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> Most of your "only species to ..." are outright false or responses to problems humans created in the first place or have very nasty analogs. Won't respond to

by ghusto 4y ago

> Most of your "only species to ..." are outright false or responses to problems humans created in the first place or have very nasty analogs. Won't respond to the "outright" false since you say nothing further, but in response to "we created those in the first place": That doesn't negate my message, and in fact I addressed that very point indirectly already when I said we reflect on our mistakes. No other species looks at the mess they cause and thinks "maybe we should stop doing this". > It may bother you or make you feel uneasy or make you not want to believe it, but humans bring an immense amount of suffering into this world. I've come from a place of misanthrope, so it absolutely does not bother me to believe it. In fact, I believed it nearly all my life. What does bother me though, is how little thought is given to the other side of the story, and the whole picture. We do bad things, but we are a net gain in terms of "goodness", whatever your definition of that word is. I'll go further; we are the only species to do good things, because we have freedom of choice. A dolphin doesn't sit around thinking on the moral implications of killing a shark for fun, or saving a drowning human. > For example, this is so strange. So the only way to care for the environment is to first destroy it and then try to fix it? Of course it isn't, and many people around the world such as native Americans don't do that. Where we _do_ do that however, we are the only ones to think about it afterwards and try to do better. It's so easy to be pessimistic, isn't it? To write off the whole of humanity as "bad", because that's easier than saying; "shit's hard to get right, but we're trying, and I'm part of that attempt".

bmitc 4y ago
> We do bad things, but we are a net gain in terms of "goodness", whatever your definition of that word is. That needs some backing up, as I highly doubt it's true for any definition of goodness. > It's so easy to be pessimistic, isn't it? It isn't about pessimism or misanthropy, which are largely irrelevant to this discussion. Realizing one is a narcissist or an alcoholic or an addict isn't pessimism. It's realization and acceptance of both the reality of the situation and that something needs to change. What humanity needs is realization and acceptance of our destructiveness and not apathy or denial. The rest of your post is unfortunately hopelessly human-centric. We have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals. This, any such claims are anthropocentric speculations.
- ghusto 4y ago
  In the great tradition of arguing with people on the internet for no goddamn reason, I'm going to argue with you some more. > That needs some backing up, as I highly doubt it's true for any definition of goodness. Come on man, be reasonable. Sure, I could come up with a definition that wouldn't fit, like "goodness == dinosaurs", but are we really going there? Let's pin it down to something we can probably both agree on: Goodness = That which is mostly of benefit to most animals. Now you can say I'm "animal-centric", but so what? I'm not into post-modernist nonsense, and we can argue on why I'm calling it nonsense too. > It isn't about pessimism or misanthropy, which are largely irrelevant to this discussion. Realizing one is a narcissist or an alcoholic or an addict isn't pessimism. It's realization and acceptance of both the reality of the situation and that something needs to change. We mostly agree; absolutely, acceptance of reality and the will (and action!) to change is what's important. What I don't agree on though, is shitting on humans and saying we don't do that because you can find some examples of _instances of human_ which don't do that. Zooming out to the bigger picture shows that we do. Even if you found only a single instance in the 8 billion instances, it would still mean humans have at least the capacity. > The rest of your post is unfortunately hopelessly human-centric. We have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals. It's human centric in terms of it being from the perspective of a human, but not in terms of what I'm willing to look at. Even if we "have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals" (which we do^), we _try_ to. Humans try to understand what impact they're having on other animals. Animals other than humans don't. ^ Google search for "animal feeling studies" https://www.google.com/search?q=animal%20feeling%20studies https://www.google.com/search?q=animal%20feeling%20studies

by ghusto 4y ago

bmitc 4y ago

> We do bad things, but we are a net gain in terms of "goodness", whatever your definition of that word is. That needs some backing up, as I highly doubt it's true for any definition of goodness. > It's so easy to be pessimistic, isn't it? It isn't about pessimism or misanthropy, which are largely irrelevant to this discussion. Realizing one is a narcissist or an alcoholic or an addict isn't pessimism. It's realization and acceptance of both the reality of the situation and that something needs to change. What humanity needs is realization and acceptance of our destructiveness and not apathy or denial. The rest of your post is unfortunately hopelessly human-centric. We have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals. This, any such claims are anthropocentric speculations.

ghusto 4y ago
In the great tradition of arguing with people on the internet for no goddamn reason, I'm going to argue with you some more. > That needs some backing up, as I highly doubt it's true for any definition of goodness. Come on man, be reasonable. Sure, I could come up with a definition that wouldn't fit, like "goodness == dinosaurs", but are we really going there? Let's pin it down to something we can probably both agree on: Goodness = That which is mostly of benefit to most animals. Now you can say I'm "animal-centric", but so what? I'm not into post-modernist nonsense, and we can argue on why I'm calling it nonsense too. > It isn't about pessimism or misanthropy, which are largely irrelevant to this discussion. Realizing one is a narcissist or an alcoholic or an addict isn't pessimism. It's realization and acceptance of both the reality of the situation and that something needs to change. We mostly agree; absolutely, acceptance of reality and the will (and action!) to change is what's important. What I don't agree on though, is shitting on humans and saying we don't do that because you can find some examples of _instances of human_ which don't do that. Zooming out to the bigger picture shows that we do. Even if you found only a single instance in the 8 billion instances, it would still mean humans have at least the capacity. > The rest of your post is unfortunately hopelessly human-centric. We have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals. It's human centric in terms of it being from the perspective of a human, but not in terms of what I'm willing to look at. Even if we "have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals" (which we do^), we _try_ to. Humans try to understand what impact they're having on other animals. Animals other than humans don't. ^ Google search for "animal feeling studies" https://www.google.com/search?q=animal%20feeling%20studies https://www.google.com/search?q=animal%20feeling%20studies