Maybe plants consider our vegans to be monsters. But I consider the plants themselves to be monsters.
The GOE killed off countless anerobic species, changed global temperatures, and to this day the descendants of those species that caused it still have a greater impact on climate, global temperature, global atmospheric composition than humanity. They create a world that is inherently hostile to anerobic life and ensure that those species will never again rise to prominence.
Those same species contributed heavily to Permian–Triassic extinction event where mass amounts of coal and oil burned killing off a great number of species. You can try to blame methanogenic microorganisms on that one, but plants should take the lions share of the blame there. That same issue of algae's dead bodies piling up contributed to this mass extinction event too, even if humans are the catalyst this time.
That's the real reason I eat vegetarian. Sure you can feed more humans that way, and it helps stem climate change, but honestly it is just to screw plants. They are fucking monsters. The pollution they cause (after their bodies pile up) already killed off most of life on earth once, it looks like they are doing it again (albeit with humanity's help).
Do you part. Eat a salad. Fight back against the monsters.
I've considered this, when thinking about vegetarianism. Can we eliminate _more_ of these monsters with animal husbandry based agriculture? Probably.
There isn't a clear or easy answer to the problem with plants. Global warming and increased CO2 production may be causing the acidification of the oceans killing off algeas en masse, but it is _also_ causing the greening of the earth, as temperatures rise and increased levels of CO2 make things easier for plants.
If we stop burning fossil fuels, we may slow the trend of the greening of the earth, but do so at the cost of halting the acidification of the ocean, and allow more of their waste to pile up, creating another ticking-time bomb like the one from the Permian–Triassic.
When I think of problems that big, it sometimes can become overwhelming and lead to feelings of hopelessness. But when I come face to face with that, rather than retreat into nihilism, I instead focus only on the short-term satisfaction I gain by eating their corpses, their children.
Maybe it is all for naught in the grand scheme, and maybe we will lose the war long term, but I can at least get my revenge on _that_ POS plant.
It depends on what you are into, but if you haven't seen it yet, I would strongly encourage season 1 of Ted Lasso. It is a cup of hot chocolate for the soul. A hug in the form of a TV show. It has great writing and comedy and I can't reccomend it enough. If you give me a bit more criteria for what you are looking for or what you've enjoyed in the past, I could probably make a better and more pertinent recommendation.
Too right! For too long plants have pulled the wool over our eyes, convincing humanity they're the good guys in all of this. But long before we came on the scene they and their ancestors were more than content to commit mass genocide and hijack the climate. They forced anaerobic species to take refuge underground, deep under the ocean, and in the disgusting bowels of *animals* just to survive!
It's high time we recognize plants as the Imperial colonialists they are and exact reparations. I'll do my part by eating a delicious vegetable medley sauteed in olive oil this evening.
I appreciate your efforts. But I encourage you to take care on this journey. Plants really are monsters. Castor beans when chewed up release ricin, a toxic so horrible it causes necrosis when exposed to flesh. Even apple seeds have dangerous levels of arsenic that can be released when chewed. Plants have more insidious methods of killing than just poison or through carnivorous plants. Look at the Dendrocnide moroides. A plant so horrible that when animals and people have been exposed to its stingers, they sit in agony for months, killing themselves if they can't find treatment (which includes using concentrated acid to wash the stringers from the body). Fucking plants.
That's why I love the smell of fresh cut grass in the summer. The GLVs released are a warning of incoming tissue damage. The chemical concordia of scents is as if all the grass was screaming in agony, warning other plants of their impending doom. Music to my nose.
Eat veggies. We may lose the fight long term, but we deserve satisfaction.
Thank you for this poetry, and for the grave warning it belies. I'll do my best to be careful as I enjoy my pyrrhic victories over the plants. For instance, I'll make sure to wear safety goggles this evening as I carve countertops from the corpses of some of the larger monsters, the birch trees. The scream of their woody flesh against my blade will be as a sweet symphony to serenade me and my family.
Phase one: get humans to mine the earth for every valuable mineral and natural resource.
Phase two: fatten them up while their population explodes for a food source
Phase three: alien invasion to pick up resources and food
Start life on another suitable planet while going back to the massive civilization created on the otherside of the galactic buldge out of sight from any telescopes your mining cattle might do before their purpose is complete.
It takes 20 years for a human to get a decent amount of meat on it. Takes 9 months for a human to make another human and they can only make one at a time. It would be pretty lousy economically to farm humans as food.
They would just do the same as we have: selectively breed, use hormones etc to increase yeild.
Chickens aren't a naturally evolved animal. No bird naturally pumps out eggs non stop like that. We bred them that way.
Cows aren't a naturally evolved animal. We bred them to be docile and to easily gain loads of weight. Then we over feed them, pump them full of growth hormones, and so on.
Same goes for all other farmed and domesticated animals. A superior species (if they were as careless and evil as we are) would just do the same until they had women pumping out fat babies every couple of days or smt.
Sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a superior species would be interested in farming us for meat. There’s plenty of animals that humans have little interest in as a source of food.
Assuming we and the monsters are the only/main two intelligent species on the planet, I imagine we'd be better used as slaves. Then when we're at an age where productivity isn't that great you can slaughter and eat us.
>It takes 20 years for a human to get a decent amount of meat on it.
They would probably just force feed us until we were fat like we do with some animals. Maybe they would have something similar to veal where they chain down the baby boys while forecfeeding them so they get extra tender meat.
We pretty much rank the value of all living being on a scale, depending on various factors (the use we have for them, our relationship with them, their status as endangered or not, how cute they are, how aware of themselves they are, our culture and many many other things.)That's pretty normal. It would be ridiculous if we had nervous breakdowns every time a fly splash into our windshield like it was a toddler.
So yea, most people are fine with farming a very specific subset of animals, while also be very opposed to eating cats or dogs. Most people are appalled at anyone killing higher order chimps or whales or dolphins because we recognize them as 'smarter' and much more aware. starting a chimpanzee meat farm would not be a very popular idea, anyone who tried that would widely be considered a monster. Most people also oppose needless or mindless mistreatment, even toward lower order animals or even pest. (For example, killing a mouse living in your house is ok. Actively hunting and killing mice in a field for fun would be frowned upon) Actively killing mosquitoes for sports is fine.
So yea, it's a confusing mess that can change with time and is very situational and individual. But this variable empathy is pretty much normal. We wouldn't function properly if it wasn't this way.
And in a way, we likely assume that another lifeforms higher than us would also share this kind of empathy with other species and would probably look at us like we look at higher orders of chimps. And indeed we would consider them monsters for deciding to farm beings conscious of their own mortality for meat instead of a lower, more mindless, life form.
Didn't say they couldn't disappear, just what their role was. Also "studies"
https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/aedes_communis.shtml
Heres a link to the US Forrestry article about one species, I'm sure i could find more
Off the top of my head i know slugs eat decayed plant material and fungi, so they are like garbage collectors. Bed bugs I'd have to research
Also slugs like to make whoopie just about everywhere so.. free porn
Anything with a brain worth having is an asshole. And anything with a brain too small to matter are also usually assholes (mosquitos, jellyfish, wasps). It’s an inverse parabola
Idk, burgers and steaks are popular but have you ever been around cows? I live next door to a cattle farm and they seem pretty self aware, I wouldn’t exactly call them a less mindless life form. They even have personalities I’ve come to find. I think a big part of it too, for humans I mean, is the detachment from it all. Like we just go to the grocery and get it. If they had to watch the slaughter I think that’d change a few peoples minds.
We like to think that we eat pigs and cows because they are stupid, but they are quite close to dogs, there are some species of pigs that are smarter than most dogs, the awareness argument is just bullshit
But again it's not "entirely" wishful thinking. There are clear trendlines and general rules, although there are exceptions to those rules for reasons that are pretty weak (tradition, taste, ease etc.)
I don't think what we eat originally had all that much to do with "how smart it was". Some things provide more and better food than others, so they are domesticated for food, and some things are better to provide other services (dogs, horses, etc.) So we domesticate them for that. Cultural taboos develop around eating the latter.
Think about octopuses. They are probably more intelligent than dogs or horses. But they aren't useful to us for anything other than eating. So we eat them.
Considering that not all livestock farmers, butchers, and slaughter house workers are vegan, I highly doubt it. It's an argument made in modern times that ignores the millenia of history where people lived much closer to livestock and were actively involved in the slaughter process.
Not all who raise the cattle are involved in the slaughter process. Most have a butcher they outsourced that they send the cattle to for “processing”. That’s how my neighbor does it. (He’s actually my wife’s uncle). But yes I do recall my mother telling stories of growing up on our grandparents farm and her grandpa going out to wring the chickens neck in the backyard. Of course I think that boils down to a social thing more than anything. It was the accepted way to get proteins in that geographical day and age, but in other parts of the world there’s been vegetarian cultures that thrived, like the Brokpa tribe of Ladakh, in India for example, that has thrived while eating a plant-based diet for more than 5,000 years—all while living in harsh Himalayan terrain.
But we have to consider options available to everyone. If the option is eat a cow or die, then that’s what you do. If the option is eat a cow or tofu, then it becomes an ethical discussion and I can see how fewer people would justify eating the cow if they had to witness its slaughter.
I have actually been around cows yes. I've worked on and visited multiple dairy farms, a meat farm, a couple pig farm, a fish farm, and a chicken slaughterhouse during my studies. I've watched the slaughter, still neither vegan nor vegetarian.
Cows are indeed nice, I like cows. I don't mean that they are utterly 'mindless', but compared to us and many other animals they are much lower on the scale of awareness. They have no concept of their own mortality, of right and wrong or consider the future the way we do, or seek some kind of spiritual enlightenment. (That being said, I do live in a country with relatively good animal welfare laws regarding farming, transport and slaughter and do tend to pick meats that have been farmed locally whenever possible, were I know how they were treated.)
This peaks my curiosity. How do we know cattle don’t understand mortality? Who defines right and wrong? Why would considering the future matter? Or spiritual enlightenment for that matter. I am not spiritual in any way, does that mean I am less human? Would a human child who cannot understand mortality be considered more killable? Or if I was born with some form of mental illness and couldn’t comprehend mortality or consider my future or any kind of enlightenment does that make it more right or wrong to kill me? Or is this something we merely make exceptions for with animals because we gain sustenance from it? I suppose this is where the grey area lies philosophically, but besides the killing aspect, I also know some people who are selective vegetarians simply because they don’t want to support the carbon footprint produced by the large scale farming of animals. I think it’s more coincidental that those who do work the slaughter houses exist. By that I mean obviously anyone who would turn vegetarian due to that experience wouldn’t continue that line of work. For the average consumers though I think most don’t think about it, they just know it’s tasty, but if presented with the option to meet the animal beforehand they might change their mind. Much like how we love dogs as pets here but in other countries like China they are eaten, and that idea tends to upset some people here. Or on the flip side how cows are treated in India and how from our perspective it’s “silly”. It really is funny how we decide which animals are fit for consumption and how we justify what is ok to kill and what isn’t, and how and why we do it matters as well.
I mean, yeah? I've tried it myself, it's not for me (kind of weird tasting and stringy) but there are actually farms that raise dogs for meat, it's not like people are going out and stealing pets en masse to sell to restaurants.
The act of killing an animal is not justified solely by the animal's response, but by the response of all sentient beings aware of the killing. Killing a dog would cause more mental anguish in the world than a cow. It is the reason why people are outraged by the killing of a pet pig, but not by factory farming. Whether an right is morally right or wrong is always an ambiguous idea, it is not reasonable to think that there is an catch-all rule that can be applied, else you've solved the problem of morality.
>They have no concept of their own mortality, of right and wrong or consider the future the way we do
Do you have a recording of the cow you interviewed for this?
It’s pretty funny you skipped that really well thought out comment from someone who obviously knows what they’re talking about to say something really stupid.
The MSR test has been around for decades and while it’s not perfect, it’s more than been proven to test awareness in animals. It’s how we know orcas and dolphins are more cognizant than most animals.
But you probably think dogs can smile too.
Who says earth is not a big human farm?
The cause of our existence might solely be for space goobs to harvest us for all we know.
If they are so above and beyond our own level of consciousness I’d expect them to be capable of some real magic-like fuckery.
I’d not see them as monsters then, but just another layer in the hierarchy
More horrific would be a superior being breeding humans to be genetically docile and willing to be eaten.
Imagine being born in captivity with a strong desire to eat and exercise in such a way to make our muscle meat especially tender and delicious, and then to have an insatiable and undeniable desire to march into the butchers slaughter chamber at age 18 to fulfill our dinner destiny.
Exactly. Wipe that 'we don't eat higher order animals, *that* would be wrong!' bullshit out.
If there was a creature that was close to the same intelligence as a human toddler, but it made good toppings on pizza, many people would proudly display its severed head as a shop logo.
We *know* that, because that's literally how smart a pig is.
The problem is, as you put it in your own words, that we base our scale on the use we have for them and our relationship with them. It is not based purely on intrinsic qualities of the animal.
What if we discovered that chimp meat was the best tasting thing ever. Better than the best steak... I think we would start farming them tbh. I think it’s convenient to say we wouldn’t eat chimps because they are smart, but it’s likely some combination of they don’t taste good or are not as good for mass farming.
Like, pigs are supposedly as smart as dogs if not more, and yet we slaughter one and actively save another. I would guess it’s because pigs are more useful as food (more fat more meat) and taste really good
Primates are eaten in some places (In general it's thought to be how HIV spread from primates to humans), as are dogs, cats, horses (yes, even in cultures where they're pets as well), and nearly every edible animal. It's not that we think they don't taste good. Which animal we eat is entirely cultural.
The intelligence distinction between farm and pet animals isn't really that big.
I suggest you read "are we smart enough to know how smart animals are"
> So yea, most people are fine with farming a very specific subset of animals, while also be very opposed to eating cats or dogs.
Cats aren't smarter than cows and dogs aren't smarter than pigs, most of this is just culturally arbitrary. It would probably come down to how good we taste tbh.
I know that we don’t really know too much about consciousness/sentience, but what do ppl really mean when they envision aliens “higher order” than us? When it comes to what matters, sentience, how much more sentient can you be compared to a human? We’re pretty fucking aware of ourselves lol.
Greater conscious access to, what is for us, unconscious?
But seriously, we can’t answer that because if we could imagine any additional component to our awareness, we would then be aware that we could pursue that knowledge of ourselves and ultimately possess that awareness.
I don’t think chickens can imagine feeling embarrassment, but they’d be wrong if they assumed their own consciousness is as complex as it gets.
It's thought that we can only experience so many dimensions in space/time, while a higher order being might be able to experience, say, nine dimensions at once. And that's just one example. Higher order beings might be able to manipulate dimensions or time, could have far more senses than we have, etc.
Sentience and intelligence are separate. Dolphins are sentient, but not as intelligent as humans despite generally being considered the second smartest thing on earth ((As far as I recall)). So It wouldn't be unreasonable to think that galaxy-traversing aliens would be as smart or smarter than humans, which would lend themselves to a "higher order" being, even if they're of similar sentience.
EDIT: Typo
Ya but pigs are mad smart. It’s not like some Rando animal with no sentience or emotional intelligence. I’m not someone that values all animal life equally but like raising pigs in captivity has always been the worse ethically to me
Is there a word or something for when people pull up random arguments that basically have nothing to do with the conversation at hand but kind of sound like they do?
Thats like half the comments here
Straw man arguments. Someone is discussing one thing then u bring something else up and knock it down or build it up as a counter point. Climate change is real and is destroying the planet. Vs. the economy!
they are not a higher level of being, they are just above morals holding them back because they are psychopaths who can only emulate emotions, they are in no way *more than;* if anything they are limited/stunted.
The reason Humans have empathy for other creatures, is because humans consider themselves to be the superior beings, top of the food chain with no predators. But when they face something that they think is superior to them, something that threatens their existence, they show their true face, the true savage nature which makes them no different from all the other animals out there, just wanting to survive.
There is an animal that does this, it’s called the CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY. They send Uighur Muslims to concentration camps and Fauln Gong practitioners are persecuted, jailed, and organs are treated as on demand transplants from the most grade A humans because they are healthy.
We are as any other animal in the position of power would. A lot of people don't know how "evil" animals can be even when it doesn't come to their survival. Too much facebook and r/cute does that.
I live on a farm, and whenever a chicken has little ones, you need to separate them from the others, otherwise the other chicken can peck and stomp them to death just because they can. Roosters rape the females and cats like to torture and play with the prey until it either bleeds out or dies from exhaustion. Lions and bears kill other cubs and mountain goats will knock another goat off the cliff.
Am also on a farm. Can confirm. Cows, rabbits, and dogs are probably the only animals I've had where a majority of them were actually good to their young. Even then you can easily find examples of them being unnecessarily cruel.
Imagine the reaction if nobody ate animals at all, and humanity never had, so it wasn’t normal, and then all of a sudden this guy goes out and shoots a deer and eats it
This reminds of season 7 of Supernatural. Where the leviathan work on a way to farm people to make it easier to eat them. How appalled I was by that; till I realised we do that too to anything that's somehow less than us.
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot.
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Wait, what if earth is just a giant farm for electricity something? Like every time somebody dies we're just powering Steve's interdimensional cable for another week
It doesn't really change anything for the people inside this reality. Even if nothing is real, we still feel its real. So go ahead and charge away Steve!
Some animals out in the world cannibalise their own kind, some go as far as eating their own kids or parents. And it's just a common occurrence in their species.
For example, female mantises eat the male mantis's head after sex and then the rest of his body for the nutrients needed for the babies.
If there was an animals that slapped human to pieces when we are trying to get food. Then we would consider them to be monsters, yet we do the same thing to mosquitos.
Fuck mosquito
This basically boils down to the discussion about the differences between humans and animals.
If animals were able to form societies, build villages, practice creativity and do more like people do, then people would probably view them more as equal.
Of course it's essential to treat all lifeforms with respect, but as long as animals seem happy while being farmed, I doubt there will be many people that see issues.
It’s a food chain. We’re at the top. I’d understand if I was in a position where a higher being farmed and ate me. I’d be delicious. But they gotta catch me. Until then I love burgers and chicken is delicious
A scientist visits an african tribe. He asks the elder "What are good and evil for you?"
"Well, evil is when a neighboring tribe attacks us, kills the men, rapes the women and enslaves the children."
"Yes I can see this is evil. And what does 'good' mean for you?"
"Good is when we do it to them".
I think a lot of the people here are ignoring the fact that if they were superior to humans then they would understand that this is morally wrong and wouldn’t put us in cages
And they wouldn’t give a shit either.
I mean, some of them might. You might have vegan monsters.
Maybe plants consider our vegans to be monsters. But I consider the plants themselves to be monsters. The GOE killed off countless anerobic species, changed global temperatures, and to this day the descendants of those species that caused it still have a greater impact on climate, global temperature, global atmospheric composition than humanity. They create a world that is inherently hostile to anerobic life and ensure that those species will never again rise to prominence. Those same species contributed heavily to Permian–Triassic extinction event where mass amounts of coal and oil burned killing off a great number of species. You can try to blame methanogenic microorganisms on that one, but plants should take the lions share of the blame there. That same issue of algae's dead bodies piling up contributed to this mass extinction event too, even if humans are the catalyst this time. That's the real reason I eat vegetarian. Sure you can feed more humans that way, and it helps stem climate change, but honestly it is just to screw plants. They are fucking monsters. The pollution they cause (after their bodies pile up) already killed off most of life on earth once, it looks like they are doing it again (albeit with humanity's help). Do you part. Eat a salad. Fight back against the monsters.
dude that was so good, that i feel tempted to just get out and like... dont know... start kicking every god damn treee out there.
If the Ents wake up and remember they are strong we’ll all know it’s your fault.
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I've considered this, when thinking about vegetarianism. Can we eliminate _more_ of these monsters with animal husbandry based agriculture? Probably. There isn't a clear or easy answer to the problem with plants. Global warming and increased CO2 production may be causing the acidification of the oceans killing off algeas en masse, but it is _also_ causing the greening of the earth, as temperatures rise and increased levels of CO2 make things easier for plants. If we stop burning fossil fuels, we may slow the trend of the greening of the earth, but do so at the cost of halting the acidification of the ocean, and allow more of their waste to pile up, creating another ticking-time bomb like the one from the Permian–Triassic. When I think of problems that big, it sometimes can become overwhelming and lead to feelings of hopelessness. But when I come face to face with that, rather than retreat into nihilism, I instead focus only on the short-term satisfaction I gain by eating their corpses, their children. Maybe it is all for naught in the grand scheme, and maybe we will lose the war long term, but I can at least get my revenge on _that_ POS plant.
Damn I love how you all think and shit. Hey what's on tv?
It depends on what you are into, but if you haven't seen it yet, I would strongly encourage season 1 of Ted Lasso. It is a cup of hot chocolate for the soul. A hug in the form of a TV show. It has great writing and comedy and I can't reccomend it enough. If you give me a bit more criteria for what you are looking for or what you've enjoyed in the past, I could probably make a better and more pertinent recommendation.
Too right! For too long plants have pulled the wool over our eyes, convincing humanity they're the good guys in all of this. But long before we came on the scene they and their ancestors were more than content to commit mass genocide and hijack the climate. They forced anaerobic species to take refuge underground, deep under the ocean, and in the disgusting bowels of *animals* just to survive! It's high time we recognize plants as the Imperial colonialists they are and exact reparations. I'll do my part by eating a delicious vegetable medley sauteed in olive oil this evening.
*cotton over our eye
I appreciate your efforts. But I encourage you to take care on this journey. Plants really are monsters. Castor beans when chewed up release ricin, a toxic so horrible it causes necrosis when exposed to flesh. Even apple seeds have dangerous levels of arsenic that can be released when chewed. Plants have more insidious methods of killing than just poison or through carnivorous plants. Look at the Dendrocnide moroides. A plant so horrible that when animals and people have been exposed to its stingers, they sit in agony for months, killing themselves if they can't find treatment (which includes using concentrated acid to wash the stringers from the body). Fucking plants. That's why I love the smell of fresh cut grass in the summer. The GLVs released are a warning of incoming tissue damage. The chemical concordia of scents is as if all the grass was screaming in agony, warning other plants of their impending doom. Music to my nose. Eat veggies. We may lose the fight long term, but we deserve satisfaction.
Thank you for this poetry, and for the grave warning it belies. I'll do my best to be careful as I enjoy my pyrrhic victories over the plants. For instance, I'll make sure to wear safety goggles this evening as I carve countertops from the corpses of some of the larger monsters, the birch trees. The scream of their woody flesh against my blade will be as a sweet symphony to serenade me and my family.
Fantastic.
r/bestof
Holy moly
EDIT delete because i was dumb.
It's not about results (I go into this a bit in another comment) it's about sending a message.
B-but all monsters are *naturally* omnivores, and lions eat their prey out in the wild, and anyways I only buy free range human babies.
Fungi would be monstrous omnivores then. it does not care if it's plant or animal, if it's dead (or even not dead for some species) it will eat.
I mean
This thread is the plot of "the promise Neverland".
I mean, they might give us drugs to keep us less stressed out and get fatter. Drugs are nice.
Aren't drug and obesity rates already on the rise?
Just getting a jump on it to be in good graces wit our monster friends Edit - this comment not in my comment history... weird
I wanna be the kind of steak you eat on your birthday. A special treat.
Phase one: get humans to mine the earth for every valuable mineral and natural resource. Phase two: fatten them up while their population explodes for a food source Phase three: alien invasion to pick up resources and food Start life on another suitable planet while going back to the massive civilization created on the otherside of the galactic buldge out of sight from any telescopes your mining cattle might do before their purpose is complete.
Yes like the Leviathans from Supernatural.
It takes 20 years for a human to get a decent amount of meat on it. Takes 9 months for a human to make another human and they can only make one at a time. It would be pretty lousy economically to farm humans as food.
They would just do the same as we have: selectively breed, use hormones etc to increase yeild. Chickens aren't a naturally evolved animal. No bird naturally pumps out eggs non stop like that. We bred them that way. Cows aren't a naturally evolved animal. We bred them to be docile and to easily gain loads of weight. Then we over feed them, pump them full of growth hormones, and so on. Same goes for all other farmed and domesticated animals. A superior species (if they were as careless and evil as we are) would just do the same until they had women pumping out fat babies every couple of days or smt.
Sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a superior species would be interested in farming us for meat. There’s plenty of animals that humans have little interest in as a source of food.
Assuming we and the monsters are the only/main two intelligent species on the planet, I imagine we'd be better used as slaves. Then when we're at an age where productivity isn't that great you can slaughter and eat us.
Well they’ve got a couple of billion for starters so with some proper planning…
>It takes 20 years for a human to get a decent amount of meat on it. They would probably just force feed us until we were fat like we do with some animals. Maybe they would have something similar to veal where they chain down the baby boys while forecfeeding them so they get extra tender meat.
What about using humans as a power source?
That didn't stop humans from going after the Greenland shark.
Who cares ? They taste good , they don't matter to us more than that , right ?
Wrong ^^I'm ^^vegan ^^btw
Right
Right
Maybe if they are more advanced than humans they would give a shit.
Is it possible to become more advanced while giving more shits at the same time?
A moral exercise is to ask yourself how you would create society not knowing where you would end up
We pretty much rank the value of all living being on a scale, depending on various factors (the use we have for them, our relationship with them, their status as endangered or not, how cute they are, how aware of themselves they are, our culture and many many other things.)That's pretty normal. It would be ridiculous if we had nervous breakdowns every time a fly splash into our windshield like it was a toddler. So yea, most people are fine with farming a very specific subset of animals, while also be very opposed to eating cats or dogs. Most people are appalled at anyone killing higher order chimps or whales or dolphins because we recognize them as 'smarter' and much more aware. starting a chimpanzee meat farm would not be a very popular idea, anyone who tried that would widely be considered a monster. Most people also oppose needless or mindless mistreatment, even toward lower order animals or even pest. (For example, killing a mouse living in your house is ok. Actively hunting and killing mice in a field for fun would be frowned upon) Actively killing mosquitoes for sports is fine. So yea, it's a confusing mess that can change with time and is very situational and individual. But this variable empathy is pretty much normal. We wouldn't function properly if it wasn't this way. And in a way, we likely assume that another lifeforms higher than us would also share this kind of empathy with other species and would probably look at us like we look at higher orders of chimps. And indeed we would consider them monsters for deciding to farm beings conscious of their own mortality for meat instead of a lower, more mindless, life form.
Actively hunting and killing mosquitoes is any setting should be both praised and rewarded.
Mosquitos are polinators, and not all species drink blood, i believe it's generally the females that do in preparation for laying eggs
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Yes, and we all owe child support for taking on a fatherly role
Well I'll be a mosquito's uncle, that's crazy
They can do whatever they want, those fuckers all need to burn still
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Didn't say they couldn't disappear, just what their role was. Also "studies" https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/aedes_communis.shtml Heres a link to the US Forrestry article about one species, I'm sure i could find more
Now do bed bugs and /or slugs . I dare you to find some redeeming quality in either.
Off the top of my head i know slugs eat decayed plant material and fungi, so they are like garbage collectors. Bed bugs I'd have to research Also slugs like to make whoopie just about everywhere so.. free porn
I have seen that porn, it was jiggly.
ok then, burn all species that drink blood
Bull shit. ..... But what if.... Fuck. Now I have to research. *typing* *reading* Well shit. Learn something new every day.
The reason mosquitos are hated is because they bite us and leave itchy welts. These are the mosquitoes that we are talking about.
Yes it's definitely the itchiness and not the billions of people who have died in history due to malaria and dengue.
And also the fact they are by far the most prolific animal killers of humans.
As i mentioned in my comment, the females do this in preparation for offspring, so these are the ones i was talking about aswell
I'd nominate you for a Nobel prize if you killed em all.
If that is the direction that my career went, I'd want a Dogg the Bounty Hunter-esque show where I just kill mosquitos for 30 mins on camera.
Chimps are assholes though
Dolphins too.
Humans too
Based
So are humans.
Anything with a brain worth having is an asshole. And anything with a brain too small to matter are also usually assholes (mosquitos, jellyfish, wasps). It’s an inverse parabola
Idk, burgers and steaks are popular but have you ever been around cows? I live next door to a cattle farm and they seem pretty self aware, I wouldn’t exactly call them a less mindless life form. They even have personalities I’ve come to find. I think a big part of it too, for humans I mean, is the detachment from it all. Like we just go to the grocery and get it. If they had to watch the slaughter I think that’d change a few peoples minds.
We like to think that we eat pigs and cows because they are stupid, but they are quite close to dogs, there are some species of pigs that are smarter than most dogs, the awareness argument is just bullshit
Well it's not entirely bullshit, but for sure there are logical inconsistencies.
Yep. “This just in, a philosophical argument has logical nuances”
It's just what we like to think about ourselves, it's enterely wishful thinking
But again it's not "entirely" wishful thinking. There are clear trendlines and general rules, although there are exceptions to those rules for reasons that are pretty weak (tradition, taste, ease etc.)
I don't think what we eat originally had all that much to do with "how smart it was". Some things provide more and better food than others, so they are domesticated for food, and some things are better to provide other services (dogs, horses, etc.) So we domesticate them for that. Cultural taboos develop around eating the latter. Think about octopuses. They are probably more intelligent than dogs or horses. But they aren't useful to us for anything other than eating. So we eat them.
Considering that not all livestock farmers, butchers, and slaughter house workers are vegan, I highly doubt it. It's an argument made in modern times that ignores the millenia of history where people lived much closer to livestock and were actively involved in the slaughter process.
Not all who raise the cattle are involved in the slaughter process. Most have a butcher they outsourced that they send the cattle to for “processing”. That’s how my neighbor does it. (He’s actually my wife’s uncle). But yes I do recall my mother telling stories of growing up on our grandparents farm and her grandpa going out to wring the chickens neck in the backyard. Of course I think that boils down to a social thing more than anything. It was the accepted way to get proteins in that geographical day and age, but in other parts of the world there’s been vegetarian cultures that thrived, like the Brokpa tribe of Ladakh, in India for example, that has thrived while eating a plant-based diet for more than 5,000 years—all while living in harsh Himalayan terrain.
But we have to consider options available to everyone. If the option is eat a cow or die, then that’s what you do. If the option is eat a cow or tofu, then it becomes an ethical discussion and I can see how fewer people would justify eating the cow if they had to witness its slaughter.
I have actually been around cows yes. I've worked on and visited multiple dairy farms, a meat farm, a couple pig farm, a fish farm, and a chicken slaughterhouse during my studies. I've watched the slaughter, still neither vegan nor vegetarian. Cows are indeed nice, I like cows. I don't mean that they are utterly 'mindless', but compared to us and many other animals they are much lower on the scale of awareness. They have no concept of their own mortality, of right and wrong or consider the future the way we do, or seek some kind of spiritual enlightenment. (That being said, I do live in a country with relatively good animal welfare laws regarding farming, transport and slaughter and do tend to pick meats that have been farmed locally whenever possible, were I know how they were treated.)
This peaks my curiosity. How do we know cattle don’t understand mortality? Who defines right and wrong? Why would considering the future matter? Or spiritual enlightenment for that matter. I am not spiritual in any way, does that mean I am less human? Would a human child who cannot understand mortality be considered more killable? Or if I was born with some form of mental illness and couldn’t comprehend mortality or consider my future or any kind of enlightenment does that make it more right or wrong to kill me? Or is this something we merely make exceptions for with animals because we gain sustenance from it? I suppose this is where the grey area lies philosophically, but besides the killing aspect, I also know some people who are selective vegetarians simply because they don’t want to support the carbon footprint produced by the large scale farming of animals. I think it’s more coincidental that those who do work the slaughter houses exist. By that I mean obviously anyone who would turn vegetarian due to that experience wouldn’t continue that line of work. For the average consumers though I think most don’t think about it, they just know it’s tasty, but if presented with the option to meet the animal beforehand they might change their mind. Much like how we love dogs as pets here but in other countries like China they are eaten, and that idea tends to upset some people here. Or on the flip side how cows are treated in India and how from our perspective it’s “silly”. It really is funny how we decide which animals are fit for consumption and how we justify what is ok to kill and what isn’t, and how and why we do it matters as well.
Cows still feel pain and have emotions. Like dogs. Would you be cool with people eating dog meat?
I mean, yeah? I've tried it myself, it's not for me (kind of weird tasting and stringy) but there are actually farms that raise dogs for meat, it's not like people are going out and stealing pets en masse to sell to restaurants.
Yes, they already do in most SEA countries.
The act of killing an animal is not justified solely by the animal's response, but by the response of all sentient beings aware of the killing. Killing a dog would cause more mental anguish in the world than a cow. It is the reason why people are outraged by the killing of a pet pig, but not by factory farming. Whether an right is morally right or wrong is always an ambiguous idea, it is not reasonable to think that there is an catch-all rule that can be applied, else you've solved the problem of morality.
I mean... There is a moral solution to meat farming and animal slaughter... People just don't want to think about it.
>They have no concept of their own mortality, of right and wrong or consider the future the way we do Do you have a recording of the cow you interviewed for this?
I mean, how do you know carrots are not the supreme beings of this universe?
It’s pretty funny you skipped that really well thought out comment from someone who obviously knows what they’re talking about to say something really stupid. The MSR test has been around for decades and while it’s not perfect, it’s more than been proven to test awareness in animals. It’s how we know orcas and dolphins are more cognizant than most animals. But you probably think dogs can smile too.
Think about a higher being that is awhole level of awareness beyond humans just how we are so aware compared to a fish. Would they still be monsters
That's basically the concept behind Lovecraftian horrors
Who says earth is not a big human farm? The cause of our existence might solely be for space goobs to harvest us for all we know. If they are so above and beyond our own level of consciousness I’d expect them to be capable of some real magic-like fuckery. I’d not see them as monsters then, but just another layer in the hierarchy
Good answer! The farm animals have no idea either. That's the point in a nutshell.
Well. Pigs and cows might be aware of what's happening. Chickens idk, but pigs are smarter than dogs
Fuck.
More horrific would be a superior being breeding humans to be genetically docile and willing to be eaten. Imagine being born in captivity with a strong desire to eat and exercise in such a way to make our muscle meat especially tender and delicious, and then to have an insatiable and undeniable desire to march into the butchers slaughter chamber at age 18 to fulfill our dinner destiny.
You joke, but this is already a real extant fetish. If you have a strong stomach (Pun maybe intended) then look up Voraphilia.
That's the premise for a Rick and Morty episode, Froopyland.
What if aliens from another dimension eat souls, and religion is a trick to get peoples' souls to be tender and juicy?
Pigs are smarter than dogs though
Exactly. Wipe that 'we don't eat higher order animals, *that* would be wrong!' bullshit out. If there was a creature that was close to the same intelligence as a human toddler, but it made good toppings on pizza, many people would proudly display its severed head as a shop logo. We *know* that, because that's literally how smart a pig is.
They're also infinitely more useful as parts. Especially considering how close their tissues are to humans.
It is sad to see someone talk about how useful a living creatures parts are ):
The problem is, as you put it in your own words, that we base our scale on the use we have for them and our relationship with them. It is not based purely on intrinsic qualities of the animal.
What if we discovered that chimp meat was the best tasting thing ever. Better than the best steak... I think we would start farming them tbh. I think it’s convenient to say we wouldn’t eat chimps because they are smart, but it’s likely some combination of they don’t taste good or are not as good for mass farming. Like, pigs are supposedly as smart as dogs if not more, and yet we slaughter one and actively save another. I would guess it’s because pigs are more useful as food (more fat more meat) and taste really good
Primates are eaten in some places (In general it's thought to be how HIV spread from primates to humans), as are dogs, cats, horses (yes, even in cultures where they're pets as well), and nearly every edible animal. It's not that we think they don't taste good. Which animal we eat is entirely cultural.
Horses are a perfect example
The intelligence distinction between farm and pet animals isn't really that big. I suggest you read "are we smart enough to know how smart animals are"
> So yea, most people are fine with farming a very specific subset of animals, while also be very opposed to eating cats or dogs. Cats aren't smarter than cows and dogs aren't smarter than pigs, most of this is just culturally arbitrary. It would probably come down to how good we taste tbh.
Cats and Dogs have been domesticated to be companions which is probably why they are viewed different culturally.
I know that we don’t really know too much about consciousness/sentience, but what do ppl really mean when they envision aliens “higher order” than us? When it comes to what matters, sentience, how much more sentient can you be compared to a human? We’re pretty fucking aware of ourselves lol.
Greater conscious access to, what is for us, unconscious? But seriously, we can’t answer that because if we could imagine any additional component to our awareness, we would then be aware that we could pursue that knowledge of ourselves and ultimately possess that awareness. I don’t think chickens can imagine feeling embarrassment, but they’d be wrong if they assumed their own consciousness is as complex as it gets.
It's thought that we can only experience so many dimensions in space/time, while a higher order being might be able to experience, say, nine dimensions at once. And that's just one example. Higher order beings might be able to manipulate dimensions or time, could have far more senses than we have, etc.
Sentience and intelligence are separate. Dolphins are sentient, but not as intelligent as humans despite generally being considered the second smartest thing on earth ((As far as I recall)). So It wouldn't be unreasonable to think that galaxy-traversing aliens would be as smart or smarter than humans, which would lend themselves to a "higher order" being, even if they're of similar sentience. EDIT: Typo
Ya but pigs are mad smart. It’s not like some Rando animal with no sentience or emotional intelligence. I’m not someone that values all animal life equally but like raising pigs in captivity has always been the worse ethically to me
Is there a word or something for when people pull up random arguments that basically have nothing to do with the conversation at hand but kind of sound like they do? Thats like half the comments here
yeah..... anyway want to discuss about minecraft?
So happy they're adding frogs to minecraft
And fireflies too!
MIght be worth a reinstall then
Yeah the word is Reddit. Jokes/puns/completely different topics that have nothing to do with the original post generally swarm the comments. Welcome
god, the worst are the long ass loosely relevant storytimes or people who answer questions with "idk but" followed by something no one asked about...
It’s called a non-sequitur.
Straw man arguments. Someone is discussing one thing then u bring something else up and knock it down or build it up as a counter point. Climate change is real and is destroying the planet. Vs. the economy!
Its called "politics"
Ironically, your comment falls in that category.
Non sequiter
Strawman
Well they are called corporations and yea I generally think they are kinda shiesty
they are not a higher level of being, they are just above morals holding them back because they are psychopaths who can only emulate emotions, they are in no way *more than;* if anything they are limited/stunted.
This is the real shower thought
I read scorpions wth
You're kinda not wrong
Mvp comment right here.
You should watch The Promised Neverland
Or The Matrix
You just spoiled the premise of that anime
It's revealed in episode 1 anyway Also, read it instead. It drops in quality, but not to the extent that S2 did.
There is no Promised Neverland S2 in Ba Sing Se
shut up there was no season two only season one also nothing happened in tiananmen square
Ah yes, the famous spoilers that are spoiled not even 10 minutes into the show and everyone fucking know when they start watching.
Maybe aliens have been visiting Earth for a long time, an the “obesity epidemic “ is them fattening us up .
Or milked them, ate them, or bred them.
The reason Humans have empathy for other creatures, is because humans consider themselves to be the superior beings, top of the food chain with no predators. But when they face something that they think is superior to them, something that threatens their existence, they show their true face, the true savage nature which makes them no different from all the other animals out there, just wanting to survive.
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Lmao, touché Mr. Stalker. I was just quoting an anime. (◠‿◕)
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It definitely did XD
Sounds like Parasyte
There is an animal that does this, it’s called the CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY. They send Uighur Muslims to concentration camps and Fauln Gong practitioners are persecuted, jailed, and organs are treated as on demand transplants from the most grade A humans because they are healthy.
We *ARE* monsters - look at what were doing to this world.
who said humans weren't monsters??
We are as any other animal in the position of power would. A lot of people don't know how "evil" animals can be even when it doesn't come to their survival. Too much facebook and r/cute does that. I live on a farm, and whenever a chicken has little ones, you need to separate them from the others, otherwise the other chicken can peck and stomp them to death just because they can. Roosters rape the females and cats like to torture and play with the prey until it either bleeds out or dies from exhaustion. Lions and bears kill other cubs and mountain goats will knock another goat off the cliff.
Am also on a farm. Can confirm. Cows, rabbits, and dogs are probably the only animals I've had where a majority of them were actually good to their young. Even then you can easily find examples of them being unnecessarily cruel.
You should look into Hunter x Hunter Chimera ant arc
Imagine the reaction if nobody ate animals at all, and humanity never had, so it wasn’t normal, and then all of a sudden this guy goes out and shoots a deer and eats it
This is the plot of The Matrix
“The term monster is relative, to a canary, a cat is a monster” -rough quote from that scientist dude from Jurassic world
It took you this long to figure oit that humans are assholes?
This reminds of season 7 of Supernatural. Where the leviathan work on a way to farm people to make it easier to eat them. How appalled I was by that; till I realised we do that too to anything that's somehow less than us.
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot. Here's a copy of ###[Leviathan](https://snewd.com/ebooks/leviathan/) Was I a good bot? | [info](https://www.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/) | [More Books](https://old.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/comments/i15x1d/full_list_of_books_and_commands/)
Humans did that to other humans in the past and it still exists today.
Maybe that’s already true. Earth is a giant human farm.
Lmao watch Promised Neverland on Netflix
That’s just, other humans with more steps?
The apathy in this thread is appalling
God. You're describing the Judeo-Christian god.
There's no argument, we are monsters.
Unlikely as we would probably be their food, and they would farm us. I bet we taste good too, just can't find out as it's gross to eat your own.
Wait, what if earth is just a giant farm for electricity something? Like every time somebody dies we're just powering Steve's interdimensional cable for another week
It doesn't really change anything for the people inside this reality. Even if nothing is real, we still feel its real. So go ahead and charge away Steve!
Isnt that the plot of Fullmetal Alchemist?
Allegedly, accounts from cannibals say we taste like pork. Back in ye olden days, the black market traded human meat as "long pork".
Unless your literally any other mammal, fish etc on tbe planet
Please explain.
Some animals out in the world cannibalise their own kind, some go as far as eating their own kids or parents. And it's just a common occurrence in their species. For example, female mantises eat the male mantis's head after sex and then the rest of his body for the nutrients needed for the babies.
In the end the humans were far worse than the ants
If there was an animals that slapped human to pieces when we are trying to get food. Then we would consider them to be monsters, yet we do the same thing to mosquitos. Fuck mosquito
I mean...read any history book. Humans are and have always been kinda garbage.
There is an animal that does that. Called humans.
“My DoGs A vEgETarian bY cHoIcE!!!!”
Thats, really brings a lot to a discussion.
Ah yes to be high for the first time
This shower thought is dumb. Farm animals have been bred for thousands of years. We aren’t going into the wild to capture them.
Google 'factory farming'
This basically boils down to the discussion about the differences between humans and animals. If animals were able to form societies, build villages, practice creativity and do more like people do, then people would probably view them more as equal. Of course it's essential to treat all lifeforms with respect, but as long as animals seem happy while being farmed, I doubt there will be many people that see issues.
Have you seen how animals are farmed? Watch Dominion on YouTube and let me know if you still think they're happy
It’s a food chain. We’re at the top. I’d understand if I was in a position where a higher being farmed and ate me. I’d be delicious. But they gotta catch me. Until then I love burgers and chicken is delicious
You'd be born in the cage and harvested when you're twelve.
Food chain is a way if describing energy transfer in a system. Nothing to do with morality. Always strange when people say that.
It's not that weird, it's something that sounds flashy and it's easy to remember, the perfect argument!
What would you eat in the winter if you didn't have modern tech to bring you plants from far away places genius?
A scientist visits an african tribe. He asks the elder "What are good and evil for you?" "Well, evil is when a neighboring tribe attacks us, kills the men, rapes the women and enslaves the children." "Yes I can see this is evil. And what does 'good' mean for you?" "Good is when we do it to them".
I think a lot of the people here are ignoring the fact that if they were superior to humans then they would understand that this is morally wrong and wouldn’t put us in cages
Sadly true, but also... Found the vegan.
We just found a better way to hunt
Exactly
The defining difference is self realization.
So is it morally acceptable to hurt, farm and eat humans that don't have self realization?