:: I never thought you were a knee-jerk reactionary, man, I always thought you were a clever, insightful, rational, calculated reactionary. One that is rather good at evading the issues once his arguments have been blown sky high, and who tends to avoid any real debate of the issues, requests for clarifications or sources, and any debating nitty gritty, resorting to purile sarcasm rather than native wit or insight. Then again, I always have been a very poor judge of character. Thing is Red; I've been posting here for possibly two years. In those
two years you'd think out of the many ideas and arguments I've
posulated there might be just one that has a tiny bit of merit but you
would never know it from the reactions I get. When I do make a salient
point (I'm of the opinion it's happened once or twice) I usually get
back exactly what you accused me of - knee jerk reactions to some
phrase that pushed a button and no substantive argument.
To the point. I don't care how many books Peter Singer sold, how many
weeks it stayed on the best seller list, or how popular it is with the
animal rights movement; if I go out and ask 1000 people who this guy
is, how many of them will have heard of him? You could count them on
two hands around my neck of the woods. It doesn't take millions of
sales to get on the New York Times best seller list. It doesn't
necessarily follow that being on the list means that your opinion is
anywhere near mainstream. Believe it or not, the vast majority
of the earth's population has not heard "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink
Floyd. It's been on the top 100 selling lists every year since it's
release. How many millions of copies do you think that is? I pointed
out to Dad that his lament was due to the generally esoteric nature of
the subject matter. Of course, I'm certainly not above purile sarcasm
if I'm right about something.
Lastly, if I'm going to knee-jerk about anything it's going to be
because of the title of a book that is meant to incite. There is a
definite anthropomorphic sentiment in using verbiage that until only
recently described an element of human interaction. The word
liberation has been typically used by various factions of
people to highlight some injustice or another. Without regard to
the legitimacy of any of these claims, does it not borrow imperative
from human suffering to title a book "Animal Liberation"? I think it is
a bold attempt to equate humans and animals.
Stuart Gort
