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What is natural? There's animals that dig into other animals brains and eat them slowly. There's animals that paralyze their victims and eat them slowly. There's parasites that infect their host and force them to get eaten by controlling them and removing their fear center. There's animals that eat their own young. There animals that only eat the young of others.
This notion that nature isn't cruel and unforgiving is just a fairytale.
The amazing thing about humans is that we can actually feel compassion for others, even other species and strive to reduce their suffering as much as possible. I'm really getting tired of people being so negative all the damn time.
Our food production needs to do better and be better but it will only do so because of us, not because we "listen to nature" or whether else people love to spew out trying to sound enlightened.
What is natural?
There are certain ecological balances that develop over time, as species fill individual niches and create symbiotic bonds. The capacity for the given biome to support life is predicated on a certain cyclical exchange. And when that cycle is broken, you typically see a die-off caused by the imbalances.
This notion that nature isn’t cruel and unforgiving is just a fairytale.
The question isn't of cruelty but sustainability. The mouse eats the corn. The snake eats the mouse. The bird eats the snake. The parasite eats the bird. The corn eats the corpses.
But if you go through with a weed wacker and kill all the snakes, you get population spikes on one end of the food chain and collapses on others, in a way that ultimately reduces the amount of life the area can support.
We saw this across the American Great Plains with the extermination of buffaloes and passenger pigeons. What was once lush and bountiful became barren and inhospitable, as industrial scale destruction of natural resources rendered territory uninhabitable. Reckless industrial development produces waste faster than the natural ecological conditions can process it. And this same development siphons off the natural bounty faster than it can be replaced.
Our food production needs to do better and be better but it will only do so because of us, not because we “listen to nature”
If we do not understand why certain natural cycles exist or how certain minerals and molecules are naturally derived and regenerated or what energy sources are available and at what rates, we risk exhausting the existing biological landscape and destroying the capacity for a particular piece of territory to sustain new life in future generations.
This is as simple as looking at the Great Lakes or the Ogallala Aquifer or the Mississippi River and asking "Is there going to be enough water in these places in another 100 years to maintain our productive rate of agricultural development?" And at the current rate we're exhausting these resources, the answer is no.
If we hadn't brought in so many thirsty commercial scale animal and plant species or attempted to generate such large surpluses that we could export them overseas at enormous profits or raised the temperature of the Earth such that we evaporated off too much surface water, we would not be in this situation.
trying to sound enlightened
You don't need to be a guru to look at the Earth and look at Mars, then say to yourself "Maybe we keep the Earth-style ecology going a little longer".
Well put.
I was directly responding to the previous commenter saying that it's natural to hunt and eat. Our current system of industrial farming of animals is inhumane for both animals and farmers. Nature might be unforgiving and metal, but we have brought the unnecessary torture of sentient animals to unholy levels.
That's what I meant with my comment.
Plenty of animals kill just for fun and will torture their prey for hours. And just because something is inhumane, doesn't make it unnatural. If anything, it's humane practices that are unnatural.
No other species has built killing factories that torture and kill billions of animals per day. It's not even comparable.
I use the word "humane" in the sense of "you would mot subject humans to it".
My brother in Christ I take it you haven't met ants and chimpanzees have you?
Oh, right, how could I forget the factory farms that ants build where they pack thousands of aphyds in tiny cubicles where they can't even move, feed them unhealthy diets to make them grow at unhealthy speeds to the point their bones break, and then finally kill the for meat. /s
Nothing else in nature compares to our animal torture industry.
My brother in Christ you know nothing of the ant wars.
Neither of the chimpanzee wars
Learn a bit, it won't kill you
We're not talking about war, that's a whole other topic. Ants don't have war for pleasure. They have war to protect or expand their territory. We torture animals for pleasure. I know trying to call me ignorant makes you feel a little better but it doesn't make you correct.
I was directly responding to the previous commenter saying that it's natural to hunt and eat.
I didn't say about hunting either, as it isn't relevant to context of Irwin's quote
it's not torture.
Making something sit in one spot in a cage for their entire life to the point where they couldn't move even if they wanted to isn't torture?
Do you also think solitary confinement in prison is natural?
in torture, the pain and discomfort is the point. prison is an excellent example of torture. by contrast, I think everyone agrees that we would prefer if no pain or discomfort were part of farming animals. this is probably especially true for the people actually doing the farming and slaughtering. in this case, the pain and discomfort are only incidental. it's not torture.
In torture, the goal is typically something other than the pain in itself.
if there were no pain or discomfort, it wouldn't be torture.
Everyone agrees? Really? So is humanity just collectively ignoring the alternatives? How is it possible that "everyone agrees" that you prefer no torture and pain, but the vast majority of people chose to engage in that practice? How can you live like that?
if you know a way to raise animals for products at the current scale and price without any pain or discomfort, you should let us know.
Well, you don't. But a good first step is scaling wayyy down. Factory farming is a response to public demand for meat.
Factory farming is a response to public demand for meat.
I think this is a fiction.
So if you chain someone up and don't intentionally dislocate any joints, and make them sit there for 10 years like that, it's not torture?
What is it, collateral damage?
the question is why am I chaining them. I wouldn't do this because I think it is immoral to chain people up, but I don't need to invoke the spectre of torture to believe it's wrong.
If you're going to chain someone to the same spot for their entire life your intentions don't mean anything. Your act of doing it is what makes it torture.
torture is a specific thing. there may be a medical reason to do it. if I cut off your foot, that might be a form of torture, but if I do it because it's dangerous or mangled, it's a mercy. the intent matters. incidental pain is not torture.