Who are they trying to reach with this? If PETA is attempting to convert people to veganism or, at the very least, get carnivores to think twice about eating meat, they are going about it the wrong way. The problem with such activism is it preaches only to the choir. No sane person is going to be moved by an ad equating the tragic beheading of a young man with eating breakfast sausage. . .Agreed. I love Wendy's new "meatatarian" commercial--more so knowing it enrages hypocritical PETA people.
The message is lost on all but those who are already convinced. So what good is it? Is destroying property and setting fires for your cause going to convince people to back it, or will the act overshadow the meaning? If standing out in front of a circus telling small children that they support the death of animals is only going to irritate people, why do it? Wouldn’t it be better to present your message in a way that’s kinder and gentler? After all, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, right? (Sorry PETA. I forgot honey equals enslavement.)
So I have to wonder, are these organizations really trying to recruit people with ads like this, or are they just talking — and preening — amongst themselves? Because if these groups want more people to listen to them, they are going to have to speak to us rationally. We may not convert, but at least we won’t write off their cause as one made up of lunatics and hypocrites. Benevolent names like Freedom Fighters isn’t going to keep people from seeing through the “we care” front they put up when they resort to acts of violence, eco-terrorism, or even mentally assaulting the children whose future they proclaim to fight for.
When I first saw the linked TheTruth.com ad, I was sitting in my living room with five teenage boys. At the end one of them said, “These commercials make me want to start smoking just to spite them.” The other boys laughed and agreed.
This is the reaction to extreme activism. I know every time I see a PETA ad I have this strong desire to go eat a rare steak. I confess: I had frog legs at dinner last night while I was discussing this subject, and just talking about PETA’s previous campaigns made me enjoy those legs even more.
(via Instapundit)
3 comments:
> they are going to have to speak to us rationally.
And therein lies the rational flaw with this argument.
For that expectation to be rational, one has to assume that PETA has a rational position in the first place, that animals have just as many rights as humans, that animals are equal to, if not better than, humans.
PETA rails against the inherent design of the universe -- All things feed off the death of other things: The Second Law of Thermodynamics, aka "Entropy".
Carnivores and omnivores feed off herbivores and plants. Herbivores feed off plants. Plants feed off the slow, inevitable death of the sun.
Life is itself a localized violation of the entropic principle -- it is a localized organization in direct opposition to the greater disorganization around it.
In other words, PETA is railing at something as basic as the Law of Gravity.
This is further supported in humans in the fact that humans cannot get all the amino acids they need to survive from plants. We are meant to eat animal flesh.
This, too, is supported by a basic survival fact:
If you are stuck in the wild, and if you kill an animal and eat it, you probably won't get sick, if the animal wasn't sick in the first place. Humans can, without concern, eat the flesh for 95% of the animal species out there.
Contrast this with plants -- if you don't *know* you can eat it, chances are, you can't. Humans can safely ingest not more than 20% of all plant species. The rest offer varying degrees of poisoning. Again -- humans are meant to eat animals as well as plants.
Finally, PETA's basic position is itself also flawed by being animal-centric. Why do animals have more rights than plants? What gives them the right to kill a plant species and eat its flesh? I wonder how many PETA supporters decorate their homes with the severed sex organs of plants? Or who would put a picture of a plant's sex organs on their walls, but never a human's sex organs? Or even an animals? Right -- "plants are lesser beings"?
How are they better than the rest of us, again?
Clearly, if they followed their arguments to their logical conclusion, they'd starve themselves to death.
And by some lights, in view of the lack of a legitimate basis for fool killing, that would be A Real Good Thing.
Q.E.D. -- It is irrational to expect rational arguments from PETA -- they are inherently irrational in the basic position they start from on multiple levels... GIGO applies.
Garrison Keillor once observed that he liked vegetarians because they look...tasty. I think that's about right.
> Garrison Keillor once observed that he liked vegetarians because they look...tasty. I think that's about right.
Granola eating, unshaved-underarm, generally unwashed(water conserving) undermuscled stringbeans look tasty?
Not much on fatted calves, then, are we?
:oP
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