“6/02/2009, 9:30pm EST”
Do you feel SORRY?
Okay, John Tierney, now you’ve done it:
If you own a dog, especially a dog that has anointed your favorite rug, you know that an animal is capable of apologizing. He can whimper and slouch and tuck his tail and look positively mortified — “I don’t know what possessed me.” But is he really feeling sorry?
Could any animal feel true pangs of regret?
Predictably, the rest of the article is similarly full of self-sycophantic, pseudo-scientific know-nothingness. When it takes a thousand concurring studies for even relatively intelligent humans to grant a single non-human species 0.01% of the value we see in ourselves, we aren’t practicing science anymore.
“Could any animal feel true pangs of regret?” I’m sorry, are humans not animals? In spite of Mr. Tierney’s blatant speciesist prickery, he surely knows, since he is a science-y writer for the venerable New York Times, that humans are biological creatures — you know, animals. Perhaps he needs a refresher in Biology 101, not to mention the rules of logic, neuroscience, animal psychology, ethics — basically, everything having to do with the subject matter he has elected to discuss.
What I want to know, Mr. Tierney, is this: Do YOU feel sorry for the atrocities that humans commit against those mere animals?
Do you feel “sorry” for this?
Or this?
How about feeling “sorry” for this victim of humanity, you smug prick?
Of course, saying you’re sorry is not nearly enough. The nature of such crimes is that nothing — nothing — can ever atone for them. To put it more nicely than I should:
BILLIONS OF ANIMALS ARE LIVING HELL ON EARTH BECAUSE OF SPECIAL, ENTITLED OVERGROWN CHILDREN LIKE YOU.
So fuck you and your precious “humanity.” I’d rather be an animal.
Never leave home without it.
