[cranks]

Ronin,

"BECAUSE I AM HUMAN!" is not logic. And you know it. I'm not Dolphin, so I don't care about them. You are not Dolphin, so you have no business with them. Cod Erat Demonstrandum.

You are human, so you are more "emotionally attached" to human. Yes. That's natural. But that's not a logic. Social animal species NEED to care about their own species. Or it's actually the other way around. They cared about each other, so they survived. That's how we evolved. That's why our species survived according to the Darwinist view. Now if you don't believe in evolution, please tell me so, because that'll change things a lot.

Assuming you believe in evolution, you care about humans more than pigs, because that's how our species survived. It is a "CAUSE" of our species' survival. It is not "logic". We are "made" to be that way.

How inhuman of you, Ronin, to say dogs don't have "selves" and therefore we can kill them and eat them as we please? I bet I could get a majority of English speaking people, or any human who didn't eat dog, on my side with this argument if we were talking about dogs. According to your logic, dogs don't have selves so we can kill them. How dare you say that? Haven't you a heart? :P

Really, if you think you can convince any dog owner with your "logic" of "non-self-aware animals can be killed and eaten", try it. You'll fail. Most humankind don't care if their dogs recognize their own optical images in a mirror or not. The mirror test? That's just freaking bogus. Dogs have selves. That's a given. Whatever "LOGIC" you employ won't move their hearts a bit.

Likewise, whatever "logic" I employ to "prove" that the species you call "whales" don't have "selves" will be moot. You'll just deny it, or just won't care. Everybody knows that, so please don't casually say you care about logic in the heat of a moment unless you really have a very good "logic". This topic is really about my, and a lot of Japanese people's, "beliefs". Please don't play it down. Please treat it as you treat your friends' Christian beliefs. I'm not saying "don't even talk about it", I do like to talk about it and I do appreciate your candidness. But please acknowledge that my opinion here is not something I concocted after I engaged in this discussion. It is a product of over a couple of decades of deliberation, backed, somewhat, by over a couple of thousands of years of the history of the Eastern philosophy.

You have said you are morally superior to people in Taichi and indirectly me. But if you are so morally superior, I think you should care about your own countries' inhumanity to your fellow human race first and foremost. I have brought up several racial discrimination cases by the anti-whaling folks here. And I've noticed you haven't made any comment whatsoever on that and just kept going on about whales. As I said, I like whales, but the racism to my race is more important for me than the whales. Coloreds are stabbed and killed by the racists in your country and the one next to it. What are all these "morally superior" people doing with whales? PEOPLE are being MURDERED because of racism IN YOUR COUNTRY! and these anti-whaling people are actually INCITING the racism!

Racism is hard to see when you are the majority. Myself included of course. It was a good experience that I got a racial slur in the UK on the street. (not to bash the UK. Racism happens everywhere and I think the UK is one of the better countries. It was just a stupid brad). It made my eyes open to racism and how I was so insensitive to it. I'm no better than you or anybody, but in this particular case I'm the working end of the racism, so I see more than you do. I brought up the example of Japanese mocked on street on Australian TV, but even Misa, who I believe is a very liberal person, failed to perceive it as an extremely racist act until I present the hypothesized example of Japanese people mocking Koreans on TV. Again, racism is hard to see when you are the majority. There are hundreds of thousands of racist remarks on the web regrading whaling. Sure, there are hundreds of thousands of racial remarks on the web by Japanese too, but I would NEVER EVER allow that in a group I belong to, and it is a more serious problem than most anything to me, more than the animal welfare for sure.

You probably remember how I was so worked up with Debito. I don't think he's evil to the core, he can even be a good person to hang out with. But I'm sorry, he is a bigoted racist. If posting the comic strip called "A Little Yellow Jap" that mocks Japanese race on the web, for whatever reason, doesn't earn him the racist title, I don't know what will. He is an "activist" on discrimination but he thinks it is totally fine to post that thing in public. Racism is that hard to recognize sometime.

I won't close this post with [/RANT]. It was out of modesty to do so in the last post. But this time I want my message to be clear. This is how I actually feel and what I believe in. No hard feelings though. I like your straightness and I thank you for giving me a chance to express our side of view, Ronin.