Zoophile Rights Day Podiumsdiskussion 2015 Outro

Yes, I still have a little food for thought, which ame to my mind

with this topic, and I viewed some youtube

videos and one of these videos I have seen

was the philosopher Daniel Danett, who told

that neurobilogists expressed the theory that

there is no free will in humans. So it happened

that we made progress in brain research and

I do not want to enter the details now.

Anyway, by new techniques of neuro-imaging

many things today can be seen.

How new connections in the brain are built

and so on, and from all these new findings they

they tried to find

the free will and did not

find it, and by this they concluded:

Free will does not exist, it is

an illusion. Then the philosopher claimed

thet from his point of view this is false.

I myself see it the same way,

there is something like free will and

if we can not prove it with our means of investigation

this does not mean that it does not exist.

This only means that our means of investigation are

not sufficient to find it,

but the conclusion I consider to be false

What do I want to say? The question is:

you can define by the free will whether

humans really have character,

that they are persons and so on and

similar I want to do this for animals.

The question, whether an animal is a person

or has a character. I do not want to

lump this together. With this you can also

answer, whether an animal has a free

will or not.

Following new results of the neurobiologists,

neither animal nor man has

a free will and this classification is

futile following

these findings.

Somewhen I chatted with a pal

abot the topic: Which person is most close

to you?

And I said: My rat.

Then he said: I would not see

the rat as a person.

Then I began to think whether

some humans see animals as

persons and some don't.

What is the reason for this difference?

Do we need this distinction, and why?

Last christmas, this is now

about a month ago, I came a little closer to

the solution. My grandma told that she

has problems with mice in the

barn , because they built a net

somewhere during the winter, so she

put toxic bait there to master this

problem.

And for me, who is living

with rats this sonded like:

You could say, in the barn a homeless

has moved in

to shelter from the cold,

and of course

I had to poison him.

When I tell this I see someone

is already laughing.

Told this way it

sounds very cruel. Without further thinking

making cold who is only looking

for a little warmth.

On the other hand: If it is about

an animal, it is somehow normal.

Especially an animal you are

used to poison like mice.

That's the way it is.

The I realized:

If I have two behaviours

which are identical, where only the

victim is different, suddenly one behaviour is

cruel, and the other behaviour is more

or less normal.

There is a contradiction in this.

My grandma is a lovely person

and I would not say she defines herself

by the cruelness she

causes these animals.

For her this is simply

something that has to be done.

Apart of this, she is one

of the nicest persons ever.

Then it came to my mind:

Could it be that we have to

make the distinction that animals are

something different than we are,

or no persons, or of less value, so that

we can mask our own cruelness?

If we say we are cruel to some

and very kind to others, this does not

sound consistent.

But when we say one is of another

category than the other, and are

applying double standards, then we

can integrate

our behaviours.

It might be that someone does

something cruel on the one hand and

is a nice person

on the other hand.

The more I thought about it,

the more I ralized

that this scheme is to

be found

all over the world.

For example in economy.

We live in an economical

very good land, but on

the costs of countries in the third world.

But we do not realize

this, we fade out that we

inflict atrocities

for our

good life.

We have the mechanism of suppression

which enables

for us a good life.

The mechanism makes us

miss the

consquences of our actions.

Then the question came to me:

Might it be that we classify

many animals as of low value

to appease our consciousnesses,

not to be force to live with the

cruelness we

do to the world.

With this thought

I want to close

Thank you

Dr. Buschmann out of the off: This is

called cognitive dissonance, a

known phenomenon in man.

For example there are simultaneoulsy

animals as source of food in factory

farms and on the

other hand a

pet dog, which is no

match. A divergence of

reasonings which

are not comaptible, simply

to appease the consciousness to be able

to better live with this.

The same scheme you can find in speciism,

racism, group building, in economical

and cultural differences. This is very widespread.

Thank you for the expert's addition.

For me it was the moment

I realized this contrast.

Thank you