From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Apr 30 2000 - 17:53:30 MDT
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> I'd like to see a little monitor associated with every living organism
> on the planet. It can watch out that they don't reproduce too quickly
> and otherwise control or guide it.
>
> I recall Clifford Simak's story in his collection City, where intelligent
> dogs have inherited the earth and are trying to bring peace to the
> animal kingdom, the lion lying down with the lamb. Predation is a hard
> problem to solve honorably for all parties concerned, but I think it is
> worth trying. Every day, billions of animals die in suffering and pain
> as their desperate struggles to escape a predator fail.
>
> Nature is screwed up. It's a bloodthirsty, vicious world. We should be
> able to do better.
>
Oh PLEASE.
I really don't want to get into a debate about this, but here goes:
Predation is not a 'problem'. Its a solution. It weeds out the weak and
ill and aged. It is THE instrument of evolution. Predation IS nature at
work. Predation is most certainly NOT bloodthirsty. Predators do not
kill more than they need to, and viciousness is a human sentiment.
Animals are not concerned with being mean, or causing pain and
suffering, they are interested in FOOD. The only reason you don't feel
the same way about herbivores is that plants can't make noise to object
when they are eaten or flee from their consumers, even though studies
have shown that plants object just as much to being damaged or
destroyed. Eating plants versus eating animals is ethically no
different, both are harvesting the body of another living thing for
one's own sustenance.
I imagine you are probably a vegetarian, or possibly a meat eater who
hasn't the guts to either quit meat or else participate in the
harvesting of meat yourself. I can respect a vegetarian for their
beliefs, no matter how wrong, but the latter is the height of hypocricy.
The only problem with vegetarians is they get to eating plants so much
they start to think like they are a member of the herd, just one more
cow or sheep, rather than thinking like the top animal in the ecology.
Its rather hilarious for me to see people who are both vegetarians and
who claim they are environmentalists but express disgust for the laws of
nature, they don't see the inconsistency.
As I've said before here, when people started talking about having skin
of solar cells to eliminate the need to eat, that I expect when such
people are created that they'll pretty quickly form a PETOP, the People
for the Ethical Treatment Of Plants. They'll call vegetarians inhumane
butchers and disgusting bloodthirsty immoral barbarians. But thats only
because they are now thinking like plants....
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