Thread: US Marine Throws Puppy Over Cliff

Wait, all he got was discharged? He should be in jail, and for a long time.

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

What amazing Fail.

What's pathetic is your trying to justify what they did by using an analogy that shows that you not only don't know the difference between the cognitive states of a dog and an ant, but replaces the two, full-grown offenders with "little Timmy."

Please. If you're going to be such a dick in your next post, display a little more logic than that. (Then, for your own benefit, go back and edit your post and take out the part where you're being such a dick.)

On the other hand, hunting down and killing an animal with a gun probably causes more fear, pain, and stress on an animal (seeing as you can't just walk up to an animal and shoot it in the head) yet most people aren't strutting around complaining about hunters.

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

On the other hand, hunting down and killing an animal with a gun probably causes more fear, pain, and stress on an animal (seeing as you can't just walk up to an animal and shoot it in the head) yet most people aren't strutting around complaining about hunters.

I've never been hunting, but aside from maybe animals in open fields, you don't go running after animals, you stay in a spot they are likely to come to and hide and then as soon as they show up you shoot. At least I think that is how they do it. When my cousin was young he went hunting and it disgusted me because he was bragging about how he had to shoot the same deer 6 times because it wouldn't die. I don't think he tried to make it suffer though, so I'm not that upset about it.


I do get upset when I hear horror stories about the first one or two shots not killing the animals.

I do complain about people who hunt for sport alone. In West Virginia, deer hunting is hugely popular. People use deer stands or quiet tracking through woods and the animals never even knows what hit them. Of course there are some exceptions and I have a problem with some of them. Inducing terror in a creature isn't necessary.

I had a rabbit business once. I went into it completely blind and ignorant. I fed and watered them in their cages every day and I kept their cages clean and well sheltered. Yet every day I would go out and find more bunny bodies, cute feet sticking out from the bars as if pleading for escape. I was planning on selling some of the rabbits as pets and others as meat. One of the meat rabbits was sick, so I mustered up some courage and snapped its neck, skinned it and examined it (mostly to get used to the task). But when they kept dying, for no apparent cause, I couldn't bare it anymore and freed them.
And the strangest thing happened. They all survived and thrived. I walked out to the barn every day to feed and water them and they would flock around my feet.
I found out, after much research, that they had been dying because I had been feeding them mulch hay. Mulch hay tends to get infested with a mold that rabbits are HIGHLY sensitive to. When they were free I had stopped given them the mulch because our field is covered in hay and they could eat it whenever they wanted.

Before I released them though, one rabbit had given birth to several babies. After a couple weeks it was obvious the little one wouldn't make it. I wanted to learn how to preserve the pelt, so I tried snapping its neck like I had done the other one. It didn't work. I tried 2 more times and only caused the poor one unbelievable pain. I was crying my eyes out, petting it, trying to ease the pain I had caused. I wasn't about to try and fail again so I left it to die in shock. When I skinned it, I dicovered I had broken it's back and one of its legs. It never occurred to me that baby rabbits- like baby people- have more resiliant bones. And I have never forgiven myself for what I did.

It is horrific for me to hear people LAUGHING while causing terror and pain on any creature. It wasn't the laughter of commradery (sp) or even excited laughter while in the "thrill of the hunt", but laughter aimed AT the suffering of the puppy.
I think that's what most people have a problem with.

Owned.

~

Why don't you people care equally that these marines are killing people and children?

Because they are shooting them rather than throwing them off cliffs. Can't you imagine the sheer horror?

Originally Posted by Goldney

Why don't you people care equally that these marines are killing people and children?

Who says we don't...

.

War happens, violence happens, people bleed, people die, people are molested.

Your life is meaningless, everything is devoid of purpose, it is nonsense. The war over resources is perpetual and mixed with a sense of purpose over creeds. However, you're nothing but a pale blue dot. There's no reason for you or anyone else to be alive.

Worrying about it is folly, complaining about it is folly. It happened, it's going to continue to happen, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.

Voice your opinion but do so in remembering that it's pointless. No one cares, nothing will really change. Puppies will fly off cliffs again another day. Children will be raped.

Don't reinforce it with attention. Don't reinforce it by acknowledging it.

If you don't like it, don't do it or reinforce it. But don't think you can prevent it from happening again - because it will.. over and over and over..

Humankind is a face being stomped on by a boot repeatedly.

Edit: I contradict myself by posting this.. so I'll just appear arrogant. Hopefully someone gets something out of this.

~

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

On the other hand, hunting down and killing an animal with a gun probably causes more fear, pain, and stress on an animal (seeing as you can't just walk up to an animal and shoot it in the head) yet most people aren't strutting around complaining about hunters.

I don't really like people hunting for pure "sport."

I am tolerant for people who hunt for food and or practical reasons. Even with that being the case, standing on top of a ridge with an uzi and screaming "Hahahaha! Die aminalz!!!" is not respectable hunting, in my eyes (even if it was for food), which is the equivalent of what the soldiers did in the video.

Originally Posted by Goldney

Why don't you people care equally that these marines are killing people and children?

The most obvious answer would be: Because it has nothing to do with this conversation.

I'm sure if you look real hard, you can find plenty of threads about peoples' feelings toward soldiers and war, as it pertains to human death.

Life is not an onus, O'nus is

Hopefully someone gets something out of this.


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Originally Posted by O'nus

Your life is meaningless, everything is devoid of purpose, it is nonsense. The war over resources is perpetual and mixed with a sense of purpose over creeds. However, you're nothing but a pale blue dot. There's no reason for you or anyone else to be alive.

I agree with everything [O'nus] said, except for the above quote.

...Not that my opinion matters, of course.

Originally Posted by Specialis Sapientia

Life is not an onus, O'nus is

Hopefully someone gets something out of this.


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Huh?

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

I agree with everything [O'nus] said, except for the above quote.

...Not that my opinion matters, of course.

How come?

~

Zhaylin that story traumatized me. I thank you.

Man....

Mes Tarrant. Yeah... when I'm sleep deprived I tend to get too chatty
I hate rabbits to this day... not because of anything they ever did or didn't do, but because I know exactly how fragile they are and my memories still HAUNT me. It's never been an event I LAUGHED about. Which is why I don't believe for one second that what that man did was out of "mercy". He didn't kill the dog to do it a favor and he didn't need it for food and neither was it threatening his life. So what does that leave?- mental instability or outright cruelty.

That's nothing compared to what happened to a dog in the Town that I live in. Poor dog was dragged by a truck.

http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimes...f43449&k=47627

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

I agree with everything [O'nus] said, except for the above quote.

...Not that my opinion matters, of course.

Clearly you're not reading enough Carl Sagan.

Originally Posted by Marvo

Clearly you're not reading enough Carl Sagan.

"Enough?" Enough to what? Fall in line with his opinion? I can form my own.

Originally Posted by O'nus

Huh?
How come?

~

Well, first - to show that I don't completely disagree, I will say this: The universe, itself, doesn't matter. It is pointless. From a perspective that tries to take in the universe as a whole, you're right. Unfortunately, the notion falls apart when looked at it from our (humans) perspective.

What I feel is pointless is when we (humans) try to base such absolute statements ("nothing matters") and philosophies off of anything other than the human perspective. For, you see, we are all human - and to humans, there is very much that matters. "What matters" is subjective. No matter how much anyone wants to try to see the concept from whatever angle, "what matters" is still going to change. Knowing this, it is practically impossible to say "nothing matters" with any sort of accuracy. It's like someone adapted to living on the moon saying that "water doesn't matter," simply because they've been adapted to living without it.

From a cosmic perspective, do humans matter? No. From the human perspective, do humans matter? Yes. (As in the case of the soldiers.) Humans shape the world we live in. They interact with us everyday. They interact with our children (sometimes maliciously). These things matter to us - unless you're the type of person who could have their child raped and killed, and just say to yourself "oh well. These things happen," and continue on with your life with no sense of loss. Or could lose all your arms and legs and just think to yourself, "ah well. That sucks. So anyway, I wonder what time the game starts?" After a time, you can learn to adapt, but that is only because you've found away to make your losses not matter to you.

What matters?

That depends on who you're asking.

Oh, I took your post as misunderstanding what he was writing as in, you had no idea what he was writing.

If you actually have no idea what he's talking about, watch this video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M
It's a 4 minutes speech kinda deal by Carl Sagan, accompanied by a neat little slide show. Puts our existence into perspective.

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

The most obvious answer would be: Because it has nothing to do with this conversation.

I'm sure if you look real hard, you can find plenty of threads about peoples' feelings toward soldiers and war, as it pertains to human death.

Theres some hypocrisy here. Earlier on you talked about cognitive states and, in the little Timmy example, implied that ants aren't as important as dogs due to this difference in cognition. By the same rules, humans are more cognitively complex than dogs, so you should all be proportionately a LOT more outraged about the hundreds of humans killed everyday by troops in the middle east. The uproar that this one puppy's death has caused just highlights how silly people can be. Get a grip.

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

"Enough?" Enough to what? Fall in line with his opinion? I can form my own.

I was making a Carl Sagan reference.

Well, first - to show that I don't completely disagree, I will say this: The universe, itself, doesn't matter. It is pointless. From a perspective that tries to take in the universe as a whole, you're right. Unfortunately, the notion falls apart when looked at it from our (humans) perspective.

What I feel is pointless is when we (humans) try to base such absolute statements ("nothing matters") and philosophies off of anything other than the human perspective. For, you see, we are all human - and to humans, there is very much that matters. "What matters" is subjective. No matter how much anyone wants to try to see the concept from whatever angle, "what matters" is still going to change. Knowing this, it is practically impossible to say "nothing matters" with any sort of accuracy. It's like someone adapted to living on the moon saying that "water doesn't matter," simply because they've been adapted to living without it.

From a cosmic perspective, do humans matter? No. From the human perspective, do humans matter? Yes. (As in the case of the soldiers.) Humans shape the world we live in. They interact with us everyday. They interact with our children (sometimes maliciously). These things matter to us - unless you're the type of person who could have their child raped and killed, and just say to yourself "oh well. These things happen," and continue on with your life with no sense of loss. Or could lose all your arms and legs and just think to yourself, "ah well. That sucks. So anyway, I wonder what time the game starts?" After a time, you can learn to adapt, but that is only because you've found away to make your losses not matter to you.

What matters?

That depends on who you're asking.

I agree with everything here. There's just two perspectives we can then take after examining this.

We can look at the puppy being thrown off the cliff and ask, "How is this going to affect the universe?" or "How is this going to affect ourlives?"

In both cases, I answer the same - not at all.

I'm not sure if you see my point or not but.. what matters depends on who you are asking, yes, because it is always up to others to decide what matters. If you decide that this does not matter, then nothing will come of it and it will not be given so much attention. To best exemplify what I mean, because it is now well known, a soldier has a potential to say, "Hey, let's throw that puppy off a cliff like in that video" and others have a possible inclination to know that they could get media coverage.

Just think - you now know of this persons name and a bit about their life because of this thing that apparently is "not liked" yet reinforced. It is like giving attention to a child for doing bad things. Just ignore it. And it won't matter.

~

EXCEPT- if the soldier was truly otherwise mentally sound and a decent person, it could indicate he was suffering greatly because of the war and could regress further, killing people on a whim instead of animals.
By acknowledging the issue and punishing it, it reinforces to the public and other soldiers that such heartless and/or thoughtless acts will not be tolerated... which may hinder others from behaving in a similar fashion.

Originally Posted by Zhaylin

EXCEPT- if the soldier was truly otherwise mentally sound and a decent person, it could indicate he was suffering greatly because of the war and could regress further, killing people on a whim instead of animals.
By acknowledging the issue and punishing it, it reinforces to the public and other soldiers that such heartless and/or thoughtless acts will not be tolerated... which may hinder others from behaving in a similar fashion.

I thought this too but by displaying the behaviour to others it still reinforces the behaviour. He threw it off the cliff for laughs and for attention and so this is a form of success. The more people talk about it, even negatively, the more successful it is. It is like making a thread on the boards here about how annoying a troll is.

Do you think that it might have been better to isolate the issue as much as possible and have close ones doe the punishment rather than society..?

I just hope no child see's the video and think it might be amusing to throw his own puppy off his patio or something.. it's better to quell the idea BEFORE seeing it happen than to make an effort to make examples. No?

~

Originally Posted by Pensive Patrick

Theres some hypocrisy here. Earlier on you talked about cognitive states and, in the little Timmy example, implied that ants aren't as important as dogs due to this difference in cognition. By the same rules, humans are more cognitively complex than dogs, so you should all be proportionately a LOT more outraged about the hundreds of humans killed everyday by troops in the middle east. The uproar that this one puppy's death has caused just highlights how silly people can be. Get a grip.

There is no hypocrisy there. As I said before, the only reason there isn't much talk here about the soldiers killing humans is because it's in no way related to the discussion started by the OP. There are plenty of threads explaining how I (and others) feel about the war, the killing of humans - and a myriad of other concepts that have nothing to do with this puppy - all over the forum. Exactly what would be the point of my jumping to outline those views in this discussion? I feel they are irrelevant. That does not make me hypocritical, in this context.

Originally Posted by O'nus

I was making a Carl Sagan reference.

Oh, ok. I see.

Originally Posted by O'nus

I agree with everything here. There's just two perspectives we can then take after examining this.

We can look at the puppy being thrown off the cliff and ask, "How is this going to affect the universe?" or "How is this going to affect ourlives?"

In both cases, I answer the same - not at all.

I'm not sure if you see my point or not but.. what matters depends on who you are asking, yes, because it is always up to others to decide what matters. If you decide that this does not matter, then nothing will come of it and it will not be given so much attention. To best exemplify what I mean, because it is now well known, a soldier has a potential to say, "Hey, let's throw that puppy off a cliff like in that video" and others have a possible inclination to know that they could get media coverage.

Just think - you now know of this persons name and a bit about their life because of this thing that apparently is "not liked" yet reinforced. It is like giving attention to a child for doing bad things. Just ignore it. And it won't matter.

~

Those are not the only two perspectives that can be gained from the video. An example of another would be "How do people, who have the same disregard for 'upper lifeforms' affect our lives?"

To ask yourself this question, is to open an entire universe of possibly negative answers.

It's true that what these soldiers do have no direct impact on our lives, but - more fundamentally - the mindset that these soldiers display (having excuses for belittling the experiences and/or deaths of other creatures) is what infects millions of other humans and affects our lives on a daily basis.

Originally Posted by O'nus

I thought this too but by displaying the behaviour to others it still reinforces the behaviour. He threw it off the cliff for laughs and for attention and so this is a form of success. The more people talk about it, even negatively, the more successful it is. It is like making a thread on the boards here about how annoying a troll is.

Not necessarily true. A troll does what he does because he intends to cause such stir. This marine might not have really thought he was doing anything that would have been as ill-received as it was. Doing it "for attention" doesn't always mean the perpetrator got the sort of attention he was intending. "Publicity" and "negative publicity" are two different things. They might accomplish a mutual goal - making you more well-known - but to what cost?

Originally Posted by O'nus

I just hope no child see's the video and think it might be amusing to throw his own puppy off his patio or something.. it's better to quell the idea BEFORE seeing it happen than to make an effort to make examples. No?
~

I somewhat agree with this. Though I appreciate the knowledge that comes from seeing these types of events, I'm not completely ignorant to how the media's showcasing of them paves the way for copycats. I'm pretty much on the fence about this one. I can't say that I've weighed both sides of the coin to a degree where I'm comfortable with saying whether the media should or should not tell us about occurrences such as this. I am comfortable in my indecision on the matter, though.

[Edit:]
Oh, and Marvo, I will watch the video in just a little bit.
[/Edit]