There's often a range of noticeable disconnects in the mind of an old-school antics-based short cartoon viewer, when the cartoon in question is a short about an animal chasing another animal for food or another hostile reason. We want intelligent beings to be treated humanely and get to keep their lives, but we understand that carnivorous animals require deaths of unintelligent – or perhaps intelligent – other animals to keep living, themselves.
As human beings in the Anthropocene era of Earth, we frown at meaningless killing of other sentient beings, and want everybody of our kind to be safe. We have to eat, though, so it’s fortunate that we can look at some killing of some animals and deem it fine, even though we technically could all choose to be vegetarian and still survive. That is fine if it is “humane killing” – as strange a concept as it sounds when you see it written – because the animals we eat typically don’t have intelligence to necessitate them having the same rights as humans.
Sure, they don’t need those rights because they are not like us, indeed. But cartoon animals that walk on two legs and have the brains to form complex plans are human enough that they should have rights similar to our human rights if we ever somehow encounter them in real life. That’s why I don’t think we should kill aliens who make contact with us unless they come as enemies to our race.
There are problems with humans eating meat, especially seeing as we are not obligate carnivores, but imagine if we were without any choice in the matter of eating meat, and we were like Tom from Tom and Jerry, and there were a race of things we had to eat to survive that were just as intelligent as us. What would a Tom race or a Jerry race have over the other one that gives them more right to exist than the other, other than the practical application of Jerries being able to survive on their own if all Toms were wiped out, and not vice versa? Once you comprehend this predicament – which you probably did already, long before I showed up – it’s easy to see the ethical dilemma behind the Wil-E-Coyote VS Roadrunner shorts or a similar property, and you might even feel apathetic towards what you’re watching. Because we apparently prefer watching survival over watching carnage, these cartoons will give the upper hand to the prey, and make the predator suffer terribly in almost every episode, when usually the predator’s motive is their own kind of survival.
The neat thing about Tom and Jerry that I am going to reveal today is that it actually gets pretty close to justifying an expectation of sympathy toward Jerry from the audience, and my extremely simple plan to take it all the way. I’ll let you stop wondering right now.
Sure, they don’t need those rights because they are not like us, indeed. But cartoon animals that walk on two legs and have the brains to form complex plans are human enough that they should have rights similar to our human rights if we ever somehow encounter them in real life. That’s why I don’t think we should kill aliens who make contact with us unless they come as enemies to our race.
There are problems with humans eating meat, especially seeing as we are not obligate carnivores, but imagine if we were without any choice in the matter of eating meat, and we were like Tom from Tom and Jerry, and there were a race of things we had to eat to survive that were just as intelligent as us. What would a Tom race or a Jerry race have over the other one that gives them more right to exist than the other, other than the practical application of Jerries being able to survive on their own if all Toms were wiped out, and not vice versa? Once you comprehend this predicament – which you probably did already, long before I showed up – it’s easy to see the ethical dilemma behind the Wil-E-Coyote VS Roadrunner shorts or a similar property, and you might even feel apathetic towards what you’re watching. Because we apparently prefer watching survival over watching carnage, these cartoons will give the upper hand to the prey, and make the predator suffer terribly in almost every episode, when usually the predator’s motive is their own kind of survival.
The neat thing about Tom and Jerry that I am going to reveal today is that it actually gets pretty close to justifying an expectation of sympathy toward Jerry from the audience, and my extremely simple plan to take it all the way. I’ll let you stop wondering right now.
Jerry is a wild mouse, invading the home of Tom’s owners, with Tom certainly being a domestic cat. You could even say that Tom is trying to be helpful, by taking care of a pest that’s surely undesirable in his household. To fix it all, make Jerry a cute pet mouse who keeps escaping from his cage and getting into trouble. That way, audiences will almost certainly have as much reason to root for Jerry as for Tom, or more. Bam, that’s done.
That is what I had typed out in the draft for this post, months earlier than now. Great, now it’s broken! I’m sure past me had a plan for all that, but I came back to writing this article evidently too late, and now the whole thing has fallen apart. I have no idea what I was building up to with the first part of this article anymore.
I feel like we basically got across the information we needed to though, right? Jerry’s not sympathetic enough and he would be if he was an owner’s beloved pet instead of a pesty wild animal showing up uninvited in somebody’s house, when Tom actually is somebody’s pet. The introductory “philosophical” part of this post that my past self left here was a pretty neat read. I’m really sorry, folks! That’s gonna have to be all. Watch this blog for a near-future article that might come out! And I’ve had a lot of trouble with it so far, so hopefully WordPress’ post editor will be gracious enough to co-operate…
Yes, I do realize that Tom and Jerry was not Warner Brothers or Looney Tunes. It’s already quite clear that things aren’t working right now.
I feel like we basically got across the information we needed to though, right? Jerry’s not sympathetic enough and he would be if he was an owner’s beloved pet instead of a pesty wild animal showing up uninvited in somebody’s house, when Tom actually is somebody’s pet. The introductory “philosophical” part of this post that my past self left here was a pretty neat read. I’m really sorry, folks! That’s gonna have to be all. Watch this blog for a near-future article that might come out! And I’ve had a lot of trouble with it so far, so hopefully WordPress’ post editor will be gracious enough to co-operate…
Yes, I do realize that Tom and Jerry was not Warner Brothers or Looney Tunes. It’s already quite clear that things aren’t working right now.
[ THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY ONLINE AT THE TIME OF 2021-05-25 ON WORDPRESS, A WEBSITE WHICH I'VE ABANDONED NOW BECAUSE IT SUCKS - THIS IS THE LAST SUCH ONE TO RELOCATE BEFORE THE COMPLETION OF THE MUCH-NEEDED MIGRATION FROM THE DOOMED ORIGINAL FIGMENT AREA WEBSITE ]