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Originally Posted by bryantm3
their priorities are out of place. i'm not saying that less important issues aren't valid, but honestly, we need to focus on more pressing issues affecting our own species before we start fretting about canines.
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I just don't buy that either/or, I'm afraid.
Are the priorities of a veterinary surgeon all out of place? 8+ hours a day spent treating sick animals? How does that compare with someone like me who makes websites look pretty for a living? What about people who run a kennel or a cattery for a living?
Who has got their priorities most wrong - the activist devoting his life to campaigning for dog welfare, or the person who works 9-5 ensuring that the toilet roll we wipe our asses with has a figure of a dog embossed into it?
The way I see it, society is big enough for the animal rights campaigners and the anti-genocide campaigners, it's big enough for the AIDS research campaigners and the Alzheimers research campaigners, it's big enough for anthropologists, zoologists and botanists.
Be realistic. War and genocide are still happening, yet we're not all going to become politicians and campaigners. I have the utmost respect for people who do, but if someone instead focuses their life on animal rights, that's certainly no less important than if they focus it on graphic design or creating music.
Suffering isn't a human-only construct, even if we understandably elevate humans in importance. Push rarely comes to shove in that sense. I have nothing but respect for the decision by someone to devote themselves to the care and welfare of an animal. In my eyes, they're already doing a more profound thing than perhaps 90% of the rest of us.