If your circle of empathy includes fruit flies, shrink and prune until it no longer does.
replyHow small should my circle of empathy be? Obviously humans are included, or ...?
replyOnly shareholder bank accounts and your own.
replyWith 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) :-)
replyEver met a Jain?
replyAFAIK, Jains consume diary products.
replyYou 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.
replyA 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.
1. Artificial insemination without consent
2. Birth and all of its pain and potential complications
3. Removal of offspring as early as possible to repeat steps 1 and 2 and so prolong lactation
4. Mastitis
replyAll of these result in suffering much worse than egg harvesting imo. Reluctant dairy eater btw
If we are really into an ethics discussion, enslaving a species to drink milk meant for their newborns would be an issue.
replyAre you seriously suggesting that we should have empathy for ... fruit flies? Speechless
replyWhy would you choose not to have empathy for a living creature?
replyBecause lice are also living creatures. And I have no empathy for them, and hopefully never will.
replyLice 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
replyCounterexample: Humans are lice to the ecosystem of Earth, and we choose to be that way.
replyI do, and I hopefully will eventually get to leeches too.
replyWhy not ? Do you think that in the grand scheme of the universe you are more important than a fruit fly ?
replyI'd hope so! The way that a planet is more important than a snowball.
replyDepends a great deal on the planet and the snowball, doesn’t it?
replyBut, 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.