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Two major studies showed that mankind has more empathy for pooches in dire circumstances than suffering people, according to a report in the Times of London.
A UK medical research charity staged two phony donation campaigns - one with a dog and the other featuring a man. Of course, the pooch drew more contributions.
"Would you give pounds 5 to save Harrison from a slow, painful death?" the separate ads said, featuring a canine and human "Harrison."
Then a Northeastern University study showed that only a baby human could compete with man's best friend.
Students were showed fake newspaper clippings about a baseball-bat attack on a puppy, an adult dog, a year-old infant and 30-year-old adult. They were asked questions to gauge their empathy and the adult finished last in sympathy.
"Respondents were significantly less distressed when adult humans were victimized, in comparison with human babies, puppies and adult dogs," according to Northeastern researchers. "Only relative to the infant victim did the adult dog receive lower scores of empathy."
Reader Comments
Like sprung from their own DNA for FUCK'S SAKE!!
........look around you with open eyes!! ..........
It's the 'helpless' bit about babies and small furry critters that makes humans respond that way. Conversely it's the competitive nature of man to disregard the plight of another human with the phrase 'better him than me.'
I agree, we are a curse to the planet, not because of population, but because we have taken ownership of it. Therefore, losing all the attachment we have to it. It becomes a material possession.
hate has to find an object or where will it go. If you hate yourself - which you is hating and which is the hated? Do you timeshare the body?
I have compassion for suffering animals - but I also see that anaesthesia and 'mercy killing' can also be so WE do not have to see or abide with OUR distress. No blame - but part of the issue. When one of our cats died we sat with her. The nature of powerlessness is that which calls upon and embodies love - call it prayer if you will - but it was the prayer for the capacity to truly be with - and not to interfere. keeping the channel open. The peace in that room was perfectly shared - two legs or four - the same.
I agree that life in the body should not become an unendurable torment - when that one is a willingness to release. However, I see stopping eating as a way out in that case - unless you are being force fed.
Loving other humans - as any kind of actual involvement - is messy, challenging, transformative. Dogs are simpler and their love is unconditional - that is they accept you as you are.
Human thinking is part of the human personality which is our strategy in life of masking from rejection, abandonment, lovelessness of one form or another. The masking is about fear, guilt and control - and presenting an image of yourself that 'wears out' in social situations.
But don't judge a human by his keeper. The ego is the idea you are alone - and so it is not the idea of giving and receiving love. It 'keeps' you on a leash and uses your energy to run its thinking.
By the way I don't see this 'study' as warranting the conclusion in the page title. I see charity being used for corporate masking and the PR of corporate capture of media plants a broad spectrum of 'meme supporting' articles. the meme of human worthlessness always being promoted - and just look at comments - including SOTT comments - to see cynical gullibility operating in place of conscious worth.
But there is a belief that animals have no capacity to escape and no voice to embody their will through. This is also held for ourselves - but we have social fears and attachments that cling on to life in form as well as protecting their rights against being 'put down' (unless on death row or beneath a drone strike etc) - excepting perhaps through long drawn out 'medical' treatments that effectively kill - and are also similarly 'profitable' to millitary industrial state-corporate cartels.
This kind of 'medical research' is about learning how to map out and use the triggers of an immediate emotional reaction. The same thing occurs to induce populations to back wars.