5 ms·
If your circle of empathy doesn’t include fruit flies, endeavor to expand your circular of empathy until it does. Goto 0.
by yawpitch 2mo ago
If your circle of empathy doesn’t include fruit flies, endeavor to expand your circular of empathy until it does.
Goto 0.
- sgt 2mo agoAre you seriously suggesting that we should have empathy for ... fruit flies? Speechless
- agilemonkey 2mo agoWhy not ? Do you think that in the grand scheme of the universe you are more important than a fruit fly ?
- sgt 2mo agoI'd hope so! The way that a planet is more important than a snowball.
- yawpitch 2mo agoDepends a great deal on the planet and the snowball, doesn’t it? But, that said, a mark of being more important than a lesser being would kind of be the virtue of still empathizing with that being, even if we assume there’s a hierarchy. And considering you and I are really just elaborate transport vessels for E. Coli and a lot of fungal spores, I’m not sure we should assume there’s a hierarchy.
- brookst 2mo agoImportant by what measure?
- invalidusernam3 2mo agoWhy would you choose not to have empathy for a living creature?
- shaky-carrousel 2mo agoBecause lice are also living creatures. And I have no empathy for them, and hopefully never will.
- yawpitch 2mo agoI do, and I hopefully will eventually get to leeches too.
- marliechiller 2mo agoLice have no choice in their lot in the universe. Do you think if they had intelligence the ability to choose their lot that they would choose their current one again? I doubt it personally. You can detest their mode of existence whilst still having empathy for them I think
- inigyou 2mo agoCounterexample: Humans are lice to the ecosystem of Earth, and we choose to be that way.
- ktm5j 2mo agoWhy would you have empathy for something that is literally incapable of things like empathy. Or any kind of emotion or thought. This is ridiculous guys, you might as well have empathy for a rock.
- yawpitch 2mo agoIt’s pretty easy to empathize with a rock, actually… they pretty much always feel stoned.
- internetter 2mo agowhere do you draw the line? (I sound like PETA). But it's a valid question. for instance, I have empathy for dolphins, and for elephants. I have empathy for cows, despite eating them. They are more smart than we give them credit for. I have empathy for a bee when I must kill it, and certainly for the broader colony and species. I don't think I have empathy for lice or ticks or mosquitoes, but where on earth is that line, and what does it represent?
- ivell 2mo agoWith this code, the only things we can eat would be fruits where we diligently plant its seeds (plants are also living things and fruits are the offerings in return we should sow its seeds) :-)
- yawpitch 2mo agoEver met a Jain?
- ivell 2mo agoAFAIK, Jains consume diary products.
- yawpitch 2mo agoYou tell me where the consumption of dairy products must result in harm to the cow. I grew up around small-scale, subsistence-level dairy farming, it doesn’t inherently require any more suffering than either egg-harvesting or apple-growing inherently do. A Jain doesn’t have to purchase milk from a factory farmer. And AFAIK even the most stringent vegans don’t brush insects from their path with every step, or avoid onions and carrots because it causes death.
- ivell 2mo agoIf we are really into an ethics discussion, enslaving a species to drink milk meant for their newborns would be an issue.
- yawpitch 2mo agoA well-nourished, well-protected, comfortable cow will produce much more milk than is required by its normal complement of newborns, and it will (and loudly) want rid of it. In my experience not milking a dairy cow of the excess would be considerably more cruel than milking it, even if you kept the milk exclusively for the newborns, and I’m pretty sure the cows I’ve seen milked in rural Nepal would agree.
- firtoz 2mo agoWhy?
- ACCount37 2mo agoIf your circle of empathy includes fruit flies, shrink and prune until it no longer does.