Plant Rights?
on 05/05/2008 at 11:12 AM
I think ALL the ____________ rights groups miss a vital point: What responsibility can _________ take for the welfare of themselves and their environment? I mean, children have limits on their rights, but I don’t see very many people argue whether or not a human child is conscious, self aware, or has a soul. I mean sure, two year olds don’t have souls, but you see my point.
If memory serves, a couple of decades ago reearchers at MIT did measurements of whatever passes for a nervous system in rose bushes and found that a rose bush is apparently able to recognize individuals and able to register a quasi-emotional response. I never saw the original study so I certainly can’t attest to their methodology, much less their results. But let’s assume for a moment that it is 100% true. More than that, let’s assume plants all register the entire range of human emotion, are fully self aware, the whole nine yards. Where does that leave us?
Exactly where we started, that’s where, because “rights” are a legal fiction with no application outside the context of the species using the concept. The only “rights” anything has in the absence of an artificial social construct is the right to die young and violently at the hands of predators or scavengers, and the right to sit naked and shivering in a cave or tree and eat your dinner while it’s still wriggling. Watch “Cast Away” sometime and you’ll see the *natural* rights of man, or any other creature.
Thus, the only real-world meaning of “rights” is a shared agreement to accept responsibility for making sure such rights are not infringed. Plants and animals cannot have rights because they cannot enter into that social contract. They can only have privileges, enforced by the shared responsibility of those who *can* enter into that contract. Children have limited rights because they can only accept the responsibilities of that social contract to a limited degree.Note that by that argument, a convicted criminal has no rights, as he/she has repudiated the social contract that gives such rights meaning. Likewise, we have no rights from a rose bush’s point of view (assuming a rose bush *has* a point of view), because we are unable to enter into a social contract that has meaning to them. Whether that is because a rose bush has no intelligence and no soul, or whether it is because we haven’t learned how to communicate meaningfully with them, is immaterial. The result is the same.
All that being said, the Hindus and the animal rights wackos have a point, although it is a point that many of said wackos would repudiate if you faced them with it, as it appears to invoke religion. The point is this: You are part of an amazingly intricate, many layered, self-regulating system that allows you to exist in relative comfort. So show a little respect.
There is a vast middle land between clear cut plant life taking/wanton shooting, trapping and killing of vast groups of animals and not ever, ever killing another living thing - and that is the region Humanity must exist in - as what is left to sustain us if we chose the animal and plants ‘rights’ above ours?!?
Respect, dignity and common sense must replace this enviro wacko insanity - and I agree ‘rights’ is purely a social contract that must be entered into by both parties. . .
Funny - but I’d bet dime to dozens that these self same ‘plant righters’ are supportive of abortion - they can parse, hedge and emotionalize their stance but still call someone like me - Pro-Life and supporter of the Death Penalty a hypocrite. . .
