I haven't seen anything of your emotional centre. Maybe I just haven't come across posts that show it.
"One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."
Paddyjohn, it's good to know and remember that those who express emotions overly and constantly are usually not the same who actually have deep feelings and emotions, and vice versa. In short, what I think you take for an 'emotional center' is just intellectual center driven by emotions, in other words: emotional thinking and stolen energy.
And hence we are at Saint-Exupery's precious gem, another quote comes to mind:
“I am looking for friends. What does that mean -- tame?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties."
"To establish ties?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world... "
“People have forgotten this truth," the fox said. "But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed."
That's not an easy subject, but I think that's where the confusion comes from, at least partly. You become responsible for what you've tamed. There are different types of bond we develop with pets and with farm or wild animals. Different contract, if you will, and different obligations.
The whole thing is not fully pure and objective, actually it's pretty much a mess. We tend to like cute animals more than the ones we perceive as ugly, the same way as pretty people with symmetrical facial features are in general liked and trusted more. That's what Nature did to us all so to help the species survive. We can and should use our brains and make corrections in specific situations, but we can't erase it from our minds completely because it's hard-wired. Denying the bias is not a good solution either.
Another tricky issue is killing, and death in general. For a normal human being killing is never fun. If it becomes fun, it points to pathology or ponerization. But thank to our sick culture the issue became a somewhat different problem with a lot of confusion involved. On the one hand, death has been pretty much removed from our sight and life, hidden in hospitals or similar institutions, there is that cult of youth, disregard for the old ones. Most people want to forget that they will die one day. And what can be a better guidepoint and alarm clock than that? On the other hand, we are being constantly flooded with images of bloodshed and killing, day after day after day. How sick it is? How are there still some sane people on the planet? I really don't know, but I'm glad they are. But it's not surprising some of us feel confused, at least not to me.
Coming back to the problem at hand.
There are zoos, that's a fact whether we like it or not. For me personally, the world would be a little bit better without them. But they are and the people who run zoos are responsible for the animals and their well-being, at least in my eyes. If you don't need more giraffes of that blood line, don't let them breed. It's that simple. Saying that one wants them to be able to feel the instinct and have "a little bit of fun" is so thoughtless that I have no words for it. If you've made a mistake and let the baby giraffe come to this world, take a good care of it, that's your dammed responsibility and if you have to pay for it, that's okay. We all pay for our mistakes one way or another. But don't make the giraffe pay with its life.
As for the children, I think that it is completely different thing when a child grows up at a farm and different for a 'city kid'. For the latter, much better education would be spending vacations in a countryside on farms. If the kids in the zoo weren't traumatized by the show, they were probably already ponerized and stripped from their sensitivity. I think that for a healthy child, they need to be slowly and gently introduced in the subject of dying and killing to develop a possibly healthy understanding of the problem. I know, not really possible in a culture where one of first kid's toys are play stations or whatever they get to keep themselves busy.
FWIW
