Brian May - a true gentleman

It's not about a 'superior' species.  I'm certainly not the superior species if I'm standing in the middle of a pack of hungry lions unarmed but for a bottle of bbq sauce .  It's about a pan-species behaviour that will sacrifice other life to take care of itself and it's own.    How does your theory work in real life?   If you have a bad neighbour that ends up infesting your apartment with 20,000 cockroaches, what are you going to do?  Move in hopeless humble awe of the 20,000 equal lives, or let the exterminator in?  If you're driving your car and the price of not hitting a person is swerving and hitting a chipmunk, what do you do?  Quickly calculate the fuel savings and hit the closest lifeform?

Indeed he is a true gentleman, its just a pity about Brian's Curse though.

GratefulFan wrote:

"If you have a bad neighbour that ends up infesting your apartment with 20,000 cockroaches, what are you going to do?  Move in hopeless humble awe of the 20,000 equal lives, or let the exterminator in?"

I think you're being a bit extreme, as we're not talking about pests here.  We're talking about blood sports - a conscious decision made by these hunters.  I see your point, but cockroaches are not a fair comparison.  Well, they are according to the right-wing gun-toting propagandists who want to lift the fox hunting bans..

Furthermore, making a split second quick decision about whether or not to hit a chipmunk on the road (and possibly harming yourself in the process) is different from going out of your way to hunt animals that have no business being hunted.

Very true Bob.

Arguing about fox hunting is a different proposition completely than arguing that Brian's views are simply ahead of their time, or that "a life is a life" - that animal life can or should be valued equally by humans in all situations. What about when the choice is not between humans and animals, but between animals and other animals?  I'm interested Bob in your thoughts on this article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12323300

GratefulFan wrote: It's not about a 'superior' species.  I'm certainly not the superior species if I'm standing in the middle of a pack of hungry lions unarmed but for a bottle of bbq sauce .  It's about a pan-species behaviour that will sacrifice other life to take care of itself and it's own.    How does your theory work in real life?   If you have a bad neighbour that ends up infesting your apartment with 20,000 cockroaches, what are you going to do?  Move in hopeless humble awe of the 20,000 equal lives, or let the exterminator in?  If you're driving your car and the price of not hitting a person is swerving and hitting a chipmunk, what do you do?  Quickly calculate the fuel savings and hit the closest lifeform? 

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I can guess what's the worldview behind your ideas, and I'm fairly sympathetical to it, but your argument is lame. All you have done is bringing up examples of people having their lives threatned by other animals - the guy in the middle of a pack of hungry lions, Bob surrounded by 20.000 cockroaches...

If self-preservation is a pan-species behavior, then we are indeed equal to other animals, since no one - at least nowadays in most of the Western World - is expected to become a martyr and put any other life, especially unrelated ones, above his own when killing is the only way of surviving.

A dog is as capable of empathy as you. If it were you or the dog one cares about on the metaphorical road, he'd hit you anytime if there were no legal consequences.  

One reason why it seems just logical to kill the chipmunk is the fact that one may get in serious trouble with the law if a person happens to be hit. 

I don't think it has much to do with empathy or a tendency to treating human beings as more valuable lifeforms. It has a lot to do, again, with self-preservation and escaping from the law.

People have been killing each other ever since the homo sapiens came into being. People do it everyday. People do it in massive scale, despite having a "deeper counsciousness", and so on and so forth. 

Human beings are able to kill thousands of people because of ideas. Lions at least don't go out of their way to kill other lifeforms for ideological reasons or just for the fun of it. 

People were the audience at the Colosseum. The other species were there to kill and be killed, and they were harshly manipulted for that purpose. 

The background of your thoughts has something attractive about it, but your argument is lame, in short.

Brian May is probably the most sincerest and genuine rock stars living! This man has no airs and graces and has a real general liking of fans, and we always read how he would take time out to sign autographs and talk to fans after concerts. He is not your typical big head-little brain guitar hero, who is dumb as dogshit and usually so full of shit it aint funny! Brian is the complete opposite! At the same time, he does not suffer fools lightly, and he is very quick to cut down any interviewer who tries to make a mockery of him or Queen! A true legend.

LAP wrote: Brian May is probably the most sincerest and genuine rock stars living! This man has no airs and graces and has a real general liking of fans, and we always read how he would take time out to sign autographs and talk to fans after concerts. He is not your typical big head-little brain guitar hero, who is dumb as dogshit and usually so full of shit it aint funny! Brian is the complete opposite! At the same time, he does not suffer fools lightly, and he is very quick to cut down any interviewer who tries to make a mockery of him or Queen! A true legend.

Is that you Brian?...sometimes I think Queen member's visit this site and talk themselves up........

Yara wrote:

I can guess what's the worldview behind your ideas, and I'm fairly sympathetical to it, but your argument is lame. All you have done is bringing up examples of people having their lives threatned by other animals - the guy in the middle of a pack of hungry lions, Bob surrounded by 20.000 cockroaches...

If self-preservation is a pan-species behavior, then we are indeed equal to other animals, since no one - at least nowadays in most of the Western World - is expected to become a martyr and put any other life, especially unrelated ones, above his own when killing is the only way of surviving.

A dog is as capable of empathy as you. If it were you or the dog one cares about on the metaphorical road, he'd hit you anytime if there were no legal consequences.  

One reason why it seems just logical to kill the chipmunk is the fact that one may get in serious trouble with the law if a person happens to be hit. 

I don't think it has much to do with empathy or a tendency to treating human beings as more valuable lifeforms. It has a lot to do, again, with self-preservation and escaping from the law.

People have been killing each other ever since the homo sapiens came into being. People do it everyday. People do it in massive scale, despite having a "deeper counsciousness", and so on and so forth. 

Human beings are able to kill thousands of people because of ideas. Lions at least don't go out of their way to kill other lifeforms for ideological reasons or just for the fun of it. 

People were the audience at the Colosseum. The other species were there to kill and be killed, and they were harshly manipulted for that purpose. 

The background of your thoughts has something attractive about it, but your argument is lame, in short.
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I don't have any beliefs in this area nearly developed enough to be considered a 'worldview'.  What I wrote were preliminary thoughts in response to the related principles that 'a life is a life' and 'animal and human life is equal' that I don't think can have any broad meaning in the real world.  My point about the lions - and there are nearly unlimited less extreme examples I could use to express the same idea - is that 'superiority' and it's attendant behaviours are  not the exclusive domain of marauding humans but the fortune of whoever has the upper hand in any given situation regardless of the species.  Cockroaches actually can't kill Bob, and that example was included to show that we regularly kill or otherwise interfere with other life to provide for things like physical and psychological comfort that are not strictly needs, but just desires A 'life is a life' when applied at all is applied unevenly and virtually always for our own benefit in one way or another.

And what do the spectrum of laws relating to the killing and harming of other humans reflect if not the value society places on human life? Of course it's about a judgement about which lifeforms are more valuable.

While I'd strongly question your assertion that the capacity for empathy of a dog and a human are the same, I agree that emotions and such even if rudimentary are not exclusive to humans.  And neither are things like cruelty.  It seems logical that the darker impulses of more complex thinking will be present in some degree in any creature with neurobiology capable of forming intent or even observing and repeating actions with a cause and effect relationship.  Jane Goodall who spent decades observing primates said her biggest disappointment was discovering that they were just like us.  She observed bullying and violence and behaviour meant to hurt, harm and ostracize and she said "I thought they were better than us, but they're not.  They're just like us."   The notion that there are no bad animals just bad people is another notion grounded in about the same degree of realism as 'a life is a life'.

I would not say "that animal life can or should be valued equally by humans in all situations", only that it should not automatically be less valued in all situations.

For example I might value my cat's life above say Rupert Murdoch's, or Robert Mugabe's. Does that seem entirely unreasonable?

Catbert wrote: I would not say "that animal life can or should be valued equally by humans in all situations", only that it should not automatically be less valued in all situations.

For example I might value my cat's life above say Rupert Murdoch's, or Robert Mugabe's. Does that seem entirely unreasonable?
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Well I don't think it is automatically less valued in all situations.   There are laws and conservation strategies designed to preserve and protect individual and collective animal life that thwart or limit human endeavours and desires all the time.  You can't, as one man in Toronto recently found out, whack a raccoon over the head with a shovel for messing with your yard for example.  Development of land for a new school in my city was delayed for years because of strong resistance from a group who wanted to protect adjacent areas of marshland and the life contained in it.   It was only granted a permit after a great number of concessions and studies that showed the impact would be limited. There are countless similar situations in every developed or developing corner of the world.

In other situations of course human will dominates, and we certainly have made a mess of  some things.  But then again, so have those mink in Scotland noted in the article above.  What I find myself resisting is the Brian May notion that just about *everything* is some kind of egregious display of human pillaging.   I think it's him that has the somewhat twisted view of the human place in the animal world.  He frequently points out that we are mere animals, but apparently ones that can't subsist and carve out a spot in the world under any of the same rules of the rest of the animal kingdom without being in some sort of horrible and sickening moral decay.   People should be allowed reasonable protection of themselves and their loved ones, their homes, their communities, their environment, their livelihoods etc. without being labelled some absurd thing by Dr. Unreasonable.

As for your cat, you probably value it's life above that of a lot of people who aren't necessarily some shade of evil.  You probably even value it's life over my life, for example, because I'm just an abstraction while your cat is (presumably) an awesome real cat!   Valuing your cat is kind of a micro version of the larger feathering of one's own nest that I'm trying to point out as normal, acceptable and even instinctive behaviour.

GratefulFan wrote: I've heard Brian's comparison of the way we treat animals with past practices like slavery as well, and I think he's reaching.  No matter how much more we come to learn about the sentience and physical, emotional and psychological lives of animals we will still always ensure human needs and desires are met.  All species do this.  Out of necessity the acts of acquiring food and ensuring physical security are played out in a particularly brutal way in the animal world.  Our intelligence and highly developed abilities to morally reason and experience empathy means we can do much better than this, but how can that expand so far as to 'be equal'?  If for some reason some choice had to be made the life of a badger is equal to the life of your child or your husband or wife, for example?  Really?

Hm.... i don't believe in cruelty, and i think its sad that animals are kept in captivity (having said that, i have cats and fish) but 'slavery' is a bit of a strong term?  I dunno, i love animals, and value their lives, teach kids to be kind to small creatures (eg, dont pull the spider apart, let him run off home, etc) but i hesitate to think of putting an animal on equal par as a human.  Then again, some people say whales are more intelligent then humans... and i value myself over a whale.  :/

mike hunt wrote: LAP wrote: Brian May is probably the most sincerest and genuine rock stars living! This man has no airs and graces and has a real general liking of fans, and we always read how he would take time out to sign autographs and talk to fans after concerts. He is not your typical big head-little brain guitar hero, who is dumb as dogshit and usually so full of shit it aint funny! Brian is the complete opposite! At the same time, he does not suffer fools lightly, and he is very quick to cut down any interviewer who tries to make a mockery of him or Queen! A true legend.

Is that you Brian?...sometimes I think Queen member's visit this site and talk themselves up........
It can't be Brian. He doesn't sound angry or resentful about anything.

Yes GratefulFan, my cat is an awesome real cat, and I appreciate your comments.

A quote from one of Brian's songs that he revealed years later was really about the death of his cat, seems relevant and maybe gives an insight into the man:

"Her ways are always with me,
I wander all the while,
But please you must forgive me,
I am old but still a child."

All Dead, All Dead
News of the World

All Dead All Dead is a wonderful composition - thanks for bringing it to mind in this context.  It's easy I think to understand Brian as a sometimes-too-intense-for-his-own-good idealist that finds it difficult to comprehend and accept anything that feels like cruelty or indifference.  I think many of us wrestle with the clash between what is and what should be in one way or another throughout our lives, so it's easy to feel empathy and admiration for his motives and intentions. But most of us require something from ourselves as well.  We learn to recognize when our emotions threaten to swamp our reason and we step back far enough to find at least an intellectual grasp of opposing ideas or outcomes.  Sometimes we end up learning and making adjustments. We allow time for reflection and make at least an attempt to see things through the eyes of others.  Most importantly we recognize our own experience from which views are formed as being inherently limited.   Brian May: Call yourselves conservationists? You are not conservationists. You are interfering blunderers, trying to restore a situation which has already disappeared. You do not care for any animal - so do not pretend that you do. All you care about is some fanciful conceit in which you, the heroes, are playing God ... trying to re-create what you regard as a desirable world. For who? STOP THE KILLING !!!! ......  YOU must be stopped - you stupid, stupid, insensitive, ignorant pseudo-scientific people. (Full post on Soapbox here) That was addressed to the conservationist in the mink article who most would instinctively understand has a difficult, unpleasant and thankless job in culling the mink who are devastating the local ecosystem.  A  tone and intent representative of the thinking he promotes around people simply carrying out some aspect of lives quite different than his. There are a hundred things to deeply admire about Brian May; we're truly lucky music fans.  A hundred things to admire, but I don't think the quality of his insight or his treatment of people in the course of seeking improved conditions for animals are among them.