Are Animals Worth More Than Humans?

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25.4.06
Updated 30.4.06

Is the money spent on keeping a pet morally justifiable when there are programs you can fund to keep humans alive? Moral questions like this are uncomfortable to discuss or think about because they lead one through the exposition of our humanity in all it's imperfect hypocrisy. The question can be repelled or quashed quite easily without too much bother. As well, the logic of such a monologue or dialogue can be followed through, and then put away without action or change.

The question can be avoided with the following:

You don't have to choose between one or the other.
I am not responsible for the lives of other people, especially those I don't know.
They should look after themselves and stop fighting each other.
They are not as important as my pet.
I can't do anything to help them.
We have had our pet for ten years.
If I give money to an aid organisation, it will just go to the corrupt leaders of the country, or to the administration costs of the aid organisation.
Why don't you stop spending money on <YOURFAVOURITEVICE> and spend it on hungry people as well?
Who are you to tell me how to live my life?
The problem is insoluble, so I ignore it.
Why don't you spend your time and money looking after your family rather than strangers?
I would just be doing it to make myself feel less guilty, and that would be the wrong motivation.
If I follow this path then I would end up spending all my money on helping others, and none on things which make me happy.
It is easier to throw money at a problem to make you feel better than it is to invest time in it.
Nobody's perfect. I make my choices even if I don't think they are morally the best.
Morality is relative.

The relationship between one human and another is possibly just as much a figment of the imagination as the relationship between animals and humans. It is a connection that exists in your brain. It is in some way a fabrication. Instead of keeping alive a pet, one could be building the capacity of a third-world human to build their own society and stay alive. We are of the same race as our starving brothers. But perhaps that relationship is a mental fabrication, too.

The surest way to create the world we most want to live in is to make it ourselves. Even the smallest contribution is a move in a direction we desire.