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“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they wil

“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” Pythagoras

whenchamenia 7y ago
Source? Because pythagoras never wrote anything down. That was kinda his thing. This is fake, unless it is from the greek pythagoras who was a athletic trainer, in which case your attribution is still dodgy. My source: the pythagoren sourcebook.
- edflsafoiewq 7y ago
  It's attributed to Pythagoras through Ovid but I couldn't find exactly where. It doesn't seem to be in the Metamorphoses.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    For the laymen, note that Ovid lived about 500 years after Pythagoras, so you can still be skeptical about this attribution.
tux1968 7y ago
Tigers and bears don't seem to have any emotional strife about their position in the food chain. Don't think we should feel too bad about it either. There are real concerns to address about sustainability though.
- deogeo 7y ago
  Bears also don't have any emotional strife about killing cubs to increase their odds of mating. Perhaps looking to them for moral guidance is not the best idea.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    But that’s part of the point. We owe animals humane treatment because of what we are, not because of what they are. To be clear, holding tigers and bears to a different moral standard is human exceptionalism. I’m fine with that, but many people seem to feel we should treat animals humanely because they’re the same as us.
    - MockObject 7y ago
      Either animals are moral entities, or they're not. If they are, we owe them moral treatment, but then they are subject to being held accountable for their own moral failings. If they're not, then they can't be said to accrue any moral failings, and we don't owe them moral treatment.
      - mkane848 7y ago
        Hard disagreement, if something can feel pain and suffering then we should be striving to overcome the need to inflict that on them. Also, just because we don't "owe" it to them doesn't mean we shouldn't. Being nice or doing good in the world isn't something that should be earned by the recipients, it should be the default for how we treat each other if we're REALLY trying to progress and move forward as sentient beings.
        MockObject 7y ago
        > it should be the default for how we treat each other What should be included in the set of "each other"? You're suggesting we include entities that are totally amoral, who happily destroy other sentient beings in the most painful ways, and who are incapable of reform. There is no imaginable social contract that could possibly include such monsters. Surely there must be some element of symmetry as a condition of such a set membership. It's implied by the very phrase "each other".
        mkane848 7y ago
        I think trying to figure that out is the exciting part, and I'd prefer to err on the side of generosity.
- tdb7893 7y ago
  Many rodents eat their own babies when stressed, and many animals practice rape. Following nature for ethical concerns is sketchy at best.
- sarbaz 7y ago
  How do you know? There's no experiment I can think of to confirm this. IMO, the correct 'null hypothesis' wrt mammals is that they think and feel like humans do, except where we've managed to prove otherwise.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- mping 7y ago
  We're not tigers or bears, so I never really understood this line of thought.
  - tux1968 7y ago
    We're all part of the same natural world, we have more in common than we have differences. The world we're all born into doesn't seem to particularly care about suffering -- it's baked into its very fabric, we're all going to suffer and die. If you are going to survive, you have to kill every day, be it plant or animal; it's just the way it is. You can say that plants matter less than animals, and make up some justification about consciousness and suffering, but that is simply our own personal bias. There is no way to know if the universe cares more about thinking or non-thinking things, or if they share the exact same intrinsic value. All such moralizing is on very shaky ground and comes down to human bias and not much else.
bart_spoon 7y ago
The animal kingdom is absolutely brutal. And not in the "predators kill prey" sort of way. I just watched the documentary "The Lions of Sabi Sands" on the recommendation of someone here, and the level of violence that exists in animal societies is something I think most would find shocking.
- vincent-toups 7y ago
  This hardly operates as a justification for human brutality towards animals. Most aspects of human society are less horrible than the natural state of affairs and an argument from nature that would should relax our standards seems highly suspect, both from an intuitive and logical perspective.
  - MockObject 7y ago
    Doesn't it, though? The point of human society is to make life nicer for its humans, not for the state of nature that comes into contact with it.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - vincent-toups 7y ago
      "The point of human society is to make life nicer for its humans." How do you figure this? Why not "The point of human society is to make the world more aesthetically pleasing?" Or "The point of human society is to make life nicer for all conscious beings?" Or "The point of human society is to make life nicer for all great apes?" or "The point of life among higher animals (of which human beings are a cohort) is to make life nice for all higher animals?" Its hardly a settled point _what_ the point of human society is or even where "society" should have its limits defined.
      - mikelyons 7y ago
        The Absolute Truth is that the point of Life is to become conscious enough to discover that the point of life is to become infinitely loving and utterly selfless. But imagine how conscious you have to be to get there! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PjZB9CoFfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PjZB9CoFfs
Nasrudith 7y ago
Pythagoras was infamous for being a lunatic in everything - you can't even exclude his area of sanity mathematics given his erroneous insistence on rationality in the face of evidence to the contrary.

whenchamenia 7y ago

Source? Because pythagoras never wrote anything down. That was kinda his thing. This is fake, unless it is from the greek pythagoras who was a athletic trainer, in which case your attribution is still dodgy. My source: the pythagoren sourcebook.

edflsafoiewq 7y ago
It's attributed to Pythagoras through Ovid but I couldn't find exactly where. It doesn't seem to be in the Metamorphoses.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  For the laymen, note that Ovid lived about 500 years after Pythagoras, so you can still be skeptical about this attribution.

tux1968 7y ago

Tigers and bears don't seem to have any emotional strife about their position in the food chain. Don't think we should feel too bad about it either. There are real concerns to address about sustainability though.

deogeo 7y ago
Bears also don't have any emotional strife about killing cubs to increase their odds of mating. Perhaps looking to them for moral guidance is not the best idea.
- JackFr 7y ago
  But that’s part of the point. We owe animals humane treatment because of what we are, not because of what they are. To be clear, holding tigers and bears to a different moral standard is human exceptionalism. I’m fine with that, but many people seem to feel we should treat animals humanely because they’re the same as us.
  - MockObject 7y ago
    Either animals are moral entities, or they're not. If they are, we owe them moral treatment, but then they are subject to being held accountable for their own moral failings. If they're not, then they can't be said to accrue any moral failings, and we don't owe them moral treatment.
    - mkane848 7y ago
      Hard disagreement, if something can feel pain and suffering then we should be striving to overcome the need to inflict that on them. Also, just because we don't "owe" it to them doesn't mean we shouldn't. Being nice or doing good in the world isn't something that should be earned by the recipients, it should be the default for how we treat each other if we're REALLY trying to progress and move forward as sentient beings.
      - MockObject 7y ago
        > it should be the default for how we treat each other What should be included in the set of "each other"? You're suggesting we include entities that are totally amoral, who happily destroy other sentient beings in the most painful ways, and who are incapable of reform. There is no imaginable social contract that could possibly include such monsters. Surely there must be some element of symmetry as a condition of such a set membership. It's implied by the very phrase "each other".
        mkane848 7y ago
        I think trying to figure that out is the exciting part, and I'd prefer to err on the side of generosity.
tdb7893 7y ago
Many rodents eat their own babies when stressed, and many animals practice rape. Following nature for ethical concerns is sketchy at best.
sarbaz 7y ago
How do you know? There's no experiment I can think of to confirm this. IMO, the correct 'null hypothesis' wrt mammals is that they think and feel like humans do, except where we've managed to prove otherwise.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mping 7y ago
We're not tigers or bears, so I never really understood this line of thought.
- tux1968 7y ago
  We're all part of the same natural world, we have more in common than we have differences. The world we're all born into doesn't seem to particularly care about suffering -- it's baked into its very fabric, we're all going to suffer and die. If you are going to survive, you have to kill every day, be it plant or animal; it's just the way it is. You can say that plants matter less than animals, and make up some justification about consciousness and suffering, but that is simply our own personal bias. There is no way to know if the universe cares more about thinking or non-thinking things, or if they share the exact same intrinsic value. All such moralizing is on very shaky ground and comes down to human bias and not much else.

bart_spoon 7y ago

The animal kingdom is absolutely brutal. And not in the "predators kill prey" sort of way. I just watched the documentary "The Lions of Sabi Sands" on the recommendation of someone here, and the level of violence that exists in animal societies is something I think most would find shocking.

vincent-toups 7y ago
This hardly operates as a justification for human brutality towards animals. Most aspects of human society are less horrible than the natural state of affairs and an argument from nature that would should relax our standards seems highly suspect, both from an intuitive and logical perspective.
- MockObject 7y ago
  Doesn't it, though? The point of human society is to make life nicer for its humans, not for the state of nature that comes into contact with it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - vincent-toups 7y ago
    "The point of human society is to make life nicer for its humans." How do you figure this? Why not "The point of human society is to make the world more aesthetically pleasing?" Or "The point of human society is to make life nicer for all conscious beings?" Or "The point of human society is to make life nicer for all great apes?" or "The point of life among higher animals (of which human beings are a cohort) is to make life nice for all higher animals?" Its hardly a settled point _what_ the point of human society is or even where "society" should have its limits defined.
    - mikelyons 7y ago
      The Absolute Truth is that the point of Life is to become conscious enough to discover that the point of life is to become infinitely loving and utterly selfless. But imagine how conscious you have to be to get there! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PjZB9CoFfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PjZB9CoFfs

Nasrudith 7y ago

Pythagoras was infamous for being a lunatic in everything - you can't even exclude his area of sanity mathematics given his erroneous insistence on rationality in the face of evidence to the contrary.