Dog fighting is heinous. Considering all the ways to have fun, particularly an athlete, there is no excuse, north or south, east or west, for raising dogs to fight for somebody's amusement. Perhaps the perpetrators of such crimes should be stripped naked and tossed into a pit with a pit bull. Maybe with a little bacon grease applied to their privates first.

Seems an awful waste of bacon grease.

I wonder if it isn't because we expect there to be cheating.

We have quite a heritage for these sorts of blood sports. Bear baiting, that sort of thing. In my recent favorite book Pub Games of England, the game Aunt Sally which is essentially knocking down one pin off a post by throwing a stick came from a past game of putting a chicken in a sort of pot through which its head pokes out and throwning sticks at it until it was dead. Oddly, at Christmas the chicken was exchanged for a squirrel. I am not sure, however, if this was to celebrate the goodness of Yule in the squirrel or the chicken.

Cheating is part of human nature. Its the genetic inherent desire to win.. To kill the mastodon first, to steal food from the other tribe when yours is starving, to get ahead by means outside of the accepted because you simply wish to get ahead. We set rules and people who are caught get punished, whoop de doo.

And dog fighting though completely unacceptable and barbaric is really just another mindless form of entertainment that the (again natural, genetic) human brain, well, maybe the less evolved human brain, craves in lieu of gladiatorial combat or actual war. Me, I play video games, and pretty violent ones, and soccer. As a species, we secretly crave to win and beat and conquer. In our society, when you are emotionally, mentally or financially downtrodden, you look for other things to win at whether it be shoplifting, womanizing or dog fighting.

Do we crave to win or do we crave to achieve the right through overcoming in battle? Do we feel as good when the wrong team wins through fluke or the victory is tainted?

I am aware, Alan, of bear baiting and the rest, but we don't live in those times anymore. Humanity has a habit, sometimes, of picking on the defenseless or the less intelligent or the less capable for the sake of sport, and the point is, pick on somebody your own size more or less. THAT is why football or baseball are better evolved, because we have to match wits, strength and ability with an equal. And there are rules. Even boxing, which is brutal, but it has its rules and also has people capable of choosing it for an activity and training for it.
Alright, CM, how about peanut butter instead or maybe tuna fish?

And even in Aunt Sally, the pin being knocked down is a representation, even if in abstract, of her head.

Gary: Society may nowadays choose to say that picking on someone your own size is the "right thing to do" but it isn't the natural desire, urge, what-have-you. It is a "rule" or "objective" forced upon we westerners by ourselves as part of a desire to be "civilized". Me, I say if bob smith wants to be the best planner of bank heists in the country,good for him, I just hope he doesn't harm any innocent people and if he gets caught, its his own fault. But if he robs my house and I catch him, he will regret it.

Your use of quotation marks is maybe the most bizarre I have ever seen. Are you suggesting there is some reason to think rules, objectivity or civiliation are not real or not good things?

In this case, the rules are flexible depending on one's location in the world. The objectives again are flexible depending on the location, upbringing and ones own personal morals and ethics and the term civilization is again, in my honest opinion, open to interpretation. Hence the quotations.

Personally, IMHO, dog fighting or any such thing involving animals is terrible. Gladiatorial combat on the other hand is not. One doesn't talk about Fight Club however so I must take the 5th on such conversations ;)

By making everything relative, all you've achieved is irrelevence. I would think it is obvious that a bar on the practice human slavery required for gladiators would be a notch above animal welfare. But, then again, I am clear that civilization is not just an arbitrary point on a range of "all sorta good."

Hrmm.. wasn't thinking of slavery as a source of combatants. I was thinking convicts or volunteers.. my error. Slavery is very bad. Except robot slaves. Or apes. So long as you keep the talking ones in check.