Week 1
Title: Week 1 Being human in the 21st century & The current state of humanity
Overview: What does it mean to be human, what distinguishes us from other creatures?
Humans have many virtues that other creatures do not. Those are such like Creativity, Consciousness Personality, Abstract Thinking, moral Judgments, and Sociality. Other than Biological factors such as an up-right posture, humans and animals are totally different. It is because humans are created in the way that they are given the free will of choice; a choice to do whatever they want/need to. This resulted to a new dimension of behavior that is seen in humans as to animals.
There is a great debate on whether humans and animals are alike in terms in the existence of a
…show more content…
An animal does feel happy, sad, scared and motivated. Really? Or is that the description from the observations of mankind? For that question, no one can answer. It is understood that humans are mainly in the state of emotion in today’s existence. A human can feel sad or happy in life. Behind sad when someone passed away and happy when a new baby is born. It is different for an animal. From being “sad” or may be “a sigh” when a hatchling got eaten up by a predator; or being “happy” or may be “delighted” for having an abundance of food for their survivability. This is the differences between the various types of Personalities between humans and animals.
There are more to explain about the differences but I would like to close on this last point. The judgments of morality are totally different. When a human feels happy or sad, they behave that way not only to ensure survivability of their race, but of the needs and wants of humans. An animal’s judgments of morality may actually just feel ‘scared’, ‘defensive’ or ‘motivated’ just to ensure their survivability. An animal do not feel guilty when killing a prey but when a human kills some other human, the feeling of guilt exist in him. Humans carry on their lives questioning whether is it a right or wrong thing to do whereas an animal does not but just solely on their survivability of their race.
These are just some of what distinguishes humans from other creatures. What are your opinions on it?
Week 2
In an article based on an interview published in Time Magazine, “A Change of Heart About Animals”. Jeremy Rifkin expresses his views about the similarity behavior and emotional state between us humans and animals, with the purpose to change the way of how we see and feel about them. “We’re so skewed toward efficiency that we’ve lost our sense of humanity. What we need to do is to bring back a sense of the sacred”, Rifkin, argues. He supports his arguments with the findings of many researchers around the globe. Researchers that come from very prestigious institutions using different species of animals, we’re talking about crows, elephants, geese, etc. Not your ordinary lab rats and monkeys (which they don’t have anything
The article “A Change of Heart About Animals” written by Jeremy Rifkin informs readers that animals feel emotions very much similar to humans and should be given more rights. I agree with Rifkin’s statement, but to a certain extent.
“What these researchers are finding is that many our creatures are more like us than we ever imagined. They feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love -- and these findings are changing how we view animals,” said by Rifkin. In Rifkin’s article, A Change of Heart about Animals, highlights the fact we should have empathy of the way we treat our creatures that we share the earth with. He supports his argument with examples of animals having adroitness such as human do. Rifkin also addressesthe brain anatomy and chemisty similar to us.
In the article, “A Change of Heart about Animals”, by Jeremy Rifkin argues about how scientists have shown and proven that there are many similarities between animals and humans. Jeremy Rifkin believes animals should be treated with more empathy and that the animals should be treated more like humans. I agree with this statement and that they should be treated better with more animal rights.
Based on Jeremy Rifkin’s article “A Change of Heart about Animals” I totally agree with what he has to say. As humans we are born with empathy. As we grow older we learn how to develop more empathy. One of our journeys while on this planet is to appeal to humans empathy. We learn how to have more empathy to those who we care about the most.
Rifkin is evidently right about how animals express their emotions and have similarities to us humans. This article
Are animals really like humans? According to “A Change of Heart about Animals”, written by Jeremy Rifkin, they are. Animals can do all sorts of stuff from doing cool things, to being a great house pet. They also need the human life to help them live their life because they have gotten so used to being around humans and doing human like things. Therefore, animals are like humans because they can show and feel emotion, have the ability to learn, and can adapt to human life.
Do animals feel joy, love, fear, anguish or despair? What ere emotions, and perhaps more importantly, how do scientists prove animals are capable of emotion? Sea lion mothers have often been seen wailing painfully and squealing eerily as they watch their babies being eaten by killer whales. Buffaloes have also been observed sliding playfully across ice, excitedly screaming “Gwaaa.” Emotions are defined broadly as psychological phenomena that help in behavioral management and control. This is a challenging question to researchers who are trying to determine the answer to this question. Through current research by close observation combined with neurobiological research, evidence that animals exhibit fear, joy
Where there is humanity, there is logical thinking and individualism. I believe that this is what separates human beings from animal species. Each
One of the most controversial topics in modern philosophy revolves around the idea of non-human animals being considered human people. Controversy over what makes up an actual person has been long debated. However, society deems it as a set of characteristics. The average person normally does not realize how complicated a question this is, and in fact many scientists, philosophers, and individuals will side differently on this specific topic. I personally do not believe that animals are capable of being human people, but throughout this argumentative paper I will address critical views presented from multiple philosophers on why this seems to be the case.
First, we must determine what emotions are. Are they different for every being, or felt in the same way? Merriam-Webster defines emotion as “a conscious mental reaction (as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.” As award-winning scientist Mark Bekoff states in his book The Emotional Lives of Animals, emotions are psychological phenomena that help in behavioral management and control (6). Another word that I will use from this point on to describe the event of cognitive feelings and emotions in animals is sentience. Again Merriam-Webster states that sentience is “the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.”
The controversy over the rights of animals continues today within the United States. There has always been a question about the emotions of animals. Can animals feel and exhibit emotions in the same way that humans do? Some people agree that animals do show signs of intelligence and emotions like love and pain. After-all there are bird breeds who mate with only one partner during their lifespan giving us the impression
The most critical social problem of the 21st century is Capitalism. Capitalism today is what use to be the color line as defined in the early 1900s by W. E. B Du Bois as: the question of the relation of the advanced races of men who happened to be white to the great majority of the undeveloped or half-developed nations of mankind who happen to be yellow, brown or black (Karenga). As Du Bois researched the color line, Capitalism in America is a systemic system of oppression transcended through time and space. In the 20th century, systems of systemic oppression were overt and known methods of suppression, alienation and repression, while today they are more covert in both practice and those who oppress.
Everything created has specie specific qualities. Human beings are closely linked to animals because of the similarities of these specie specific qualities, but these alone do not make humans animals or animals humans. While there are quite a few characteristics that are similar there are enormous differences. One is
Willy Brandt once remarked:” Western Europe has only 20 or 30 more years of democracy left in it; after that it will slide under the surrounding sea of dictatorship” (Crozier, Huntington, Watanuki, 1973, 2). It would seem that democratic governments have become increasingly unable of facing “the challenges of the modern world”. Specifically, democratic European governments have become increasingly incapable to adequately represent the interests of the governed, while economic growth has also produced forces within nations that could potentially lead to the potential “regression”(Crozier, 1973, 49-50) of European states from democracy into tyranny (Crozier, 1973, 49-50).