Rights of Nature?

'Rights" is a pretty odd word to apply to nature, I agree. Nature generally seems to look after itself by not particularly caring what happens to it - it always wins in the end.I doubt a lion respects the rights of a wildebeest much, but nature only allows a given amount of lions and wildebeest to co-exist - if lions ever get the upper hand, their food supply disappears.I doubt nature minds one way or the other wether mankind pollutes itself out of existence - it seems to think that rats and micro-organisms are at least as cool as apes and that humans are as dispensable as dinosaurs.If I was nature I'd be rubbing my hands together in anticipation of what will spring up after the next apocalypse - manmade or otherwise.

This is a really strange argument because of course we can confer rights on anything so long as we understand we're making it up.For example, I've just granted the right for the seagull to nest on my chinmey. I don't grant the right in perpetuity and I reserve the right to revoke the decision if my wife gets dive bombed too often or if they splatter my car after it's been washed.And most importantly, the sea gulls neither know nor care and will shit on my car regardless. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Well traditionally we gave no other creature any rights - with the possible exception of sacred cows and Janeists - who are are fearful of treading on a worm.Now we tend to like some creatures but not others. Hampsters are nice but not rats. Goldfish but not tuna. Budgies but not seagulls. And so on.We apparently care about animal husbandry for cows unless we can pretend not to know how they're actually treated. Not so much chickens.I can pour boiling water on an ants nest but not my seagulls. I can't shoot my seagulls but I can a pigeon - or a grouse, but only in season.I can catch, kill and eat a salmon - but only if I have a licence.I can take in a stray cat without notifying anybody, but not so a dog.We grant rights but they do seem at tad arbitrary. Because we made up the arbitrary rules. How else?

I don't think so, what we're discovering is the need to behave a bit better.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Of course I'd feel pissed off about it too and all those groups did and some still do. You've confirmed your own point - people make up the rules that suit them and they change over time. We almost certainly will grant more rights to various animal groups - sentient or otherwise. That doesn't make them any less arbitrary. Doubtful - we tend to eat a lot of them. That's one hell of a non sequitur

No, everyone SHOULD have he same rights. But they don't and the reason they don't is because some people don't agree with me and I can't make them.Opinions on morality depend on your own position in society and the times and the country you live in.

You're going to have to ask them.Rights are things that we decide on and then confer - which is a just a fancy way of saying we make them up at our convenience. They are not something that is out there in the world undiscovered, they arise from our own developing morality.