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How do you feel about animals and nature?

MikeOekiM

MikeOekiM

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So looking at everyone around me it feels like im one of few people who truly love animals and nature. I think they deserve just as much respect as humans do. I have had friends who would torture and shoot animals with paintball guns and other crazy stuff like throwing a frog like 30 yards and other stuff that really makes me feel sick.

Also, many people may think thats just as sick as i do but this next part ive found most people dont agree with. I think insects like ants, spiders, flies etc all should be treated normally too. Yeah it may be scary to see a spider in your house or something but i just put a cup over it and take it outside when i see people kill insects left and right spider or harmless insect like an ant.

They, to me, are just another species in this world and you have to think what if you were an animal or insect how would you feel if someone tortured you or messed up your habitat or something like that.

I dont know.
 
I, for one, feel exactly the same way as you Mike. We are the minority though. In my experience, it seems like most humans don't care about other creatures but humans, and then some only care about themself, and that's it!

The thought of purposefully harming an animal sickens me, let alone the thought of torturing an animal. Insects included. The thought of people unnecessarily destroying anything in nature makes me really sad, and I feel helpless. Humans are an extraordinarily destructive species :X

A few years ago our house was pretty much taken over by spiders. They were harmless as long as we respected each others' space. The only reason we ended up getting our house fumigated was because we found a species of spider which are lethal to humans and animals, and we have a lot of pets. So for our house to be safe for us and our fur-babies, we had to kill off the spiders.

We'd even named some of the bigger spiders, so it sucked having to kill them :|

A few months ago I saw the movie Red Dog, and a couple of days later I was telling people at my work about it. I explained the movie to them and proceeded to tell them that "I have never cried that hard in a movie, EVER". To which one of the ladies at work replied "You cried?? But....it was just a dog..." Even after me explaining the story to her, she still could not fathom how I could feel so sad about a dog's plight.

So yeah, us people who love and care for animals and nature equally as much as humans are the minority.

I dunno what to do about it though...there are too many humans in the world to change their perspective en mass.
 
up here where i live the temperature drops below zero half year long so taking insects outside is = to killing them and it aint ike im gonna act as a mommy to some bug that aint gonna survive long enough to make it till the sun comes back, i aint gonna start to look for a mate so that their offspring may live...
its all part of a process called natural selection and i dont need to be responsible for other living being, where i live is my territory and im allowed to protect that territory, thats the game of nature

but i do connect with nature, with plants, animals, insects, humans...
and i could ad virus and bacteria since its all part of the same thing
its all part of a whole, its all part of my ecosystem
for me its all about balance
so im ok with eating meat, thats how nature has evolve, thats what we are part of, im accepting the situation
im accepting that there is gonna be suffering if there is gonna be life
survival is as violent as it can get, its a jungle out there, nature doesnt make laws against murder, rape, genocide... but we do, humans do, we are the most violent thing on earth but we are also the most caring
we have gardens, we have pets, and it doesnt have to be about farming, it doesnt have to be about food, it doesnt have to be about survival anymore,
we have found some free time to enjoy the connection we can feel with it all, with nature, with plants, with animals, with water, with snow, with the wind, the sun, the moon
we can connect because we have evolved the capacity to take the time to care
but not everyone is there, cats will kill a bird for the fun of it, to practice its hunting skill, its the equivalent of torture but its done on a very unconscious level
same thing happen with humans, not everyone is on a level where they can connect, with themself, with others or with animals
but those people are part of nature too, if i really want to connect with nature i need to respect them as much as i respect nature
my upbringing has put me in a situation where i was emotionally incline to see nature as good and some human as bad,
im still adjusting the two to be able to be more stable in my views, more realistic, more well balanced
its funny, its like when i was a kid and wanted to have a zoo, i was so into animals, and then at a certain point i realize that a zoo meant putting innocent animals into small cages...
ive had to adjust my emotional response to zoos and to nature and to humans
and i should say; and to myself basically
to my own human nature and what it means to be human in all of this

at this point in my life ive gone back to what it was all about when i was a kid : monkey banana butt !
 
yeah i understand how u think ninja im more talking about the people who it seems feel like no one but humans deserve to live on this planet. I dont really like how people hunt but im ok with it as long as its not the type of hunting where you are just doing it for fun and arent even gonna eat the meat.

like its crazy how many people i know who torture animals and insects. Im talking sticking stink bugs to fireworks and going outside to use bug exterminator on any bug they see just cuz they think its fun.
 
@neo - I wouldn't say you're in the minority, at least not on the internet. The general consensus i've seen is that people seem to care more about animal cruelty than human cruelty (something i've noticed in myself, too).

On a somewhat unrelated note, one of the most depressing wikipedia articles i've ever read (and i've read it quite a few times): quaternary extinction event

Extinctions_Africa_Austrailia_NAmerica_Madagascar.gif



It seems that general ecological collapse is an inevitable part of continued human expansion.
 
In the tradition to which I belong, our perspective is that insects and animals are pure and innocent - they do not pretend to be anything but themselves. We humans on the other hand sometimes lie, cheat, guile our way to get what we want. So in some respects, animals and insects are better than us - they simply act on their pure natures.
 
skase007 said:
In the tradition to which I belong, our perspective is that insects and animals are pure and innocent - they do not pretend to be anything but themselves. We humans on the other hand sometimes lie, cheat, guile our way to get what we want. So in some respects, animals and insects are better than us - they simply act on their pure natures.
Click to expand...

Many animals have been known to deceive others. I'll have to look around for some citations, but flowers that look like bees to get pollinated, ants that take other ants as slaves, cuckoos which kill the chicks of other birds so that their own will survive, there are several animals that send false pheromone trails or mislead others for food. It's funny how people have this 'human guilt', where by simply existing humans are inherently considered bad, but when animals do such things, it's considered 'their nature'.
 
i feel the same as you OP.

however if you look at the way other species behave, its not nice - torture and death, its all a part of survival. nature. but i do think torturing other creatures for sick pleasure is fucked up and disgusting, it makes me hate the human race. we're just a load of destructive dominating assholes
 
Yeah i feel the same as you.. Obviously if it came down to it though, a human life (dependin on who they are ;)) is worth more than an apes life is worth more than a dogs life is worth more than a rats life is worth more than a frogs life is worth more than a fishes life is worth more than an ants life.. see what im saying?

Animals have emotions too, thought and feelings, the more complex they are, the more conscious they are, the more life they actually have.

I too pick up spiders without harming them and throw them outside if i (or the girlfriend :P) feels they are too big to stay in the house.. i let flies out the window.. i even throw left overs of food into bushes rather than bins to feed what little wildlife we have round here..
 
a humans life isnt worth any more than any other life in my opinion. its all life. whos to judge which life is more important? everything is connected. we're just another being. its just the way we perceive ourselves to be more important
 
I don't believe I'm quite as into it as some of the posters here. I am insanely scared of spiders (as in ... the anxiety goes up ... I scream and freak out :s). So yeah, I kill spiders. But I still feel bad about it ... like in a way ... I wish they could just be somewhere that isn't near me!

But I've been avoiding meat lately, I love animals in general too much :(.
 
a humans life isnt worth any more than any other life in my opinion. its all life. whos to judge which life is more important?
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All our values our anthropogenic, we are the judges of life's value. Why does any life have value at all? Because we believe it does. The good is an entirely subjective human creation, unless you want to invoke the supernatural. I'm all for better treatment of animals, I've been toying with the idea of becoming a vegan (I think vegetarianism is an unsunstainable copout), but to state that a human's life isn't worth more than any other is a bit silly. Government provision of medical care for humans; I don't think I could get behind free surgery for dogs, let alone for amoebas. The sad fact is that, whether we like it or not, we are competing in this world- by your logic, isn't it wrong to take penicillin, wiping out millions or billions of microbial lives out of selfish desire to save your own skin?
 
in terms of how to treat animals, i think capacity for pain, both physical and emotional, is the important factor. how we can judge that, i don't know, but my guess is a cow can feel more pain than a spider, so i'd treat a cow with more respect than a spider. in an ideal world, we would treat everything with equal respect, but in practise, we have to make some choices.

Vader said:
(I think vegetarianism is an unsunstainable copout),
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in theory i agree. but in practise, if you want to positively influence the most people, and reduce the meat/dairy consumption of people other than yourselves, vegetarianism is preferable IME. i don't really try to convert people, but just in discussing my reasons for being vegetarian have converted a few. in 2 years as a vegan i just convinced people i was a nutter, even in the most vegan friendly city ever. (yes this is mostly me rationalising my own guilt at eating dairy)
 
how we can judge that, i don't know, but my guess is a cow can feel more pain than a spider, so i'd treat a cow with more respect than a spider. in an ideal world, we would treat everything with equal respect, but in practise, we have to make some choices.
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Does an unusually emotional person demand more respect than someone who is relatively unresponsive? Brings to mind the "utility monster" thought experiment, if there was a being who would derive more enjoyment from possession of any thing than any other being would, ought we give it everything and deprive ourselves? I totally agree, though, setting those noodling concerns aside. With regards to the eating of meat, I'm not sure how bad I could ever really feel about eating, say, a mussel. The cognitive capacity of shellfish is probably closer to that of spinach than to that of a primate, and for me, that does seem like a pretty good metric to judge things on. Of course, then we are left with the ugly idea that the lives of stupid people are worth less than those of intelligent people (I've raised that point in discussions before, and people have been perfectly happy to assent to it (needless to say, people who consider themselves part of the latter set)).

The argument for veganism that I most often encounter is that it is akin to slavery. I never found that convincing; I saw it more as a kind of symbiosis. However, my recent thoughts have been regarding the economic necessity of slaughter in order to produce dairy products. It is not possible for everyone to be a vegetarian, dairy products are inextricably entangled with meat. To me, this is a more convincing argument, and one that may in fact compel me to "convert".

btw, is Leeds really a vegan-friendly city?
 
Vader said:
Does an unusually emotional person demand more respect than someone who is relatively unresponsive? Brings to mind the "utility monster" thought experiment, if there was a being who would derive more enjoyment from possession of any thing than any other being would, ought we give it everything and deprive ourselves?
Click to expand...

ah ha, no. i guess we would need some sort of heuristic rule for each species at to what sort of range of pain it could feel, rather than going by individuals responses, which would get around the objection that one persons pain is another's pleasure too.

the conclusion that some people were less conscious than others is an ugly conclusion and one that obviously arises once we treat animals on the same scale as us, and that scale as a continuum. if we don't attach any value to cognitive capacities, it doesn't matter, but here we are, so it does matter. its also a continuum for individuals, i think its stupid to think that i'm more valuable after a cup of tea in the morning than before. so there must be more to 'worth' than cognitive capacity, but what that might be is quite mysterious to me.

yeah, its not possible for everyone to be vegetarian, and that is a v compelling argument towards veganism. all the arguments for vegetarianism in terms of resources (which other humans could consume, my main justification) required are essentially watered down arguments for veganism.

haha no, Leeds isn't even a very vegetarian friendly city, but bristol is and i had the pleasure of living there for 3 years.
 
yeah when i have a spider i wont hurt it, ill just pop it outside.

the way i look at everything in life is if something negative doesnt have to happen then i will make sure it won't.
 
So how about bedbugs? They will bite the hell out of you all night, make you afraid to go to sleep, and practically ruin your life after you deal with it long enough.. But calling in the exterminator to kill them all, is that wrong? They're animals just doing what nature has designed them to do, drink your blood.
 
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