re: Isa 10/29/10

This is a response to Isa's question," Do you think that our nature as humans has grown into something that may be uncontrollable if not regulated?"

In Isa's post and comment in class yesterday, she talked about the status of owning diamonds and pearls is like the status of owning a buck head on your wall. The words "power, money, and status" all come to mind when talking about trophy hunting (a whole new meaning to 'PMS'). When it comes to killing animals and mounting them on the wall or making rugs out of them that is power. I killed this animal and I am going to show it off. I wouldn't call this status, because the person is showing pride in the fact that they dominate the animal they killed. Wearing a fur coat, or a mink boa is a symbol of having money just like owning diamonds and pearls. Your status is determined by how much money and power you have. I think that it is in our nature to want to obtain the highest status possible.
It's not our nature as individual humans but our nature as a society that has made us believe in this appeal to vanity. Since owning a fur coat and the like are not things that everyone can afford, the amount you own does not need to be regulated. The amount of deers that are hunted, or any other animal that is, needs to be regulated because the population will be at risk for the hunted species.
There is an up side to a small amount of hunting though. When deers are over populated there are a lot of car accidents where they die and cars get completely totaled. I've heard several first hand account stories from friends and relatives. When a deer dies from a car accident, I'm pretty sure that in this country, it doesn't get eaten. I'm not saying that we might as well hunt them because they a going to die anyways from cars, I'm just pointing out that there are less car accidents when the population is under control.

Questions: What are other countries traditions for road kill? How does this compare with America's? What should change about our system or other countries?

Vegatarian V. Ego Defense Mechanism

On Friday Alex spoke about a billboard supporting meat eating and then asked why people were so threatened by vegetarianism. I replied by saying, "People come up with those ignorant sayings because they feel the need to rudely over justify their meat eating so that they can protect their egos." In further inspection of the topic, I found that this situation, does in fact, resembles a certain type of ego defense mechanism. In psychology courses they only teach you the ten Freudian ego defense mechanisms, yet there are others. I won't go into detail about all of the others but I will mention that they are typically divided into three categories: primitive; less primitive, more mature; and mature defense mechanisms.
Among the primitive defense mechanisms is "acting out." The man and the billboard would fall underneath this category. Acting out is preforming an action (puting up a meat eating billboard) instead of feeling the related emotion. People who are defensive have a hard time facing their shortcomings. Instead of excepting other's opinions they fight fire with fire.
Some individuals, feel threatened by vegetarianism because they are at risk for feeling guilty for something that they have been taught is okay their whole lives. An individual does not want to admit that they are a bad person for advocating the death and torture of another being for their own earthly use. In order to refrain from such feelings, they go to the extreme with excuses such as: "That's why God put them here," "PETA is just exaggerating, the animals don't really go through all that suffering," and, "Everybody else eats meat, so it's okay." By instantly dismissing the ethical aspects of meat-eating with excuses, the feelings of guilt are not felt.

Question: Is there a psychological aspect to eating meat and testing on animals? Perhaps cynical?