Alexei Sorokin: “These dogs are biological trash.” - The mass culling of stray dogs prior to Sochi

No dog is "biological trash"

Rarely am I shocked or surprised by human cruelty but a perfect example of the disgusting cruelty unique to our species is captured in the phrase used by Alexei Sorokin. When questioned by the media, he invented a new phrase to define the many dogs he slaughtered. The phrase: "biological trash" highlights the problem of how framing can be used in a destructive way. For those who do not know what framing is, framing is a sort of cognitive bias where people have a tendency to have a different emotional reaction when gentler or "newspeak" innocuous language is used in place of the more obviously "evilspeak".

The phrase "biological trash" is a newspeak phrase which tries to mask the cruelty. This phrase in my opinion is also very similar to phrases like "ethnic cleansing". What is the difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide? They are essentially the same thing but ethnic cleansing as a politically gentle alternative phrase. In place of biological trash as was used by Alexei, we typically see in the United States the word "vermin". Vermin and "biological trash" have the same meaning but biological trash sounds much more evil.

In my opinion there are humane ways to limit the population of dogs without having to resort to killing them. Even worse is that the dogs in the case of the Olympics were killed merely so human beings could do sporting events. Can stray dogs cause problems such as biting random people, spreading rabbies, etc? They can cause problems but then what is the best solution for this?

And should humans have the right to in essence "own" another animal? Whether it is a cat, or a dog, why do humans believe that it is a 'right' to own these animals? Part of promoting freedom means that even non-human animals should have at least in my opinion some basic rights. We can debate on what these rights ought to be, but they definitely should have some. This is particularly going to become more relavent also because of futurist angles which I'll present below.

Gene editing and "pets"

Today we have the ability to do gene editing. Nothing stops a dog breeder from deciding to enhance the intelligence of their dogs through a combination of gene editing and careful breeding. In a future where the non-human animals are progressively evolving to become smarter by human decisions, shouldn't rights be scaled up as well? At what point do rights scale for non-human animals and how can human animals assume we have rights if animals are mistreated?

All rights start with the most vulnerable

The defense of rights in society in my opinion starts with the most vulnerable. Under this argument we can make the case that non-human animals do have rights. It is true that stray dogs cannot live amongst humans for various reasons but in my opinion moving the dogs is a viable solution to that problem as there are places in the world where there are not many humans around but which are suitable for the stray dogs. In addition, the concept of "pet" has to be evolved if we are going to even keep such a concept. Technology is going to force this issue, and the in my opinion outdated thinking of Alexei Sorokin has to be addressed and discussed.

The purpose of this post is not to push any specific political views on animal rights or any specific ethics. The purpose of this post is to request a discussion as to why humans feel that human beings have a right to own non-human animals in 2017. In addition the purpose of my post was to expand the idea spectrum and solution space in the area of human and non-human animal cooperation. The technology we have available will make many forms of animal cruelty completely unnecessary, and when it becomes obvious that it is no longer necessary for any technical reason then will we be able to socially adapt?

Reference

1. http://time.com/3290/sochis-stray-dogs-are-biological-trash-says-the-guy-in-charge-of-culling-them/
2. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140206-stray-dogs-russia-sochi-olympics-killing-animals-world/