Moral Compass In Hal Herzog's Animals Like Us

Since human beings are born, people always try to find a general standard to judge our morality and behaviors. We call this standard as moral compass, people expect that a stable moral compass can become the rules of all human behaviors. In Hal Herzog’s essay “Animals Like Us”, he points out that people have a very contradictory mentality when they face relationship between human and animals becuause people have their own ideas and attitudes about different animals. That is why people do not have a stable moral compass when they face different animals. The same moral issues also exist when people deal with the influences about the new genetic technologies. In Tenzin Gyatso’s “Ethics and the New Genetics”, he talks about the developments

In modern society, more and more people keep pets as their family members, they enjoy the happiness brought by their pets and take good care of them, many people believe that pets are the indispensable parts of their lives, but they only notice the positive aspect of keeping pets. Herzog mentions the investigation data that “in a typical year, 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs, and two dozen people, mostly children, are killed by them”(Herzog 246). Since many people think dogs are the best companions in their lives, the group of dog-keepers is growing steadily. However, dogs are the main late-night noise resources, and there are also many people afraid of dogs. They disturb people’s normal life and bring fear to the society. While adopting a dog, people did not think about the consequences they would bring to their neighborhood, they only think about their future happy life. Meanwhile, because people can not predict the long term impact of keeping a dog, they can not encourage this behavior. People should take fully consideration before taking action and think about the long-term consequences, and do not define the behavior to be right or not. For instance, Dalai mentions that “In medicine, for instance, the drug thalidomide was found to be excellent for the treatment of morning sickness in pregnant women, but its long-term