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Universal life and death and Humans
HyperAquaBlast
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I watched this awhile ago about baby chickens being ground up alive. Yes its disturbing and sad but it makes me think about stuff. Now this isn't about animal cruelty or rights but how humans treat life and death. Those chicks were killed cause we didn't need them at all. In my eyes there are some humans that are not needed at all but we try to keep them. I'm bringing this to D&D so I can hear different opinions on the matter and probably hear how I am a despicable human being like I usually hear when I bring this discussion up.
So I like to view myself as someone who respects all forms of life. Its an amazing feat that a being is created with all its biological complexities but its a fact that once its born its on a path to death. The two things I think on the matter the most is what effect will this creature/plant have on the world during its life and how will it die. Now humans are pretty much the supreme beings on this planet and we have decided for the most part how some things will live and die and how we should act during these events.
So now here is where I get yelled at. Here are the examples I use: So an unwanted dog or stray is kept for maybe a month or so to see if its adopted. If not then the dog gets euthanasia. Dog bites a little kid then thats pretty much a death sentence. Coyotes on your land attacking your chickens then go right a head and shoot them. Ground hog messing up your lawn? Then yeah take him out. Ants eating that cereal that fell behind the fridge then you might as well exterminate the couple thousand of them in their nest. Domestic animal is sick or hurt to where its not useful then death is the best thing you can give them. A spider made his home above your door way cause it has ample moths but you kill it cause spiders are icky. Yadda yadda.
Now with people, thanks to our superior intellect and ability to understand each other, it doesn't work that way. You have a couple of kids spray painting your walls? Then you better hope you have insurance and hopefully those kids will be caught and maybe get scolded. Guy beats his girlfriend and the kid he accidentally had with her? Call the cops and get a restraining order. Someone commits a couple murders will usually be sent to prison for a term with no hope of ever getting out but why not waste them? Mentally retarded baby is born will more then likely have to be taken care of for its whole life because it won't be able to function on its own in the world but should it? This guy was born with his heart outside his chest and we tried our damndest to keep him going and it was a success but why try other then then for the hell of it? Why do we have prisons with people in them with crimes that disgust most of us but we hope they will be rehabilitated? Slavery and usage of people for service is wrong because no man should live like that but its cool to have a fuck ton of animals at our disposal with shit lives? People have caused some species to go extinct but eh thats not so bad as some of the religious persecution that has gone on through history is revolting. A poverty sticken country out there? Then its up to us to help bring them up so they don't die the way we normally do. And why the hell am I supposed to sign the "feel better" card at work because your aunt passed away or I get the mean eye? Why on this coming 11th am I going to have to stand outside and bow my head in silence? Blah blah.
We know right now what is to be cared for and what isn't on Earth. We consider ourselves intelligent and civilized and if you aren't similar then you aren't shit. For example, say at the bottom of the ocean or some planet that people eventually get to and explore, we find new life. What are we going to do? Obviously we are going to take it out of its habitat and examine it and probably kill it in the process. What if these things are more advanced then we can understand and we are destroying their society? Or we are interfering with a type of life that would have probably gone out and become something more until we stopped it dead in its tracks because we found out it makes great spaceship washer fluid? What if a something came here and farmed us for food? Should we accept as the cows do?
So alright I can probably imagine what some are thinking. That I am not compassionate and just incredibly uneducated on a lot of the matters. Or just a straight fucking idiot. And you are probably right. Most of the time I feel no different if a squirrel is seen on the side of the road obliterated from the tires or a child crossing the street was hit by a car and died a day later. I think they both suck but hey death happens. But why is the person who hit the kid who ran out into the street chastised? Why am I considered horrible if I think a baby born with abnormalities be taken out right there and then since it won't be useful in society? Is it just because humans are evolved enough to have morals and rules and laws so we don't let some form of anarchy to blow out(serious question)?
TL;DR
Why is it ok for death to be cool with everything else but with humans?
So I like to view myself as someone who respects all forms of life. Its an amazing feat that a being is created with all its biological complexities but its a fact that once its born its on a path to death. The two things I think on the matter the most is what effect will this creature/plant have on the world during its life and how will it die. Now humans are pretty much the supreme beings on this planet and we have decided for the most part how some things will live and die and how we should act during these events.
So now here is where I get yelled at. Here are the examples I use: So an unwanted dog or stray is kept for maybe a month or so to see if its adopted. If not then the dog gets euthanasia. Dog bites a little kid then thats pretty much a death sentence. Coyotes on your land attacking your chickens then go right a head and shoot them. Ground hog messing up your lawn? Then yeah take him out. Ants eating that cereal that fell behind the fridge then you might as well exterminate the couple thousand of them in their nest. Domestic animal is sick or hurt to where its not useful then death is the best thing you can give them. A spider made his home above your door way cause it has ample moths but you kill it cause spiders are icky. Yadda yadda.
Now with people, thanks to our superior intellect and ability to understand each other, it doesn't work that way. You have a couple of kids spray painting your walls? Then you better hope you have insurance and hopefully those kids will be caught and maybe get scolded. Guy beats his girlfriend and the kid he accidentally had with her? Call the cops and get a restraining order. Someone commits a couple murders will usually be sent to prison for a term with no hope of ever getting out but why not waste them? Mentally retarded baby is born will more then likely have to be taken care of for its whole life because it won't be able to function on its own in the world but should it? This guy was born with his heart outside his chest and we tried our damndest to keep him going and it was a success but why try other then then for the hell of it? Why do we have prisons with people in them with crimes that disgust most of us but we hope they will be rehabilitated? Slavery and usage of people for service is wrong because no man should live like that but its cool to have a fuck ton of animals at our disposal with shit lives? People have caused some species to go extinct but eh thats not so bad as some of the religious persecution that has gone on through history is revolting. A poverty sticken country out there? Then its up to us to help bring them up so they don't die the way we normally do. And why the hell am I supposed to sign the "feel better" card at work because your aunt passed away or I get the mean eye? Why on this coming 11th am I going to have to stand outside and bow my head in silence? Blah blah.
We know right now what is to be cared for and what isn't on Earth. We consider ourselves intelligent and civilized and if you aren't similar then you aren't shit. For example, say at the bottom of the ocean or some planet that people eventually get to and explore, we find new life. What are we going to do? Obviously we are going to take it out of its habitat and examine it and probably kill it in the process. What if these things are more advanced then we can understand and we are destroying their society? Or we are interfering with a type of life that would have probably gone out and become something more until we stopped it dead in its tracks because we found out it makes great spaceship washer fluid? What if a something came here and farmed us for food? Should we accept as the cows do?
So alright I can probably imagine what some are thinking. That I am not compassionate and just incredibly uneducated on a lot of the matters. Or just a straight fucking idiot. And you are probably right. Most of the time I feel no different if a squirrel is seen on the side of the road obliterated from the tires or a child crossing the street was hit by a car and died a day later. I think they both suck but hey death happens. But why is the person who hit the kid who ran out into the street chastised? Why am I considered horrible if I think a baby born with abnormalities be taken out right there and then since it won't be useful in society? Is it just because humans are evolved enough to have morals and rules and laws so we don't let some form of anarchy to blow out(serious question)?
TL;DR
Why is it ok for death to be cool with everything else but with humans?
I have a bad feeling about this thread but I'm hoping I hear some enlightening view points if any.
HyperAquaBlast on
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Right now, a sentient being composed of air molecules and stray dust could be in excruciating pain caused by my repeated breathing. I won't care until it can tell me of it's existence in a way I find meaningful.
stop...breathing
That's not true though. Humans killing other humans is acceptable to a certain degree depending on the culture and situation. Blowing up a school with kids inside is considered illegal and immoral. The perpetrator would be arrested and prosecuted under civil law. But when it's part of a military action it's dismissed simply as an unwanted side-effect. 'Casualties of war'. Then there is capital punishment, abortion, self-defense, etc.
those germs just wanted to live, man
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Some of them were just one day away from retirement :P
Because human beings define that which is "ok".
Yeah that's a pretty obvious one, but should humans really be able to decide?
What would prevent them from doing so?
Absolutely nothing, because we obviously choose what gets to live and what gets to die and what purposes each of these things serve. This doesn't justify the action.
What sort of justification would there be other than humans saying "this is fine"?
You can justify this in a bunch of ways, from utilitarianism on down.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I fail to see who would be able to decide other than us. Barring God, or Batman. I mean, animals kill each other all the time, so what's so different here? We make the rules regarding humanity because we can, because no other species has been able to offer an alternative system that could be enforced regardless of whatever we might think of it.
As far as the OP, the basic problem we face with things like euthanasia and murder is that, although we might find them morally reprehensible (or not), we hold ourselves, as a society, to find better solutions than resorting to simply killing people to solve our problems. Now that isn't to say we aren't full of hypocrisy, notably in matters involving the death penalty, but, in the West, the public view of itself is a good and just society, not one ruled by base rules, low justice, or revenge killings.
Of course that isn't a true image, but it influences how we view what we judge to be morally reprehensible acts. It is perfectly plausible that there could, or perhaps does, exist a society wherein all members are perfectly ok with murdering any and every other member. Unlikely, but possible.
As others have noted, the issue is why we view other species to be so different from us as to limit any guilt over negative treatment. It's what you might call the 'Save the cute animals' syndrome. Few people really want to save a horseshoe crab.
If we were on the bottom of the food chain, do you think we'd still approve of everything the dominant species decides, even if that includes raising us on farms and slaughtering us once we reach maturity?
To ask "Is this justified" in relation to how we treat other animals is really a rather silly point. Justification to whom? Most animals neither need it nor would understand it. Most animals do not appear to attempt to justify their own actions.
Do you think a wolf ever asks itself "Hey, that deer has a right to live. Maybe we should try to kill it quickly, rather than hounding it to death over the course of several days until it eventually exhausts itself and is forced to sit there while we begin to eat it alive"? They don't ask themselves such things, or if they do they apparently decide "Nah." That we have any empathy for non-humans at all is a boon to the other animal species. A lot of species don't give a hoot about the right to survive for anything else.
As for specific examples mentioned by others:
Ants, and insects/arthropods as a whole are little organic robots. I feel absolutely nothing when killing them, as they don't seem to feel anything.
Killing those groundhogs. They should thank their lucky stars that we severely limited their natural predators, and that all they have to do to survive is eat and not annoy us (and avoid what few animals we don't kill). Pretty easy compared to how their lives were before we moved in, offenders get removed.
I'm sure if you showed how an average worker in China or Malaysia works and lives to create cheap junk for us to consume, people would be up in arms about how they're being exploited and whatever at least until the next season of Dancing with the Stars.
And this is exactly what I'm talking about. The whole they don't appreciate life as we do so fuck them they are now officially ours. Until they can scream "No! Don't kill me!" or say "I don't like how I live among you." then they should be grateful how we decide how they should exist on earth. But if thats ok then why do human criminals that we know are bad and useless but instead of systematically wiping them out like any other pest, we try to arrest them first and use a justice system? And yeah thats a bad example and whole lot can go wrong but there it is.
Of course there is the natural food chain and we are number one and I am totally cool with that and proud. We evolved to be superior and were showing it. And this isn't about cutsey animals or me feeling guilty about others actions that brought this up. Its the mass creation of life and how easily we take it away from a lot of life forms. Its how we play gods. It just sorta puzzles me why with the 7 billion people on earth why we try to justify keeping some alive where in similar circumstances of other life we'd just end them.
And of course this all from a young naive U.S. male with a nice sheltered life. So you can hold that against me too. This thread was also made as a learning process for me.
Now is that because of my horrible grammar skills or is it the "What the fuck? You can't just do that!"?
Human criminals aren't bad, or useless. Also, quite frankly, even complete sociopaths possess qualities that make them more relatable to me than say, a rabbit.
It's not that I expect other animals to speak English. It's that until contact is made, and sentience is certain, it's difficult to actually empathize with them on the same level I empathize with another person. I can't get into the head of a dog, no matter how much I may anthropomorphize them in casual conversation.
Most people—even carnivores—would agree that it is wrong to make animals needlessly suffer for most of their lives and would be horrified to see the conditions in factory farms. This is because we know that, for any animal with a rudimentary nervous system, suffering is bad and should be avoided. In fact, "AVOID SUFFERING" is basically the starting axiom of utilitarian moral philosophies like Peter Singer's.
However, death is not something that can be avoided (yet). Eventually, every animal will die. Often, death is full of suffering, because it is preceded by pain. In intelligent social animals, death may cause suffering among the dead animal's friends in family (elephants have been observed mourning their dead).
However, you can easily reduce the bad things about death to corrollaries of that beginning axiom: avoid suffering. Which is to say, if you can kill something without causing any suffering—to itself or to its loved ones—then I'm not sure you can easily say that the death is morally wrong.
Humans also have a special caveat to this, as we imagine ourselves as having rights granted to us by our society, including a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Painlessly killing a friendless, familyless human being, then, would still frustrate the human being's rights. But rights are abstract and only emerge in complex cultural societies. I don't think rights are innate to biological life, nor should human concepts of rights be applied to, for example, chickens or cows.
If we are talking about emotion, mammals share the same primary ones as us. Other than the grey matter, their brains "personality structures" aren't that much different: just less complex in terms of what activates them.
I dunno much about birds, but ravens show high levels of abstraction ability.
You know all the feelings you value when you speak about empathy? Mammals have those. (They learn things via emotion similarly to us as well: for example a fearful or anxiety inducing experience will be remembered and they will show visible physiological symptoms of distress when the same experience occurs again.)
I don't give a damn about insects tho.
Octopuses will be the death of us all.
Shit, bitch. I got suction cups.
I eat meat because it's delicious and because it's a good source of all manner of dietary requirements that I'd have to purposefully try to arrange my diet to get otherwise. Humans evolved eating meat. Are other omnivores weak for eating meat?
Rights come with responsibilities. If the ability to suffer is sufficient criteria to grant a creature rights, how do you grant those rights when said creature is incapable of either understanding that it has a set of rights, the limitations of those rights, or the responsibilities inherent in those rights? Humans are given a right to life and liberty only in the limited case that they do not use that life and/or liberty to deprive others of it. At the point that they do, they lose their liberty and, potentially, their life. You can't explain to a lion that it is allowed to live and be free only so long as it doesn't kill. You can't explain to a dolphin that it's free to swim around doing its dolphin-y business only so long as it obeys property lines laid out by the fishing industry and that violation of private property is a willful endangerment of its life.
The idea that humans "should" act in any particular manner is a perilous line to tread, in my opinion. We act according to our nature. To some extent our nature is that of a thinking creature, and so our actions are tempered by notions of empathy and ethics and so forth. In the end, though, we act to preserve and advance our species. Actions taken to make ourselves a 'more ethical' species are, in the end, an attempt to better ourselves and to maintain the world around us for our progeny as much as they are an effort to preserve or better the lives of anything else on the planet. Debating the ethical standing of our practices is fine and I'm all for it, but when you start tossing around words like "should" it seems to pre-suppose a higher authority or standard to which we are being compared. Barring spirituality and such, humanity are the top of the line on this planet. We have no standard by which to judge except that which we make ourselves. We "should" stop fighting wars, exploiting the environment, eating meat, using animals for labor and testing, exploiting one-another, allowing children to starve, etc. etc. etc.... but we've been doing those things as long as we've existed. A desire to better our species is commendable, but crying for reform without suggesting how we should stop doing things we've done for longer than we've stood erect isn't going to get anyone anywhere.
When I go to Walmart and buy plastic utensils made in some sweatshop in Uganda, I'm not acting to advance my species. I'm acting in my own self-interest to save both money and the pain in the ass of washing dishes. A few noble individuals aside, I doubt there's very little humans do that doesn't involve self-interest of the individual or of some particular group.
Do either of them really have rights?
We have laws protecting infants and the severely mentally handicapped in much the same way that we have laws protecting pets. Neither of them have most of the rights granted to healthy adult humans. They're essentially treated as property and their keepers (parents, family, caretakers, whomever) are legally responsible for maintaining their health and behavior. They don't get euthanized like pets do if they're sick or unwanted, but that's purely because of the high premium we put on human life. I'm all for making it illegal to euthanize healthy animals just because they haven't been adopted, and for making it legal to euthanize terminally ill humans.
For what it's worth, I really believe that in a few hundred years, people will look back at today and be shocked at how little we valued the psychological and physical well-being of the smartest, most thoughtful, most complex creatures we've ever met.
I'm shocked at how people in 1809 were treated. And 1609. But the trend seems to be away from the idea that 'people are disposable except for the ones I love'.