You are ignoring the fact that beings learn and evolve. Would you 'enforce' a baby not to throw up food on the carpet?
yes, everyone would 'enforce' that baby in the sense that everyone will interfere in such a way that the baby does not throw up on the carpet. We enforce our values on the natural behavior of the baby.
Are you going to prevent the baby from eating where there is a carpet? In other words are you going to change the babies behavior around a carpet, or your behavior when a carpet is present?
changing his behavior might be more difficult than changing his position away from the carpet. In any way, my behavior towards the baby is different when a carpet is present: I can move the baby away, or the carpet. And when instead of a baby we have an older child, I can try to directly change its behavior.
If you want to enforce a creature not to eat because you do not understand how their diet fits into some longer term picture, then you are taking food from a stranger, a hostile act that can merit death in nature.
in the case of a chimp we were talking about killing someone for food that was not necessary for survival. If it was necessary for survival, to avoid death, then we have to use the ring finger which says that the animal is allowed to eat whatever is necessary for survival. Then we have the situation of the lion eating the zebra.
Life is not only about survival. No one survives life so if it were about survival everyone fails. A chimp has his or her path in life. You are saying you have some superior path that justifies eviscerating the chimp's path and making it a branch of your path. Violence, including eating animals, should be discouraged, I agree with that. But your method makes no sense.
if everyone fails at survival, then how come there still is biodiversity? Look at the ring finger principle: it is about the conservation of biodiversity. So with survival I meant that biodiversity does not get lost. Or you can say: it is survival of a population instead of an individual.
Yes, the chimp has his own path in life, and yes we should respect his path. But we should do it consistently! We should respect everyone's path, without arbitrary exceptions. You forgot someone: the hunted colobus monkey. Why did you not say that this monkey has his own path in life? Why is the chimp allowed to kill the monkey? With hunting and killing the monkey, the lifepath of the monkey is very drastically changed, you agree? But with preventing the chimp from hunting the monkey, the lifepath of the chimp is changed only a little bit.
You are saying you have some superior path that justifies making the chimps path much more superior than the monkey's path.
If you want to try to be more civilized and try to convince the monkey not to kill for food, my suggestion would be first to master that skill in your own life, then in the lives of those who share your language and would not need 'enforcement' to agree with you, then maybe consider trying to force yourself on monkeys.
that sounds obvious. But it is not merely about convincing someone. We did not convince the baby not to throw up on the carpet. Yet, we interfered in its behavior with the goal that the baby doesn't throw up on the carpet.
Again, if you interfered in the babies behavior blindly, by force, you did nothing good.[/quote]
my sister has a baby, and she puts the baby in a chair at the table so that he cannot throw up on the carpet. My sister used force to lift the baby up and put him in the chair. I don't know what you mean with interfering blindly. But are you suggesting that this interference did nothing good?
What you suggest is to physically prevent monkeys from eating animals. Why don't you describe to what lengths you might go. It is certainly good to give monkeys a respect for life, and encourage nonviolence that way. Also okay to arm their potential victims so the price of a meal is clear. But how far are you thinking to go? Would you be willing to limit their habitat so they would not have contact with potential living food? Put on shock collars to zap them when the brain part associated with meat lights up?
good idea :-)
we can go as far as a teacher or policeman go when they see a child attacking another child. Perhaps in the kindergarten they are interested in this shock collar that zaps a child when the brain part associated with agression lights up. And yes, let's arm the other children. Cool :-)