2004-07-24

Why are humans cruel?

Russell Beattie blogs about Why Bullfights and the Running with the Bulls sucks:

San Fermin (the festival of Pamplona) is here and thus bullfighting is back on television. Just to remind myself what a gory show it is, I just sat through another one of the slayings on TV and am still amazed by it. It's so frustrating, that I'd thought I'd share...

When I first came to Spain I had this idea that bull fighting was this sort of "traditional" sport where once a year or so they would kill a bull or two and that it was okay. But it's not like that at all. It's a sport, televised just like baseball is in the U.S... Thousands of bulls are killed each year in the most amazingly cruel manner possible. During festivals like San Fermin, they'll torture a dozen or so bulls a day. See all those bulls on TV? They're all dead by the end of the day.

Why are we so cruel? Some times I just wanna find a big tree and crawl up inside and whither away. Have we always been so twisted, so mean? Why do we torture each other and our fellow animals?

What the fuck is going on?