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Comment by simonsquiff | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how cultures differ on some of these.

I was speaking to a friend who works in China. He says he often discusses with the locals their appalling treatment of animals, which can be genuinely shocking to Westerners. He says this is usually met by a swift rebuke "How on earth can you criticize us for our treatment of animals when your culture treats your elderly relatives - your own family! - so horrifically, shipping them off to be ignored in a home for the rest of their lives?". It's a fair point - people in glass houses...

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Ehh... it's a point, but IMHO not a good one. I'm Chinese and have heard a lot of this viewpoint from my "own kind" (I don't actually identify culturally as Chinese, but whatever).

"We're faultless because you've got faults" is a shitty argument no matter which way it's offered. Or more accurately "we're not going to engage in intellectual discussion about this issue until you yourself are perfect in every way". It's dumb and pointless, and is really just defensive nationalistic kneejerking.

Another common argument I hear from the Chinese is the "you had our turn, so we get to have ours". It's very common when it comes to environmental issues - the basic logic is that America was able to burn fossil fuel in a completely unrestrained way for decades, so why shouldn't China get the same opportunity?

I don't think the argument is that they are not faultless. It's that they see the Western faults (treating their elderly relatives so poorly) as so much worse than their faults in a related area (treating animals poorly). It's a valid observation - that our complaining of the poor treatment of sentient animals is rather undermined by our poor treatment of a much more closer to home sentient animal.

> when your culture treats your elderly relatives - your own family! - so horrifically, shipping them off to be ignored in a home for the rest of their lives?"

Have they considered that perhaps it's the American individualism manifested by the elderly, and not by the young, which causes this? My grandmother just moved out of my dad's house because she wasn't ready to give up her freedom. My wife's grandparents still live by themselves in their mid-to-late 80s and fire every caretaker my wife's family hires for them. My own mother and my wife's parents have assured us that they will never be moving in with us (or into a home, for that matter).

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