Blackfish, KONY, and Vegetarianism

Why did people care more about Marius the giraffe's death than the 146,000 Syrians that were dying a few weeks ago? 

I was watching a Freakonomics podcast last week (highly recommend the novels, by the way), and I felt like the response and overall message was insufficient at answering the posed question. I have thought about a few theories about how, perhaps, we have become desensitized to mass atrocity and violence. If you turn on the news or go to the homepage of any news outlet, you will see a large number of headlines that revolve around crime and violence. You may see a few articles about some really great thing a person did that restores your hope in humanity, but how often does that happen? Why does the media choose to portray the violent stories over the heartwarming ones? Is it a projection of what the media wants us to see, or what we want to see from the media?

When I first heard about Marius' death, I was outraged and wanted to address my grievances to the zookeepers who justified killing an innocent animal in the name of "genetic redundancy." I can see the points in their argument - letting an animal (in perfect health) that would be socially marginalized due to his defective status live would surely impact him in many negative ways. But does it make it okay to kill him and then make a spectacle of distributing his body parts for the other animals to enjoy as food in front of people? How did people react to such a spectacle that's so violently charged?

This brings an interesting point to how we view media then. Blackfish, a documentary exposing the way that the whales are at Seaworld, stirred a lot of people to boycott Seaworld and catch on to the "FREE THE WHALES" movement. Again, I was one of the many who also shed a few tears when I was watching the documentary on Netflix and made the decision to not visit aquariums/zoos anymore. Are we arbitrarily biased to sympathize with animals rather than humans then?

I don't believe this is true. Back when KONY stirred global attention, everyone turned into an activist and donated to the Invisible Children foundation (extremely shady in 2012). When this was unfolding, I became increasingly annoyed by people who started to become advocates, because I viewed it as such a facade. I will be the first to admit that this was extremely misplaced, but at the time, I thought people were joining in on the bandwagon just for appearances instead of genuinely caring for the cause. Even if the people who shared the video and turned into advocates overnight probably haven't thought about child soldiers since 2012, the movement brought a lot of attention to an otherwise unknown issue that has been plaguing Africa.

 There's an additional dimension to this, because KONY was fueled by the internet and much of what people do to raise attention to causes takes place via the world wide web. People change their profile pictures and hold messages that bright attention to global events like #BringBackOurGirls, and I am a complete advocate for that.  (complete aside: There's a lot of criticism surrounding these actions, because "they're not really doing anything. they're just bringing attention to themselves and want people to see them as awesome!1!1!" Okay, so I can understand this perspective, because I was there, too, but even if they are bringing attention to themselves, they're ALSO bringing attention to the cause at hand. And that's more than what I think other people who are just completely idle are doing. Maybe you think that this isn't the right standard for trying to press on for change, but it's at least an effort. Though, if it's not genuine, then that's pretty wrong. </rant>)

I think it's interesting how we react and perceive things based on appearances. There are people who deem vegetarians/vegans as crazy people for not eating meat and then adamantly criticize Asian countries that participate in dog eating. Why is it that society views eating dogs as a terrible, terrible crime (which I fully agree with, BY THE WAY) but is down to have an eight course meal involving the slaughter of other animals? Why do we look at a cow and perceive it as food, but we could never imagine even hurting our pets? We can own goldfish and put them in a tank, name them , and continuously replace them after one dies, but also eat fish for dinner.

I'm not here to say this is right or wrong or attack anyone who eats meat, because I have eaten meat, too. It's just that we're so laden with contradictions that I think the concept of "right/wrong" is not so black-and-white as we deem morality to be. I'm still trying to find an answer to why we care so much about animals and care so little about people (do we actually care?) that's different than the "animals are helpless victims" approach.