51–60 of 76 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it bad for its effect on you?
Along the lines of “A man is worked on by what he works on.” or “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster.” If you start destroying things for pleasure, your psyche may/probably will change. A parallel question I’ve seen: are training bonsais cruel?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Along the lines of “A man is worked on by what he works on.” or “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster.” If you start destroying things for pleasure, your psyche may/probably will change. A parallel question I’ve seen: are training bonsais cruel?
I don’t think people kill insects for the joy of killing though
Honest question. If you remove religious and spiritual aspects and come at it from a place of pure reason, does it really matter? What is pain but a chemical signal something is wrong?
I don’t think wanting to avoid inflicting pain on others is religious/spiritual
Honest question. If you remove religious and spiritual aspects and come at it from a place of pure reason, does it really matter? What is pain but a chemical signal something is wrong?
You’re saying it’s fine if someone punches you in the face?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans are animals, very successful ones. The only reason other animals are kept in check, is because they eat their food source until there's too little left to sustain them. Goats will eat everything bare, locusts destroy everything, beetles ruin forests, beavers dam rivers changing ecosystems so much, it can be seen from space. Every single lifeform on this planet expands, grows, multiplies without restraint. Anim…
No, you misunderstand me. I do not act as if other animals are noble, I act as if humans are not special in comparison to other animals.
I never intentionally harm a single insect... except flies and mosquitos. I hope they do feel the pain as they deserve it! Other than that I respect all of them.
I used to never harm insects until I found ticks and mosquitos on my dog...So now I kill ticks and mosquitos. I like spiders though. I have had one living in my bathroom window for about six months now. It seems to be eating other spiders that try to crawl in based on the contents of its web. I consider this rent payment and allow it to stay.
Supposing that it was conclusively proven that they did not. Would it still be ethical to kill them? The Jain religion has quite a bit to say on this topic: https://voices.uchicago.edu/religionculture/2017/11/22/atten... Side note: the author also notes a very unusual consideration of electricity as consisting of a living force, that should therefore not be used needlessly.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50403455-metazoa
Breaking it down - what we think of as pain perception is not one thing but several, as you'd expect for one of the major functions in a ninety-giganeuron brain.
There's something not much more than a low-level reflex response - "Ouch" - and most animals have that.
There's wound-grooming behaviour, which is mostly linked to capacity to heal, and shows up in perception as the longer-lasting (minutes to days/weeks) pain from an injury. A lot of animals with exoskeletons have very limited healing capacity, so there's no point in attempting to heal. This is thought to be why, for example, a severely and probably fatally damaged ant will just keep on trucking, whereas even the simplest mammals and reptiles will attempt to rest and heal.
Then there's awareness of mortality. Simply, an animal that doesn't know it's alive can't connect pain to the concept of death. To what extent this exists across the animal kingdom is one of the great unknowns.
And then finally there's placing a value on one's life (and so negative value on harm to it), and the way in which we humans understand that is intimately bound up with concepts like love, grief, friendship, family and so on - these likely exist for animals that care for their young.
Those are traits mostly limited to higher vertebrates, and it's not entirely clear to what extent birds and mammals have a common ancestor with that capability (therefore some commonality in "experience") or whether that's convergent evolution. It's pretty clear that it exists across all mammals, but has independently developed to much higher levels in the most intelligent ones (cetaceans, elephants, apes), despite these groups being very far apart on the mammal tree of life, having diverged almost at the origin of placental mammals (which makes more sense when you consider what a placenta is for).
So what the pain experience is "like" for a hive-society animal like Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants), where caste roles are biologically determined, is impossible to say, if indeed there is any experience there. The skin (or exoskeleton) they have in the game is so different to ours that it's hard to reason about it.
On this topic, highly recommend this book, which provides a rather different perspective: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50403455-metazoa Breaking it down - what we think of as pain perception is not one thing but several, as you'd expect for one of the major functions in a ninety-giganeuron brain. There's something not much more than a low-level reflex response - "Ouch" - and most animals have that. There's…
This is more developed in mammals and birds, warm-blooded animals can turn their metabolism up and down at will as part of their survival strategy. All vertebrates have it to some extent, but e.g. quadrupeds can run faster, most birds can only choose to fly or not at all.
My take-away is that we should be more concerned about how we treat animals that are very clearly capable of a wide range of emotions, and which humanity currently treats extremely poorly - pigs and cattle especially.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to feel the same way but watching a flock of birds spend 30 minutes picking at every wriggling thing they see crawling in the dirt changed my perspective.
I'm a bird watcher, I go out a fair amount so I've seen a lot of predation, not just of insects but other birds and mammals. I still don't want to do needless harm to any animals, even insects. I'll still take out roaches, fire ants, flour moths, and other invasive/pest insects, but I actually feel some remorse when I kill the moths and others since I believe they do suffer by my hand even if I don't have another cho…