The Value Of One Life Over Another

Recent news has some people asking the question "Why is a human life more important than an animal life?".




Also, does age play a part in valuing one life over another? Is the life of a 3 year old human more important than the life of a 17 year old human? Is the 17 year old life of more value than a 40 year old life?

 

I would say none have priority over another, unless quality of life was a factor, then and only then would it become different, in my mind that is.

 

If required to make a decision to save only one of the lives in question, could you?

 

Yes, I think if I had to, I would.

For instance..just random this!

If the 17 year old needed a heart, and the three year old was on life support, both mine, I would have to know one could help the other, that there would, with no intervention, be either...yes, I would.

 

I think it is a simple matter of being instinctually inclined towards self preservation, and since we are a social species that self preservation extends to our species as a whole.

Intellectually I don't think human life is more important than an animal, but on a base emotional, instinctual level I would rescue a human over an animal. And i would rescue a child over an adult, but I would probably rescue an elderly person over a middle aged person simply because the elderly are more helpless.

 

Why do we ask ourselves such questions, to torture ourselves?

 

So the more helpless one is the one you'd choose in those circumstances you listed.


That adds something to think about with Isiah vs Harambe. Isiah (3) was clearly helpless.

 

No; to better understand know ourselves.

 

car plunges into swimming pool 17yr old and 3yr old are drowning ..
having to rescue the 3yr old first due to size and weight of the 17yr old, which may hamper the effort to save the 3yr old.

3yr old is conscious in an air pocket .. 17yr old is not conscious, blood coming from nose and mouth, easily freeable. If possible rescue the 17 first .. ect.

this is also situational .. There are no true sets of parameters for such scenarios.

 

human life is more important than animal life because we're human. animals probably feel differently.

age could be considered a factor if you consider the amount of life potentially lost. so, the 3 year old has more years potentially left in his life than the 17 year old, so his death would be a greater overall loss. you could actually even apply that logic to the human vs animal argument in a lot of cases, since most animals have shorter lifespans than humans.

 

I would say there are too many factors involved for me to make a decision like that. Acknowledging that part of my decision making process lies in my subconscious, evaluating all of the experiences I've ever had. Who knows, I might shoot the 40 year-old because he had too many freckles, even though I would justify it in some other way.

 

I do not think a human life is more important than an animal life or vice versa. Life is all important....speaking from my head but speaking from my heart..........and in the context, of what is mosre important to me,....that would depend on the person.
I usually have more feelings for animals that i never met than people I never met, though, as oftentimes they are merely at our mercy.

 

So with that kind of logic, you would concede to an alien life form that is more evolved and more intelligent than you are?...hypothetically speaking?

 

and this is not a challenge to anyone else's way of thinking or feeling, as everyone has a right to feel the way they feel about anything.... but it is how I have always felt about such things. I feel that some of mankind has become too full of itself with an over inflated ego of its self importance on this earth, and to me, that is a turn off. I am not saying everyone is like this.....There are truly wonderful people in the world, too. but any living thing is going to feel excruciating pain if you set it on fire......
I saw a gigantic turtle as road kill the other day. I recognized it by its tail and the back of it shell.....the front end of it was made chopped meat by a vehicle. My heart ached the entire day for it......and my heart has not stopped acing for Harambe's tragic end, either.....Maybe I need to go away for awhile to try to heal from many things.....If we are the superior beings...according to some, then how come we do not act like it....? We act like we are the only life that has a right to be here, and we do not respect all living things as we should....That to me is the meaning of a real "HUMAN being..."
I listened to this song many times today.....as this is where I am at right now with the way I feel lately.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eib94JjrNEw

 

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.

We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man.

In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

- Henry Beston



Hotwater

 

Ummmm... So do Crows.

 

As far as species survival goes, I think of it more as a team sport. I'm on the human team and I accept that cows are on the cow team. So if me and a cow were both stuck in a river of tar and a cow on the shore decided to pull the cow to safety with its teeth over me, no hard feelings.