Pit Bull
November 19th, 2007 4 comments link to (permalink) posted by david
I doubt there are many people who need to be convinced that dog fighting is barbaric, however this film gives a rare glimpse into how people can convince themselves that something so obviously cruel is acceptable.
We see a man from Tucson carefully rearing a Pit Bull puppy, chained next to an infant seat (i.e. he has a family) for it to be built up into a good fighter, a noble warrior. In other words, it is much more complicated than saying that he hates dogs and wants to torture them. He does not perceive his persona to be much different from someone who would have any other member of their family deliberately raised as a fighter. I suspect he fancies himself as a gladiatorial trainer, rather than a someone with a deep inferiority complex. And I would argue that this is exactly how the chain of torture does extend to humans.
The second issue is what is to be done about Pit Bulls. There is a cultural difference between the UK and the US here. In the UK all Pit Bulls were killed (rightly so, in my opinion), and yet in the US it would seem that the public outcry would prevent it. Pit Bulls are often owned by the same types of people that nurse spent Greyhounds, other poor animals, but ones that haven’t been known to eat your children (that’s what eventually provoked their slaughter in the UK). The argument is that even if Pit Bulls have been bred (or nurtured) to be monsters, they had no choice in the matter and therefore we should let the innocent live until found guilty.
The logic of this seems strange. When we raise and breed animals such as dogs, which are carnivores, many more animals will die to feed the dog. We are therefore prioritizing the monster over the cute, whether we like it or not.
50 min 53 sec Nov 16, 2007
tags: society
4 responses so far »
RES : Nov 19, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Have you recently come off some medication? When I first found your website with it’s collection of informational movies I was overjoyed, but recently there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of topics you choose to explore, not to mention the decline of the philosophical debate with which you present them. It is disappointing to have some one once revered exposed as a parrot, repeating what has been overheard without any real thread of comprehension connecting a holistic perspective of reality.
With specific regard to the pit bull issue, I was not aware the United Kingdom had reconfigured there opinions on genocide. Maybe if we’re lucky, next they’ll do away with the pesky pigeon population. Punish the deed not the breed.
Keep your mind out of the gutter my friend, the banks are a slippery slop!
Lisa : Dec 20, 2007 at 10:18 am
Of course you don’t see pit bulls, as Americans do. In the UK, you hunt foxes for sport. Why should you care about pit bulls, when you force dogs to rip apart another canine?
Funny, I don’t see a difference.
admin : Dec 20, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Thats not quite true, Fox Hunting is now illegal in the UK. However, I am absolutely in agreement with you, in thinking that the tradition was barbaric. It was for a similar, but even more barbaric sport that Pit Bulls were created, to torture bears to death in pits, hence the name.
I should clarify that Pit Bulls were not ’slaughtered’ in the UK, merely that they have to be sterilized, so that the breed eventually dies out.
But make no mistake, this is not a natural animal, but a breed that was created by people specifically to torture other animals. It is an animal lovers act to see this artificially aggressive animal die out naturally.
There are plenty of animals that have made good pets that are called Pit Bulls, these tend to be mongrels and even then behavior can be dangerously unpredictable. However the type of aggression that a pure bred Pit Bull has will often die out in nature over time since any interbreeding will tend towards the dog population norm.
amazed : Jan 2, 2008 at 10:07 pm
My goodness you ARE an idiot!
“this is not a natural animal, but a breed that was created by people specifically to torture other animals”
All breeds of dog were “created by people” for specific purposes even if that purpose was to look cute so to that end that are all “unnatural” and as they are artifical too we should want them all to die out, correct?
Come out from under the rock you’re living under and stop regurgitating the media spew. Your commentary was terribly archaic…how disappointing…..
Leave a Comment