Ethics vs. Sadism

As I was going through The Anthology again, I came across the definition of sadism. It's said that it is "the unconscious impulse to acquire unrestricted power over another person," but instead of just people, I believe that we're doing the same thing to animals (485). We the people are slaughtering animals, we are controlling what they do, what they eat, where they live, and most importantly, how long they live. What makes us so special to be able to do such things to others? I believe its because its our intelligence, something that we have way more than any other living organism in the universe, but yes. I believe that we the people can be described as sadistic because we are "inflicting pain [and] suffering" to people as well as animals (485). There is nothing that the animals can do because they don't know any better, which is why I believe it is wrong to do unethical things to the unaware animals.

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Closely associated with sadism is animal cruelty. In The Four Stages of Cruelty, written by William Hogarth, he talks about the first stages of cruelty by providing examples such as "burning the eyes out of a bird with a hot needle" or how "a pair of fighting cats are hung by their tails and taunted by a jeering group of boys" (490). This reminds me a lot of what I call humans. It reminds me of some of my friends. Some of my friends in the past used to play with CO2 powered BB guns and what they do sometimes is go bird hunting. Why do they do such a thing? It is because they are bored. Little do they know, birds have feelings too. They have emotion and feel pain like we do. I never got myself down to do such a thing. I still wonder how they could do such a thing though. It's such a cruel act. The bird gets shot down and is left struggling on the floor. What can it do then? Its either wait for its death from food and water deprivation or get eaten by bugs or other animals. It's a horrible death. We would never want that to happen to us so why should it happen to them? There should be no reason for our animal cruelty.

Reading on, I find that the “Supreme Court overturns [an] anti-animal cruelty law in [the] First Amendment case,” something in which I find to spark a flame within me (502). Who in their right mind would do such a thing? Who in their right minds would allow animals to be “crushed to death by women wearing stiletto heels” just for a “certain sexual fetish”? (502). Honestly, those are the sorts of things that make me mad. These are the things that anger me the most and actually make me want to get my opinion out there. Usually I don’t like to butt into such controversial topics, but this is just plain wrong in my opinion. People who get aroused from such acts are sick in my opinion. Why does this anger me so much? It’s because the animal is “intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed” (502). How would you like it if someone decided to crush you to death, say toss you in a dump truck and watch you get crushed while I get pleasure from it? You wouldn’t so why do it to animals? There is no reason for this period.

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Citations:

The Anthology

Images:

[1] http://www.slasherama.com/images/nasties/sadism.jpg

[2] http://dingo.care2.com/pictures/c2c/share/12/125/540/1254003_370.jpg