Quote:
Originally Posted by Dent
The total amount of suffering in the world is (maybe) far less now than it was a hundred years ago.
loss of wildlife populations vs factory farming.
World facing first mass extinction since the dinosaurs as wildlife populations plunge by 67 per cent in 50 years | The Independent
"wildlife populations plunge by 67 per cent in 50 years"
"They found that between 1970 and 2012, the average decline in population was 58 per cent. "
Depression is something that only happens in social animals, and factory farmed animals probably spend almost all their time in a negative state whereas wild animals are probably only negative most of the time.
Still if you do the numbers the devastation that humans are causing are reducing suffering in the wild.
Insect populations are another thing.. I don't think there's much data on insect populations now vs 100 years ago, and as you recognise they probably don't have the same level of mental anguish.
It's possible that even though they don't have the same "in your head" suffering, the "escape from the fire" suffering is much more intense than humans.
Humans can rationalise going to the dentists, having an injection or working out because they can see into the future and anticipate that it's going to be a good thing for their future self, animals that don't have our foresight ability might experience massively more distress.
just some thoughts..
Also there are shitloads of people working on human suffering, animal suffering is neglected and it's not clear that you can't do both or even that helping animals will make us friendlier and want to help humans more too, they're not mutually exclusive.
At a guess I think maybe 99.99999% of suffering on earth doesn't occur in humans.. this number is kinda pulled out of my arse though. If Brian is right it's far more, if insects can feel pain but it doesn't amount to suffering it's a fair bit less. then bacteria sperm and atoms and so on, it's a tough one. |
A lot of this is speculation and still glossing over the fact of intense and extant human suffering. Even if the claim is true that 100 years ago human suffering was less (which i'm curious about given global population growth), there is still clearly much more human suffering to reduce.
There may be a lot of people working on human suffering, but not enough, clearly. Everyone you know, possibly even yourself, are suffering from many things right now.
This is coming from a
practical point of view; as in; dealing with the world as it currently is. You can't just gloss over the obvious fact that human suffering simply perpetuates more suffering. The kids that put cats in a bag and set them on fire don't exactly have the best homelife; almost all human cruelty has it's sources of not being taught with compassionate love and care the value of Life and empathy towards animals.
Until we find a way to continue to reduce this on a massive scale, people simply will not care about wild animal suffering in Nature until their own personal sufferings are gone. Until they can reach a new level of understanding and healing in their personal lives. They don't have time. They have lives to live. Children to feed. Work to do. Oh and my back pain...up now my parents are dead...wow how the time flies...what's that you say about wild animal suffering?
I think that doing all this stuff from a thought experiment for some kind of hyper-futuristic utopia where human beings have an absolute mastery over Nature and can be in complete control of the ambient suffering level by some form of omnipresent technology is interesting... but not going to get very far in our lifetime.
Do you know why perhaps 99.99999% of suffering on Earth doesn't occur in humans? Because it happens away from where humans are. To even begin to think about the practical, real-world application (presumably the endgame for this argument) into the real world, it would take not only world-peace, but pretty much every single human being on the planet would have to achieve Buddha-level consciousness in order to not only be aware of but have empathy for the smallest and most disgusting insects that are eating each other 10 feet underground right now.
How are you planning on feeding all of those insects and animals without causing other beings sufferings?
The time you spend here on Nubblies could be spent out saving banana slugs from getting run over on the hill near where I live.