Sells, please clarify the meaning of "the modern world" or "modernism" that you are using, since it clearly isn't the present.

"Realistic narrative" appears to be used in two continually conflated senses, as a proper noun it is the story of all things & purposes and more generally it is any plausible story. The benefit of the latter being the ability to demonstrate & thereby teach moral principles. Correct?

"My problem with them is that they are severed from the 'realistic narrative',"
If it isn't enough that the rights are supported by underlying moral rules (which I assume would fit many realistic narratives), then what is it that you want? Someone to write a good story about them? It seems like you want to avoid using logic to distill, evaluate or build on existing moral knowledge; that every moral concept needs to be readily available in the form of story so it can be understood easily. Or alternatively that every moral idea must be consistent with a person's preconceived understanding of the world, which would create a wellspring of cognitive dissonance.

Your reply to Mollydukes gives the impression that you think the factual truth of the Bible, and by implication Christianity, is of little importance compared to the moral rules and personal meaning that can be obtained from accepting its stories. Your ruins of modernity are not related to the validity of modern thought, but what you believe to be its negative effects -- your focus on the results of modern ideas is itself instrumentalist. But you claim both as truth and decry instrumental reasoning.

"[I]ndeed they seem to stem from any good intention present in the councils of the United Nations."
That's a rather limited & peripheral view of human rights.

"The modern experiment started with Descartes when he posited the thinking subject as the basis of epistemology, thus replacing God."
Are you saying he was wrong?

"As Jenson says, we arrived at a story without a story teller and this has meant the unraveling of the story and some forms of postmodernism."
What story is/was that?

Deuc.
The present is most strongly influenced by the modern. As I remarked, it all started with Descartes and the turn to the self as the beginning of philosophical thought. “I think, therefore I am”. This displaced the medieval construct that began with God as the starting point of all thought. The result of Descartes’ move broke the relationship between man and God and man and his neighbour and left him a solitary person robbed of what is essential to be a person. Add to this mix the rise of natural science, the consciousness of other cultures, historical/critical analysis of biblical texts, (all good things) and you get the modern world which surrounds us today. The replacement of God with man in the radical Enlightenment,resulted in the revolutionary age etc. The transition from premodern and modern is really a transition between a widely recognised story of the universe in the Judeo/Christian tradition, and this story subverted by secularism (progress).
The relationship between the Christian story and morality is not a simple as it seems, it is not just a reading off of a code as in Islam. Rather, because the story is a human story it relates what it means to be human (especially the one true human, Jesus) we become situated in this story so that our behaviour naturally flows from it. As I have said before, Christianity is not primarily an ethics, it points to who we are and what we may hope to be. I am very wary of moral principles.

We do not write our own story, we receive it, it is a given. It is interesting that this is so offensive to the modern mind which insists on making everything up de novo. Reason and logic are always used in any respectable intellectual pursuit. We are not talking about story in general but the story, the unified theme of biblical writing. Of course we write our own stories, we are addicted to them, that is because this is the way we naturally understand anything at all.

Philosophy has totally overtaken PETA's arguments here. PETA (and other animal advocacy groups) campaign against CRUELTY to animals. Mulesing, and the live animal export trade are undoubtedly cruel. Both are allowed to happen for purely economic reasons, and totally fail to consider the suffering of the animals involved. There are alternatives to mulesing practiced already by many farmers. The government for reasons best known to itself (but no doubt at least in part cultural cringe) subsidizes, with huge amounts of taxpayers' largesse, the sending of millions of sheep, cattle, deer, camels and horses on horror journeys on third world wrecks of ships to countries with NO animal welfare standards every year. They are handled and slaughtered in a manner that is illegal in this country. So PETA - go for it! Australila really needs its collective conscience raised. Most of the animal cruelty in this country is to be found amongst farm animals in the form of intensive farming; pigs are kept for most of their lives in stalls in which they may be able to move one step, and never get to touch their young. Battery hens live in cages the size of a A4 sheep of paper. We have an animal welfare body called the RSPCA which does not even bother to investigate breaches of "Codes of Practice", which are effectively the means by which Animal Welfare Laws in States and Territories are routinely broken. And that is just how governments like it. I am ashamed to be a member of a species that is capable of such CONSIDERED, HARDENED and CONSISTENT cruelty. And I would rather starve than eat my dogs, or my chickens, who are refugees from a battery farm, and when they came, did not even know that they could walk, or spread their wings, and who had no feathers, and beaks cut so badly that they will will never be able them to eat as they were meant to. PETA has succeeded where other animal advocacy groups have failed by hitting producers where it hurts, in their wallets, and more pwer to them.

Over lunch, at a recent international conference on values at Louisiana State Univerity, Angelette put forward a bold and controversial position which ought to put PETA on it's back foot. If, as PETA contends,"animals have rights and deserve to have their best interests taken into consideration, regardless of whether they are useful to humans", it follows that they also have responsibilities for the harms that they do. On that basis, Angelette contends that because animals do harms to other animal and plant life - they eat and kill plants, plants that do no harm to animals - we are less culpable for eating meat than we are for eating plants. The 'Angelette argument' will break down if one plumbs the depths. Supose for example I'm intersted in the welfare of the planet itself and willing to extend rights and duties there as well. The plants will need a defense to keep us from eating them, since we might make out that some plants are harming mother earth.

People Against Live Exports do not agree with animal cruelty.
There is no question that this man is a better human being than many of us.
He has given much of his time to improve animal welfare.
We would like to say to people like Deuc that you have clearly given a perfect description of yourself.
We suspect that you are possibly involved in the evil trade .
Nobody has the right to enforce their views on others.
The reason most of the animal groups fall short of actually helping animals is because they are forever telling people they should not eat meat.

Sure that’s their belief and others don’t agree.
What we all should be working for is to improve animal welfare standards to stamp out cruelty.
While we continue to have media giants involved in live exports the Australian public will never know the truth.
I asked Peter to help me form free range farms co-jointly owned here in Australia.
Animal lib the vegetarians Animal Activism Animals Australia PETA. AACT are extreme because they don’t want live exports BUT they don’t want to help ensure that these poor animals are slaughtered here either.
I think they need to grow up for the animal’s sake.
We don’t want to kill animals but we love them enough to work to make it as quick as possible.
Animals are very sensitive and knowing.
They have their personalities and there preferences like we do.
Personally I prefer animals as they are more honest.
Getting back to Peter I believe he is anti abortion as well.
Fine there is nothing wrong with him having his own thoughts.
Just so long as he does not try to enforce them on others.
I applaud Peter BUT he should be careful NOT to tell people not to eat meat and not to TELL people not to have an abortion. These people ARE extreme and damage the work that main stream fair minded people do to improve animal welfare every day like People Against Live Exports and many others.
Wendy

If you do not wish people in the know to comment do not ask.

To delete the comments left on this page earlier today regarding peta RSPCA is nothing short of criminal

Who better to know whats really going on than those who work in the industry.

Open post?
We dont think so!
People Against Live Export