Thought Exercise #7: Due 10/22/13

"When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what is it that we are asserting?....[I]t is simply not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not, we must face the fact that humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with differing moral capacities, differing intellectual abilities, differing amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, differing abilities to communicate effectively, and differing capacities to experience pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand of equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality. It would be an unjustifiable demand."
--"All Animals Are Equal," by Peter Singer

It is true that it is fallible to say that every person is equal to one another. It's an idealistic statement, much like Communist society, in which everyone is ideally seen as equal in terms of socioeconomic classes and monetary prospects. In our diverse species, there are people of all different races, heights, intelligence quotients, skin color, looks, and skills. For instance, one cannot expect an art history major to run a program that a trained computer engineer could do under one minute, nor can one expect a fifteen-year-old girl to mother a child the way a more financially-capable thirty-year-old woman could do.

But what of animals? It is ridiculous to say that all animals are the same, as there are thousands of species adapted to different environments and behaviors. But what can one say when trying to compare humans to animals? The socially-ingrained immediate response most people will perhaps say on this matter is that "Humans are superior to animals." But how can they justify that? Just because animals do not have the IQ of humans? Because animals cannot industrialize and build cities and weapons of mass destruction? They, in their own ways, can be considered vastly superior to humans. For instance, dogs have better sense of smell than humans do, and bears are much more massive and powerful than humans are, and fishes can breathe in water. In addition, when humans die, they don't contribute to the ecosystem. In short, humans are not equal amongst each other, and humans cannot be considered superior to animals.