[ SECRET POST #2261 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2261 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising]


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03.
[My Mad Fat Diary]


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04.
[Homestuck]


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05.
[Prequel]


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06.
[Kaichou wa Maid-sama, Nana, UraBoku, Sukitte Ii na yo, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, and Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo]


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07.
[Skyrim]


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08.
[Dangan Ronpa]


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09.
[Star Wars/Spaceballs]


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10.
[Baraka]


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11.
[Yosoeb Yang / B2ST]


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12.
[Wolf Children Ame & Yuki]


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13.
[Charmed]


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14.
[The Following]


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15.
[Sherlock]


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16.
[Penny and Aggie]


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17.
[Teen Wolf]


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18.
[Sengoku Basara]


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19.
[Big Bang Theory]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 061 secrets from Secret Submission Post #323.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

10. http://i.imgur.com/fCjoERd.jpg
[Baraka]

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know what the context is, but I can come up with several possible explanations for why someone would focus on that:
--If the donkey is being abused by a protagonist, but the surrounding poverty is just sort of there with no one clearly to blame, people may focus on the wrong which has a bad guy. If the poverty is presented as the doing of an antagonist, people may take the antagonist's badness for granted and comment on the wrongdoing of the protagonist.
--In general, some people are affected by abuse when they are not responsive to suffering without abuse.
--And, yeah, some people feel sorry for animals more than they feel sorry for people.

[(Anonymous)]

I've never been able to personally understand that. Why would someone feel more sorry for an animal than an actual person? I understand about animal rights and all that, but doesn't human suffering kind of trump that?

[visp]

It's not really true though. People talk about how everyone hated Vick for dogfighting, but can you imagine what would have happened if he was taking children and forcing them to fight - sometimes to the death - for his own amusement and for gambling? He'd get the death penalty.

[(Anonymous)]

It depends on what kind of "care" you're talking about. People might be more emotionally affected by seeing an innocent, uncomprehending animal who doesn't understand why its being punished for no reason being hurt than an intelligent, sapient person who can comprehend his/her condition and reasons for their suffering being hurt. It's similar to being more affected by children's suffering than adults'.

Feeling that way doesn't mean they don't intellectually prioritize human suffering above animal suffering or believe animal suffering is somehow more important.

[anonymouslyyours]

I think it's harder to deal with an animal getting hurt because there's no question of it's innocence and vulnerability and the fact it can't understand what is going on. But human suffering ...it's like people build up a kind of immunity against empathizing with people too far removed from their lives and there's always some kind of shitty victim-blaming or expectation of boot-strapping one can engage in so they don't have to acknowledge the awful feelings.

I don't know if I'm explaining this right.

Confused!Anon

[(Anonymous)]

I can see what you're all getting at, thank you for explaining it to me. I think I can understand it now.

[(Anonymous)]

Baraka is a documentary film with no narrative; it's a mix of different scenes that aren't sorted by any kind of priority. It does portray many kinds of misery with both people and animals, so I guess you can tell something about a person based on which scene upsets them the most.

[(Anonymous)]

Again, not necessarily. Poverty is an institutional condition. Abuse is a personal, deliberate action of one person against another. The two produce very different emotional reactions. In stories, why do you think it's 100X easier to hate a specific villain than a societal situation, regardless of what causes more suffering?

[(Anonymous)]

I had to adblock your photo, so that's what I think of your secret.

[(Anonymous)]

"ooh, my poor nerves, seeing cuuute widdle animals suffering". "Poor brown people suffering? ~Pfft."

Tool.

[visp]

But how do you know what other things people do or do not talk about on the internet? Does every "poor donkey" comment have to come with a footnote about how bad things happen to others as well?

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP, just an anon that agrees with them -

okay, I assume you haven't seen the scene in question, but really, it is several minutes showing emaciated, terribly impoverished people who are literally living in a garbage dump.

If people are commenting about "poor donkey" and not commenting about "those poor people" then I can only assume they value animals more than brown people, because seriously that is fucked up.

[visp]

Soo... no one's allowed to mention the donkey?

[(Anonymous)]

So if the people had been white, I would have been allowed to value the donkey more? :P

Found the scene!

[al28894]

For everyone who's confused, Baraka is a film that has no plot, but uses scenes from nature, culture, and humanity to document the highs and lows of mother Earth and of Humanity.

Personally, I think it's the greatest film that anyone's ever peoduced, ever.

(Film: Baraka. Scene: Madness): http://youtu.be/S1J6TFHCevg

Re: Found the scene!

[(Anonymous)]

Samsara is better IMO (it's the 'sequel' kind of)

[(Anonymous)]

oh noes don't judge me! anything but THAT!!

[al28894]

Considering the scene and context of that part of the movie, I can kinda understand why OP judges people in relation to the scene.

[(Anonymous)]

IAWTC

Playing devil's advocate here...

[(Anonymous)]

Some people see stuff like this from a different (more philosophical than realistic) angle. They see people suffer and question why these suffering people make their animals suffer in turn.
They make them suffer because it is convinient for them, animals are "biological machines that can't feel physical or psychological pain" so why not use them as hard as we can.

The question is why people shouldn't be allowed to treat other people like shit when humans are allowed to treat animals like shit. Why is the suffering of your own species so much more important to you than the suffering of another. Especially when both parties, the poor people and the innoccent animals, can't change their fate because it relies on someone who is in power over them.

Now my own opinion: I feel horrible for both the animals AND the people. Those women getting forced into prostitution staring back at me made me tear up. But the donkeys having to pull that way too heavy cart (which will one day literally break them and render them dead) made me really sad, too.
I think a person getting forced into inhumane living conditions is slightly worse than a donkey pulling a way too heavy cart, but suffering is suffering. If those donkeys refuse to pull, they will get beaten into submission (often until they fall down and just die because donkeys don't react submissive to force).

Both is horrible when viewed in the right context.
And people pointing out the suffering of the donkeys don't neccessarily shit on the fates of the people. It's just that animal abuse is often excused when your living condition is bad and so it sometimes needs to be pointed out that not only the suffering of people should be important to us, but the suffering of other species as well.
Pointing out something like that doesn't make you a bad person.
You can feel bad for people and still see that animals suffer. Feeling bad for people and feeling bad for animals is not mutually exclusive.

Now if onlookers literally sa: "The donkey is more important to me than the people", then yes, they are scum. But saying something about the donkey while keeping silent about the people isn't always the same.

(Sorry for the bad wording, English isn't my first language)

Re: Playing devil's advocate here...

[(Anonymous)]

This is a beautiful comment, and your English is very good.

[(Anonymous)]

It may not necessarily be a lack of empathy for other human beings. I think it's the distinction between systemic, entrenched, "passive" violence (poverty, starvation) and individualized, "active" violence (using an animal extremely harshly). One of these is a mire of complex issues, while the other has a distinct and noticeable cause-effect. Viewers can place the blame for the overburdened donkey, so it is easier to be upset, and probably easier to comment on without much thought.

[(Anonymous)]

This. There's no one person you can blame for things like poverty and starvation because it is the result of multiple factors coming together. You can't point at one person or even a small group of people and say "the poverty is all their fault." You CAN, however, point at the people driving the cart and say "they're overworking their donkey."

Is it really so surprising that people do the latter?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't understand why people get all I-WILL-JUDGE-YOU for having a different charity, or for whatever thing elicits their compassion.

Do you judge people who give to environmental causes, and tell them they should be giving to AIDs research?
Do you judge people who give to AIDs research, and tell them they should be fighting cancer?
Do you judge people who speak out against bullying, but don't mention poverty?
Do you judge people who fight poverty, but drive SUVs while doing so?

If someone is supporting a BAD THING, then go ahead and judge them. Otherwise, I figure you're just bound and determined to be offended, because that's the flavor of the Internet these days.

It's getting to the point that, no matter what your opinion, you have to add a giant legalistic disclaimer of "I hate to see animal abuse, but I must also bring up the intersectionality of poverty and cultural tradition" yadda yadda yadda.

smdh