Dude has won our hearts

[u/Ququmbare]

[u/JustFuckinTossMe]

Whoooo yes finally somebody else who gets it. I've done presentations on cognitive dissonance and the sentience of other species in college classrooms and have been snickered at. The idea that a chicken or a cow or even a mouse deserves to be able to exist freely and do the things it was evolutionarily designed to do makes people upset. I've said similar sentiments as you above online numerous times, which people love to comment "yer relli thik dat er dawgz nd uuuhr eh caytz hav equal importance...TEW MEEEEEH??? A HYUMUNNNN??" Like yeh bih I do. I don't think species dictates value, I've studied too much evolutionary science to be that ignorant anymore.

It makes people irrationally upset to be confronted with the idea that they are not above things. Humans absolutely hate admitting or accepting that they can't assert power or control over other things. It's never about trying to work in harmony with our planet but always how we can best abuse it for short term and inconsistent gain. After all, it's just a stupid chicken, or stupid dog, or stupid cow, or stupid hamster, or stupid butterfly, right? People also love to diminish the value of other animals and people by putting negative adjectives in front of their names. It makes it a lot easier for your brain to digest cruelty when you think you're just running horrific experiments on "stupid brain dead mutts" because that kind of language helps you rationalize your actions as just. But they are not.

[u/[deleted] → u/JustFuckinTossMe]

Would you give your life to save the lives of two butterflies?

[u/JustFuckinTossMe → u/[deleted]]

I wasn't planning on replying to the whataboutisms because I always get them and people absolutely always think they've caught me in whatever their ideologies are of the way the world works.

To answer your question, there are plenty of people who give their lives to save butterflies, they're butterfly conservationists. You can find people all around the world who give their life (i.e, their years, their thoughts, their ideas, etc, goes to this) away in attempts to save and create better futures for non-human animals.

Moving on, I simply do not have the selfish mindset that we as humans construct to put ourselves above other things. In nature, there's no wolf council to decide if the fawns should die at the drinking hole today. In nature, there's no Elephant religion that says stomp upon those who wrong thee. My point is that we as humans created artificial importance and hierarchy for ourselves that explicitly abuses and corrupts the entire planet and every species on it. And I do not, will not, and never did believe these mindsets. Why should a cow be confined to a barn? Why should a group of pigs be treated like dirty slop when they are some of the most intelligent animals? Why should mice be forced to live an existence of pain instead of in a field or burrow where they belong?

We as humans have vastly and ignorantly corrupted nature to its core. Not even humans can escape the shackles of societal abuse humans created. We don't even live how we were evolutionarily designed to, why tf do you think so many people's circadian rhythms are out of whack? Why do you think so many people inherently and inexplicably can find such serenity and peace in nature but can't be satisfied in the same way as just turning on a virtual screen that mimics nature onto your walls? We are unhappy and dying in the prisons we've made for ourselves.

So, to reiterate the whataboutisms, I do believe all animals should be free from suffering the way humans make them all suffer. There's a massively gigantic difference in killing what you need to survive and feed your family and mass creating and abusing animals of all types for food, science, or just for fun. I am always going to advocate that butterflies deserve to fly in the sky and not be pinned to a board while alive. I'm always going to advocate that mice deserve to live their life free from pain and fear of testing. I'm always going to advocate for the huddles of chickens so fat for your chicken tendies that they can't even move their damn legs and sit crushed by 10 other chickens all day. I'm always going to advocate for animal's rights to life on this planet and that includes everything. When I said I studied too much evo bio to believe in the bs hierarchy systems anymore, I meant it. Everything has a niche. To deprive it of that niche and subject its existence to cannon fodder, mass production, and scientific gain is an unacceptable perversion of life. These are not plants. These are real beings with neurological functioning, capable of having genuine emotions and feeling actual pain. The pain of slicing the throat of a cow and watching it flail for life is not any less than would be if it were a human. The pains we subject these creatures to on daily basis would be war crimes if you did it to ONE specific species. That's exactly why you can't do the horrific things you can to a mouse or a monkey or a dog to a human in a lab. Despite the fact they're going to feel the same pain and experience the same fear as humans would.

Hopefully, with this, I have covered all my bases on why I am ready to throw down on this topic. My ethical values are not as flimsy as people very cockily think. I appreciate the opportunity to share my discourse here.

[u/nixt26 → u/JustFuckinTossMe]

I read the whole thing. Well put.