Quote:
Originally posted by boobmaster
I think we object more to killings of things which represent innocense. Fluffy white rabbits and cute little cats are animals which we view as completely innocent, incapable of harming others. Children are in the same category, which is why we object so strongly to child abuse. Adult human beings do not represent innocense in the same way. A lot of times, we feel that if an adult gets killed over something, he/she probably deserved it. A lot of this, I feel, is subconscious.
Adult humans are capable of hurting others; cats, rabits, and children are not. Note that rats and roaches are living things which can and do do harm to humans. They spread disease, bite children, nest in our bathtub drains. When they are killed, we look at it as more of a good thing.
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As a follow up to this, one of the things a lot of people said during the rash of recent beheadings is that the people who got beheaded were stupid to have put themselves in a position of danger in the first place. It seems irrational to most of us that someone whould knowingly put themselves at risk by staying in an area where something like this could happen to them. In other words, if someone gets beheaded, it's partially their fault for not getting their asses out of dodge when they were warned to get out.
The cat in that video, on the other hand, did not put itself in a position to get burned alive. It was incapable of doing so. The kids presumably picked it up out of someone's backyard, or, even worse, it was a pet of one of the kids to begin with. The humans could have left, the cat could not have. As a result, we tend to view the killing of the cat as more henious.