Lunch for today + Dessert + Crushing a snail's shell
Lunch for today: Chicken House somewhere along Upper Thompson Road. No pictures - I forgot to take them before I tucked in. What's supposedly good about this stall is they sell kampong chicken, which are purported to be firmer than normal factory-farmed chickens. It wasn't as tasty though, and the meat portion was small. Overall I'd say go for Nam Kee Chicken Rice just a couple of bus-stops away.
Wanted to have some dessert for dinner. So I queued up, told the seller what I wanted, she told me that wasn't available, and then without waiting for my response took order from the person behind me. I glared at her for a while before I left annoyed. Was what I did irrational?
I'd say so. I wanted the dessert somewhat. A more mature thing to do would be to calm myself, wait for the seller to serve the customer behind me, and then place my order. This way I still get my dessert after at most a minute's delay. Instead I left in a huff.
Perhaps there's a way to rationalise my behavior. Perhaps we can say, by glaring and leaving in a huff we are signalling our displeasure, and if they want to keep a customer around next time they'd do well not to bypass them so quickly. By withdrawing our purchases we feedback to poor-service businesses how they should behave in order to get our money, and this should ultimately benefit the consumer in the long run.
It's hard to buy into such a line of thought. For one, losing a customer probably doesn't mean much to a dessert stall with a reasonably high volume of potential customers. My feedback is going to be ineffective - and I lost a chance to eat the dessert I wanted. For another, the stall hasn't lost me completely. I'm still going to purchase from the stall when I feel like it. I'm not going to deprive myself of dessert from that stall forever because of one instance of poor service. So yea, I guess I was irrational to act in the way I did. That's why they say emotions are sometimes irrational.
Some nights ago I saw a gigantic ant-like bug the size a third of your finger. I got a pair of scissors and played with it for a while, before snipping off the top third of its body. The severed head was still moving even after thirty minutes. I took some shots with a camera but I'm not going to put them here partly because the shots are too blurry but mainly because I'm feeling lazy now.
What can we say here? I believe there are some who will say I will get my retribution next time. Maybe when I go to Hell I would experience being tortured in the same way I tortured the bug. I wonder how this group of people feel when they use insecticides to kill pests. Others like Kant may say such sadistic treatment of insects is indicative of how this person would treat human beings under certain circumstances.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge people like that. While it's true sadistic treatment of insects reflects a sadistic streak in one, we must be careful of expanding this streak to humans or other higher-being animals. At best we are entitled to say sadistic treatment of insects reflects a sadistic nature against insects. I do not think we are entitled to say a sadistic nature against insects reflects a sadistic nature against any part of nature that are not insects. I remember some time ago there was some person who cut off the legs of cats. We feel disgusted, but I think people who make remarks that such a person is a danger to human society are unjustified. I hold that such a person is liable to the charge of animal cruelty, and I hold that if there is such a thing as insect cruelty I am liable to that charge; however if we are to extrapolate such behavior to behavior against humans, and judge one's morality from there, then the onus is on the prosecution to prove that there is some link, even a correlational one, between same sets of action applied to different sets of beings.
The same goes for people like Seetoh (see post below) who want to judge one's moral character based on, in part, how one dresses and how one behaves in public.
Wanted to have some dessert for dinner. So I queued up, told the seller what I wanted, she told me that wasn't available, and then without waiting for my response took order from the person behind me. I glared at her for a while before I left annoyed. Was what I did irrational?
I'd say so. I wanted the dessert somewhat. A more mature thing to do would be to calm myself, wait for the seller to serve the customer behind me, and then place my order. This way I still get my dessert after at most a minute's delay. Instead I left in a huff.
Perhaps there's a way to rationalise my behavior. Perhaps we can say, by glaring and leaving in a huff we are signalling our displeasure, and if they want to keep a customer around next time they'd do well not to bypass them so quickly. By withdrawing our purchases we feedback to poor-service businesses how they should behave in order to get our money, and this should ultimately benefit the consumer in the long run.
It's hard to buy into such a line of thought. For one, losing a customer probably doesn't mean much to a dessert stall with a reasonably high volume of potential customers. My feedback is going to be ineffective - and I lost a chance to eat the dessert I wanted. For another, the stall hasn't lost me completely. I'm still going to purchase from the stall when I feel like it. I'm not going to deprive myself of dessert from that stall forever because of one instance of poor service. So yea, I guess I was irrational to act in the way I did. That's why they say emotions are sometimes irrational.
Some nights ago I saw a gigantic ant-like bug the size a third of your finger. I got a pair of scissors and played with it for a while, before snipping off the top third of its body. The severed head was still moving even after thirty minutes. I took some shots with a camera but I'm not going to put them here partly because the shots are too blurry but mainly because I'm feeling lazy now.
What can we say here? I believe there are some who will say I will get my retribution next time. Maybe when I go to Hell I would experience being tortured in the same way I tortured the bug. I wonder how this group of people feel when they use insecticides to kill pests. Others like Kant may say such sadistic treatment of insects is indicative of how this person would treat human beings under certain circumstances.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge people like that. While it's true sadistic treatment of insects reflects a sadistic streak in one, we must be careful of expanding this streak to humans or other higher-being animals. At best we are entitled to say sadistic treatment of insects reflects a sadistic nature against insects. I do not think we are entitled to say a sadistic nature against insects reflects a sadistic nature against any part of nature that are not insects. I remember some time ago there was some person who cut off the legs of cats. We feel disgusted, but I think people who make remarks that such a person is a danger to human society are unjustified. I hold that such a person is liable to the charge of animal cruelty, and I hold that if there is such a thing as insect cruelty I am liable to that charge; however if we are to extrapolate such behavior to behavior against humans, and judge one's morality from there, then the onus is on the prosecution to prove that there is some link, even a correlational one, between same sets of action applied to different sets of beings.
The same goes for people like Seetoh (see post below) who want to judge one's moral character based on, in part, how one dresses and how one behaves in public.
5 Comments:
Dear Sir Whale, I suspect you were driven more by curiosity rather than sadistic impulses (if it did indeed actually happen). In the uncompromising glare of your cold logic, the ant amounts to nothing more than highly sophisticated play dough. To begin with, you cannot be cruel to something you consider incapable of suffering (in the 'human' sense). Of course, from the perspective of the ant, such fine distinctions do not matter.
I think acts of cruelty put people off not simply because they are assumed to indicate future violence towards humans. It has to do more with the needlessness of it, like burning money to ward off the cold weather.
Also, it could be a question of empathy. We too are beings with a fragile, corporeal body. Our legs have meaning for us because they allow us to move around freely, and we cherish them for that. Yet, we routinely desecrate the original 'meaning' of a drumstick, formed by the chicken's mother so that her child may move around freely. While cooking a drumstick over a roaring gas stove fire, humans mentally block out the inherent horror of such an act.
Yet we need not look to horror movies to be reminded of such bodily horror, people getting burned alive in accidents are a common occurrence. Materially, our flesh is not much different from the legs of a chicken, and there isn't much to stop a determinedly curious person from holding his hand over a roaring gas stove fire, just for the fun of it.
Hmm, research has shown that animal cruelty is linked to youth violence and adult crimes of violence against other people. Cruelty to animals is one of the diagnostic criteria for Conduct Disorder. And as quoted from a paper: "...review of data over a twenty year period that compared the criminal records of men convicted
of animal cruelty with a group of “next door neighbors” found that those convicted on animal cruelty charges
were five times more likely to have been arrested for crimes of violence against people, four times more
likely to have records for property violations, and three times more likely to have been charged with drunk or
disorderly offenses."
I think the underlying factor is empathy bah. People who are average/ high in empathy would probably feel discomforted by cutting off the legs of cats and would probably not happily do so for leisure. Someone who takes pleasure in the pain of another living thing (like a cat) would probably not be able to feel much empathy for a human being either.
I'm pleased to see that no mention is made of cruelty to insects, so I can continue playing with bugs with peace.
Edrick, I think you're right in pointing out that I was driven more by curiosity rather than sadistic impulses. Hard to see which was the reason behind my childhood activity of stepping on snails and crushing their shells though.
I don't do that anymore. If you two are right, I've grown more empathetic. I think it's more likely because I haven't seen any snail in recent years.
Hm...I'm quite sure our emotions have some evolutionary significance...
Aquila
oh... I just happened to use the chicken as an illustration. It was not my design to imply that it's not cruel to cut up insects because they are less similar to humans than chicken. Though obviously, there is a question of degree. Cutting up an ant is not the same as cutting off the ear of a boy, but I am not saying that it's therefore not cruel to cut up insects.
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