I just read a story about a (fictitious)couple that killed their dog and i was left slightly annoyed by the ordeal.
While I agree with the sentiment of the story, I think it may be better to present the "moral" as follows:
Don't act based on your gut feelings alone. When the owners did they not only killed their beloved dog, a member of their family; but they also cheated them selves out of the numerous other benefits that particular member of the family brought to the table. Free security monitoring, makeshift baby sitter, live in bodyguard for their whole family, etc...
The problem that the family faced was created by a very small part of the thought process that follows:
- Why is there blood on the dogs mouth?
- She must have bit something...
- What else in this house bleeds?
all correct so far... - the only other thing in the house that bleeds is the baby!!!! (here was the mistake, they didn't know about the snake)
- (often skipped step) Verify our hypothesis
- react accordingly
One might argue that a dog that had killed the baby should be put down (a debate for another thread maybe), but it's clear that a dog shouldn't be killed for protecting the baby!!!
My argument is that the couples assumption was correct (mostly) the dog HAD killed something with it's mouth. Judging a book by it's cover (or dog by it's saliva in this case) doesn't really fit in this sense. Reacting based on emotions instead of making a rational decision is more the point.
Emotions are VERY good at motivating us to do all kinds of things (hence the reason the original author of this story chose the topic they did); they are, however, PISS POOR at helping us to make sound decisions!!!!
If we all took the time to do a little research about everything unknown in our lives we may make vastly different decisions.
Some people read this story and were moved to go protest some perceived injustice because now they associate judging a book by its cover with killing innocent family pets!!! Emotions are funny that way! The really bad part is, it takes a lot of practice to slow your emotions down long enough to provide room for logic to lend a hand.
Unless you have put in the effort and time to develop the skill of forethought it is easy to fly off the proverbial handle before you even realize you have acted. Writers use emotionally charged prose to motivate you to turn the next page. Some might argue that this is how all the good books are written.
There are some people who use this fact against us though. Take the story of Ollie for instance the emotional charge of someone killing a dog (especially an innocent one) is being equated to judging someone by their appearance. The 2 situations are only loosely related but by linking them together the author can capitalize on some of the momentum from the former and direct it toward the latter (their desired cause).
At it's heart, this is manipulation and therefore i feel that it is dishonest and wrong. No, it's not nearly as wrong as killing a dog but, I think you are an intelligent enough audience that i dont need to wind you up like a toy and send you off to do my bidding. You should be allowed (i.e. not interfered with) to chose your own cause to go fight for! Which brings me to my second point (or twelfth):
Why do groups matter so much to people? Are injustices toward women somehow intrinsically different from injustices toward blacks or Muslims or Jews, etc????
If everyone who fought against an injustice (no matter the perceived victim) got together and fought against injustice toward any group wouldn't there be more power behind every action they took?
I mean correct me if i'm wrong but... the reason that it's wrong to beat a woman has nothing to do with her being a woman. It's wrong to beat on people. It just happens that women are more often the victims of this heinous crime than men are. and subsequently men are usually the perpetrators. But... Is it really that simple?
Isn't it also wrong to beat someone because of their race, color, creed, religion and/or sexual orientation???? is it somehow more wrong based the group you belong to? do you need more help if you belong to multiple groups? Maybe you just need it to stop and preferably for the assailant to be rendered incapable of doing it again, whether to you or anyone else.
Don't all victims of abuse want the same thing? Maybe some restitution or retribution would be in effect as well. But again, those desires are probably equally distributed among survivors of abuse no matter what group they belong to.
So why is it that when you are being abused you need to go find the correct support group. I wonder if the overhead to run all of these national level groups is worth the amount of people that the groups are unable to assist each and every year. If everyone who gives currently to a group that supports victims of abuse no matter the group the victims belong to decided that they were going to only give to the Victims of Abuse wouldn't there all of a sudden be only 1 CEO to pay. Yes I'm sure that the administration of one large group would be bigger than any of the smaller groups individually but... I guarantee you it won't need to be as big as all of their administrations combined!!!
Not only would there be more money to go to the victims but the concerted effort of all those groups at once could possibly find a way to protect every future victim before they even become a victim. maybe they could come up with a curriculum that could be taught in school or something (i don't claim to be as intelligent as all of those minds combined, and that's my point).
It seems to me that the true beneficiary of this divided system that we currently have is all the administrators that would otherwise be out of a job, not the victims; I would rather them be our focus.
I have been talking about the various groups that fight against abuse but they are only part of the redundancy that I'm speaking of. there are tons of groups out there that act under the auspices of fighting against injustice but i think most of them shoot themselves ( and their beneficiaries) in the foot by labeling themselves as the group against hate crimes, or sexual persecution, or whatever. I guess our government used to be there people who were supposed to protect us from force or fraud but they have now gotten too big to fail for lack of a better catch phrase =) all the division in our government has gotten to the point that we have administrations whose sole purpose is making sure that the other administrations are administering right. WTF????
TL;DR: we need less people helping us help and more people helping!