When children see animals in a circus, they learn that animals exist for our amusement. Quite apart from the cruelty involved in training and confining these animals, the whole idea that we should enjoy the humiliating spectacle of an elephant or lion made to perform circus tricks shows a lack of respect for the animals as individuals.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes the exploitation of animals in circuses for human entertainment.
In this quote, Peter Singer highlights the ethical concerns surrounding the treatment of animals in circuses. He points out that when children witness animals performing for amusement, it fosters a belief that animals exist solely for human enjoyment, neglecting their intrinsic value and individuality. The statement emphasizes the cruelty involved in training animals and suggests that society should develop a greater respect for all living beings rather than viewing them as objects for entertainment.
In practice
In a speech about animal rights at school, you might quote this to highlight the ethical issues of animal entertainment.
The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.
Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and how long it lasts, but pain of the same intensity and duration are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals.
What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.
Almost everybody accepts that some people can be killed. 'The concept of 'brain death' - the belief that people on respirators can legitimately be killed - shows that.
If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.
Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations about honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by sex.)
In the Christianity of Christendom the Cross has become something like the child’s hobby-horse and trumpet.
The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time.
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
This work, though it deals only with eating and drinking, which are regarded in the eyes of our supernaturalistic mock-culture as the lowest acts, is of the greatest philosophic significance and importance... How former philosophers have broken their heads over the question of the bond between body and soul! Now we know, on scientific grounds, what the masses know from long experience, that eating and drinking hold together body and soul, that the searched-for bond is nutrition.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
A society based on the freedom to choose is better than a society based on the principles of socialism, communism and coercion.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.