Emotion and Logic - Earthlings essay rewritten

                    The documentary video <Earthlings> is about how we humans abuse animals and how our wants and needs for animals should be seriously reconsidered. The video contains footage of animals being hit, whipped, slit in the throat, skinned alive, and confined in small places. Along with uncensored cruelty of humans against other animals, the intense music magnifies the emotional effects. My opinion, however, is that the video focused too much on the emotional and psychological effects compared to its lack of logic and consistency.

According to the film, all earthlings are equal. Then what about the bacteria and viruses that infect us? Is it "species-discriminatory" to kill them just that we could live?

                   The video begins with defining the term “earthling.” It says the term is not species-discriminatory, and that the term contrasts with the fact that humans are greatly abusing other species on this planet. However, <Earthlings> uses species-discriminatory methods throughout the film. In the video, it is mentioned many times that animals have the same mechanism for receiving pain as that of humans’, and that is why we should sympathize with them. This shows both the inconsistency in logic the video commits and the excessive focus on the mere psychological effects. The video deliberately chose animals that have similarity with humans because that way it could easily arouse dramatic emotions. We would not feel as compassionate for insects being crushed or trees being burned than we would for dolphins and pigs being slaughtered ruthlessly. The video sometimes depicts rather acceptable treatment as abominable. For example, the video shows the footage of pigs being slit in the throat, which I believe is extremely natural way to kill. A lion does not use anesthesia when it hunts deer, so why should we? Slitting the throat is not exactly what one would call prolonging the animal’s pain unnecessarily.

                Not only is the video focused excessively on psychological effects rather than logic and information, but it also is unclear in its motive. It seems the video is focused more on the pain animals suffer than the environmentally harmful effects or the outcome of the ecosystem. Concentrating on the pain of animals, the video seems to neglect the pain of humans caused by the system. For example, the video explains how cows are brutally treated in India. I believe the people who are moving the cows are in great poverty and pain too, not to mention that the inefficient and immoral system is the cause of this phenomenon. Then what is the motive for making this video? Does it just want us to feel the animals’ pain rather than to think about what is the cause of all this and suggest a solution? The problem with <Earthlings> is that it does not really have a “crux”: it is just a list of animals in pain.

Animal Rights?

                I would further like to counter directly logic of the <Earthlings>. As cruel it may sound, animal rights do not exist. It is natural for some species of animal to use other species of animal for its own purpose. For example, lions hunt deers and roundworms parasite people. It is generous of us to show mercy to animals, but it is not wrong to “mistreat” them, as the consensus that it is morally wrong to use them to our benefit was never established. I do not recommend people to kill animals for fun or to cause them excessive and unnecessary pain, but I do believe that meat-eating is not to blame. The film shows some gruesome events that take place in slaughterhouses, and I believe the government should intervene and provide some minimal standards; I do not, however, think we should view the slaughterhouses as moral decadence of the era.

                The film also attacks animal experimentation. The film says “Those who hope to find remedies for human ills by inflicting deliberate sufferings on animals commit two fundamental errors in understanding. The first is the assumption that results obtained on animals are applicable to mankind.” It is true that human beings are not equal to animals and therefore medical experiments on animals are sometimes misleading. However, the human body is also strikingly similar to other animals in many ways and medical experiments are conducted to detect errors that occur in those similarities. How can we conduct medical experiments without animal experimentation? The director of the film himself might have died before reaching adulthood if it were not the great amount of medical research scientists have accumulated via animal experimentation.

                I do believe <Earthlings> is very smartly made. It evokes sympathy for animals and appeals to emotion extremely well. But that is also the flaw of the documentary. It focuses excessively on psychological effects and not on logic and information. It also provides no solution or objective, and its logic is unreasonable. <Earthlings> succeeded in showing us how we treat animals, and we should change some parts of it, but the documentary is perhaps too one-sided and biased to tell us logically. Maybe its extreme bias makes us think about the matter, and in that aspect the film is meaningful.