I would to a certain agree with akalae here, its just one small problem with it all: Mr Vargas took this dog, and hence, became the responsible party for this animal.

He took it, and hence, he was responsible for it. And therefore, i would say he was guilty of animal cruelty, abuse or whatever you may call it. That it was shown as some sort of "artistic scence" only makes the viewers guilty as well, and i would have no problem fining any human visitor that came to this place, looked upon the dog, and did nothing, ignoring a human duty towards something that we are now in control over (the dog in this case).



Are Human Animals more worth? Yes, thats what Humans say. Dogs consider themselves more worth, as Horses see themselves ad infinitum, so that is a none issue. But it is interesting to point out, that if it was a human child, or perhaps a homeless person he would have been arrested, why is the dog less worth? A homeless person cost money for the society, he will most likely stride to criminality, steal and kill to survive, whiles a dog could be used for something, perhaps a blind, or a child needing someone close. Far fetched, but you get the point.

Do tell me if this does is not a sound opinion?

-JE

Way to twist this around. We aren't talking about me. I've already explained what I would do in the situation Vargas was presented with. I didn't bring Mother Teresa into the conversation.

If you continue to consider Mother Teresa's example as consistently good behavior, then you are deciding to remain blind to the facts.



Irrelevant to your point. Again, you brought this idea of consistently good behavior into this dialogue. I did not. I told you that it was irrelevant. You insisted that it was and brought Mother Teresa into it. She is not an example of consistently good behavior at all, as I've illustrated.



Could it be that you're justifying without any evidence. Was she out of money at the time? Did she not have money coming in? I mean, she'd just met a few years earlier with British publisher Robert Maxwell for a books for cash scheme that got her millions (and it turns out that money was embezzled from a pension fund) She did nothing. She went on with her business. Asked the judge to show Keating mercy and went on with her life. In the meantime, thousands of elderly people lost their life savings. Did she even respond to the request to return the money? Nope. Did she do anything to help those people who lost that money? Did she even acknowledge that they existed once she knew what Keating had done? Nope. The fact is, she didn't care where the money came from.



So, you can't provide any information on the proceedings, but you are sure that's what they did. Well, for your information, John Paul II abolished this practice in 1983 which led the way to the 500 canonizations and 1300 beatifications under John Paul II (compared to the 98 by all his 20th century predecessors combined). He beatified and canonized like Bush pens signing statements. There were no clergy officially serving as Advocatus Diaboli. But then, you're certain, that these non-existent canon lawyers did the job they no longer had... of course





Well, gee, if someone told me that if I'd given them money I'd stolen, it would certainly make me feel pretty good.

Well, when Mother Teresa says things like, the Duvaliers love their poor and their love is reciprocated (so obviously not the case), you've got to wonder if she's not nurturing goodness, but rather petting the hand that feeds her.



Okay, now you're delving into things that we cannot debate on this site. So, I'll ignore the above.



The dog in the exhibit was named for Canda and certainly that carried some meaning (as expressed by the artist), but... the exhibit was not about Canda. I've already posted a quote about what the exhibit was about in a previous post.



Yes, good acts... like returning 1.29 million dollars in stolen money. Like not accepting money from and praising the rule of dictators who plunder their own citizens.

You have descended into a spiral of nonsense.

The fact of the matter is, you brought this in to the discussion. You can continue to argue that Mother Teresa exhibited consistently good behavior - and she didn't - or you can let it go. Your question was irrelevant. Why? Because nobody exhibits consistently good behavior, Paladin Elspeth. Nobody. That's why your question was irrelevant, meaningless, pointless.

Considering the "certainty" of your responses, I'm not sure you know what you're talking about.



I don't know, is it immoral to "let two dogs fight to death"? If the two dogs want to fight, who am I to stop them?

Now, if you trained these dogs to fight in the manner that dogs in "professional" dog fights are trained to fight and you forced them to go at it until death, well... what's on the canvas may be art, but I'd say you'd probably go to jail for abuse.

But Vargas didn't do anything close to this. This dog was tied to a post on a street corner. It was very sick, starving and wouldn't eat. While callous, certainly, I would not say he ventured into abuse. He simply changed the venue of the dog's death.

I would like to thank you for letting me know of John Paul II's abolition of the devil's advocate position in the proceedings. It would have been better had you provided a reference, but I found it on my own. Thank you just the same.

I maintain my belief that Mother Teresa of Calcutta, aside from your attacks, was a saintly woman who actually helped people in India. Without this fact, she would not have become known in the world as someone who was dedicated to alleviating human suffering in God's name.

You obviously maintain a very narrow view of what comprises "consistently good behavior" when you maintain that nobody demonstrates this. Perhaps you are mistakenly equating it to consistently perfect behavior. If that is what you mean, I have to agree with you. But I know many kind people whose behavior is exemplary--they wouldn't knowingly hurt anyone--and I am not as cynical in my assessment of them. I only hope that there are such people present in your life.

However, as has been made abundantly clear in this thread, Vargas became responsible for the welfare of the dog when he took it and tied it up in an art gallery, placing food a few feet away from it and forbidding others to feed it so that he could make his "statement." That was wrong; that was not art according to anyone who holds affection for these creatures. It was callous and worthy of punishment. It was intentional negligence and, regardless of the complicity or passive neglect of onlookers, Vargas did wrong and remains responsible for his own actions. And it doesn't matter whether he named the dog after the human victim or not. If he had named the dog "Hitler" it would still have been abuse in the form of willful negligence and no less wrong.

As far as priorities go, the symbolism should have had a lower priority than the physical reality. "Statements" are no justification for intentionally allowing a creature to suffer.

Well, you just seemed so darned certain. Sometimes doing the homework before you make statements of certainty saves you the lack of credibility you gain when three seconds of searching glaringly proves you don't know what you're talking about.


Never stated that she didn't help people in India. It seems you are mistaking my statements of fact as "attacks" on Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Can you point to any statement of denial of those facts by Mother Teresa? Did she not visit the Duvaliers? Did she not praise them, saying that they love the poor and the poor love them? Did she not refuse to return the stolen money? Did she acknowledge the wrongdoing of Keating? Did she acknowledge those victims? Did she return the money she gained from Maxwell that he stole from the pension fund? How exactly was I attacking her? More likely I was attacking your assertions about her - rebutting them. Don't get my attacking your ill-informed assertions confused with attacking a person, "my friend". And, remember, you brought her into the discussion, not me.



Nope. It is the "consistent" part that I have a problem with. Mother Teresa, as I have shown, was not consistently good.

Consistent:

showing steady conformity to character, profession, belief, or custom
or... free from variation or contradiction




It has been stated repeatedly, that does not necessarily make it "abundantly clear." It has also been stated repeatedly that the dog wouldn't eat. Tell me, at what point does that become "abundantly clear"? If the dog wouldn't eat, then forbidding others to feed it is, ultimately, meaningless. Besides, if someone wanted to feed the dog, they could have. I didn't see any rope or other barrier cordoning off the dog from the public. What, are they going to arrest someone for feeding a starving dog?



And feeding the poor in India is no justification for refusing to return money stolen from elderly people - refusing to acknowledge that wrong has even been done to them - or taking money from, endorsing, and in fact praising, a dictator who stole from his own poor and starving people.

Difference is, I see the parallel. You don't.

One right - whether it be to highlight a wrongdoing or to feed the poor in India - does not justify the ill means used to achieve that right.

I never said what Vargas did was right. I just don't understand the level of outrage over something that was callous and not even on the scale of the actions of other more beatified people who, if they were the people you make them out to be, would've known better. Such outrage is exactly what Vargas was trying to highlight.

It might come as a surprise to learn how many of the great personages of history - including those famous for their wit and learning - that were vegetarians. Jeremy Bentham, whose utilitarian philosophy influenced the constitutions and laws of many countries in Europe and the Americas, lived on a diet of potatoes. Ethically, if you consider whether or not animals have rights, it would nevertheless be difficult to justify slaughtering wild horses for dog food, or raising domesticated livestock for human consumption; suffice it to say, ours has not been a history of good husbandry. Who are we to assert such mastery?

One of my favorite books about the natural world is by Henry Beston, who, I think, may have come closest to the truth about man and his place among the animal kingdom when he wrote:

“We need another and wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."
- Henry Beston, The Outermost House (1928)

Well, I was darned certain. I didn't know the previous Pope changed the rules. So sue me.

You certainly were less than forthcoming about the goodness that Mother Teresa is known for in your efforts to make your point. Pardon me for mistaking it for condemnation. Sure looked like it to me--still does.

If I live the rest of my life in a totally exemplary manner, I will not come close to performing as many acts of compassion as Mother Teresa of Calcutta did.

And it might be that she was known to extort money in a way from dictators and other powerful people in order to help the "poorest of the poor." Surely it has been done before. Only Mother Teresa's confessor could know whether she later confessed these times as sins because it was easier to do this than to constantly lean on parishioners of various Catholic churches for the work of the Missionary Sisters. Perhaps she, too, succumbed to the seductive premise that the end justifies the means.

It would certainly be easier to alternately spiritually intimidate/appeal to any remaining benevolent impulses of the rich and powerful than to stir up the populace to overthrow a dictator and then--maybe--convince the populace to distribute the plunder in a fair manner, including the poorest among them. This is especially true when one considers that the Catholic Church has, as an institution, historically sided with leaders in defending the status quo, instructing the faithful through their priests to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," whether legitimately procured or not. In this way Mother Teresa was merely following some well-established practices of the church hierarchy, whether we agree with them or not.

In Vargas' case, I see his attempt at "art" as a cynical stunt designed to shock and enrage, involving an innocent creature that should have been nursed to health if possible, euthanized if not possible. It was brutish, and what it managed to do, in my case and obviously the case of many who have posted here, was upset us about the dog rather than raise our consciousness about the man who was killed by the dogs.

Say what you will, for I am giving up on this thread and trying to persuade you to change your mind while you quibble over semantics over whether someone can be consistently good.

Bottom line: Letting a dog starve to death in an art gallery is not art.

From the dawn of creation, man and dog have shared an uncertain existence together; and of all the relationships in the animal kingdom, no two species have been so united, so mutually dependent, or their bond so taken for granted. A man may leave his wife, abandon his children, and forsake hearth and home; but his faithful dog will follow him to the ends of the earth. What greater love can a man hope for despite all his meanness? - he must be a miserable creature, indeed, to despise such loyalty! In all of heaven, were there ever angels made to serve him better, and yet be denied even the scraps from the Lord’s table?

Good Christian friend: You can have your God - and heaven too, for all its cold comfort! - I’d rather a dog for a friend.

I didn't know that either until I looked it up. But being that Mother Teresa is one of your favorite saints-who-is-not-yet-a-saint, I thought you would've followed the process of her beatification.



I was sticking to the point. You brought up consistently good behavior and used her as an example. In a rebuttal that doesn't mean I point up all the good things she's done. It means I highlight the things that indicate that she did not have consistently good behavior.



Good to know and completely irrelevant.



Perhaps, it might be, surely, blah, blah, blah. Did she or did she not do those things? Yes, she did. Does that, in addition to her acts of compassion, constitute consistently good behavior? No. Point made. End of story. And your defense of those actions by Mother Teresa while condemning this lesser action by Vargas only serves to highlight the hypocrisy.



Quibble over semantics?!! Wow.

I told you it was irrelevant in the first place. That takes some nerve. Your frustration is about my "quibbling over semantics?" Or is it more about the fact that you can't support your position? And, I don't need to have my mind changed, Paladin Elspeth, thank you very much. I've already stated that I believe your position on this to be hypocritical... why on earth would I want to adopt it?



Bottom line: Allowing thousands to starve while you endorse, praise and take money from the person starving them so that you can further your cause is not charity. Such an act is worse than letting a starving, dying dog who won't eat die in a gallery as part of an exhibit.

Once again, Nemo, a masterfully crafted marvel of literary skill. Slightly tangential, but masterful nonetheless.

We are not arguing about the loyalty of dogs, nor their comfort value to their owners. From what I can glean, this debate is about how moral it is to take a dying dog, and document its death. Yes, no doubt your dog, if you have one, is a wonderful canine, content and well fed, frolicking around meadows and streams, as most dogs are wont to do. However! You miss the point. Dogs who live in city streets have no warm hearths, no loving masters. They have scraps of rotting food, water laced with all sorts of icky pathogens, and brutal children with pointy sticks and rocks.

Vargas acknowledges this. He is showing the people of his city, perhaps even his country, their blind cruelty to these suffering animals. Why, he is asking us, do we cringe at the sight of the one starving dog that we can see, but feel nothing for the thousands of equally pitiful dogs that we cannot?

He gives us the answer as well, not outright, but as a whisper of guilt within ourselves; hypocrisy.

It's hard to find any information about this so-called "artist" other than abusing a dog in the name of art. I did find this:

Charming. Think of what would happen to a US "artist" had they done the same to Bush. And good heavens, what a waste of food! When there are starving people in this world! O the humanity!

When's the gallery opening?

Seriously, this goes on every day, in virtually every part of the world, whether it is allowed or not. The closest to me (I hope) is ~2 hours drive south in Tijuana, not that I get down there, ever. I assure you that U.S. citizens do go there all the time, expressly to watch some dogs kill each other. Would it not be better if they got some sort of life lesson from it?

It's not art, it's a sporting event. It happens every day. Still, I know people find football (either one) very inspirational at times, so maybe sports and art aren't so different.