Do you think its wrong to step on bugs - why or why not?

[michael87cn]

you seem (overly) confident that you've done nothing wrong, but you ask total strangers if you were wrong or not.

I'm guessing the "five foot guy" (I'm guessing you're taller than him, and that's why you even mentioned his height at all....) actually did bother you.

IMO... you aren't wrong for killing the bug. you're wrong for being incredibly cocky about it.

imo.... attitude is everything. Kill a bug? Cool... fine. Have a reason for it. Oh, you just thought it was fun? Hmmm... may be a sign of psychological disorder.

Hey, brutally honest... yeah, but you asked!

 

[michael87cn]

It's a bug. There are literally millions where it came from. Hell creatures like us killing them all the time is expected that's why the reproduce so dramatically. There's nothing sadistic about killing a bug every now and then. Going around and wiping out nests though that's another matter.

litterally millions, huh? That's your logic? You realize there are billions of humans (way more than your millions of insects) and in actuallity, probably trillions of insects. If not more. I mean... ants alone.... there are so many.....

 

[EHKOS]

It highly depends. If it's not hurting anything and if it doesn't make me want to scream and run away, I'll let it live. Like a moth or one of those corner spiders. But if it's intruding in my home and it scares me or is a hazard to my health, then it's dead. Flys are a grey area, they piss me off, but they really haven't done anything, so I let them live, but not for lack of trying. If I kill it, I kill it, if it gets away and disappears, then I'm glad I didn't have to extinguish its shitty little life.

 

[Fijiman]

I don't really care. Plus, as a personal rule, if they have entered my house they have basically guaranteed death, especially if I catch them out in the open.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I don't kill. Any bugs inside my home will either be ignored or transplanted outside, depending on the season. This is pretty difficult because of how much I loathe bugs, but I won't intentionally harm another living creature. Of course sometimes I accidentally kill a bug or two, some of them are pretty fragile, and also mowing the lawn is certain to have some casualties, but as far as I see it that's unavoidable.

The way I see it is that if some advanced alien race were to come to Earth they might see us as nothing more than insects or vermin, and so I try to preserve all life in the hope that anything that finds us may also do the same. Also, bonus points if it turns out that we will have judgment passed on us based on the actions of our lives.

 

[jakeyjakey]

you seem (overly) confident that you've done nothing wrong, but you ask total strangers if you were wrong or not.

I'm guessing the "five foot guy" (I'm guessing you're taller than him, and that's why you even mentioned his height at all....) actually did bother you.

IMO... you aren't wrong for killing the bug. you're wrong for being incredibly cocky about it.

imo.... attitude is everything. Kill a bug? Cool... fine. Have a reason for it. Oh, you just thought it was fun? Hmmm... may be a sign of psychological disorder.

Hey, brutally honest... yeah, but you asked!

Yeah, his comment did sort of bother me. I know for a fact that he is hindu, but I don't know if that's why he got upset.

I don't think it's accurate to say I kill for fun. Spiders don't belong inside anyway. And in the grand scheme their lives are pretty insignificant. Hell, the smell of my feet could probably kill these guys.

 

[Batou667]

As a kid I used to run outside after it had finished raining and rescue worms and snails from the pavement so they wouldn't get trodden on. I'd still never kill a spider (I carefully catch them and put them outside) but wasps and houseflies are fair game - if I open a window and they don't get the hint and leave, then *splat*.

The deal breaker for me is whether the animal is likely to sting or is carrying germs. I've been ruthlessly killing house mice recently and I feel no remorse whatsoever. My family's health outweighs a mouse's right to crap over my kitchen work surfaces.

 

[UmberHulk]

I love bugs if I see an interesting looking one I'll usually pick it up to get a closer look. That being said I understand why some people don't like them I feel the same way about worms.

 

[DEAD34345]

Killing insects just for the fun of it is enough to make me instantly dislike someone. If there's any kind of valid reason, I can understand it, though I personally try to spare them when I can. Cruelty for the sake of cruelty however is just sad. Surely that's obvious if you have any kind of moral conscience?

Also, spiders are pretty smart. They've been proven to be capable of learning and adapting to different kinds of prey using trial and error, so I'd say they're far removed from "robots".

 

[Pinkamena]

They're lesser creatures, so I don't care much. There's no fun to get out of it, it's more of a chore. But morality is no factor in my decision to kill a bug.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I have a phobia of being touched by insects. ANY insects. If the most beautiful rare butterfly in the world landed on me, it'd end up a smear. And any insect that comes into my apartment will die; this is my territory and I will defend it. But I don't torment them; I kill them as quickly as possible.

And outside, where the insects belong? If they're no threat to me, then I just leave them alone.

And call me judgemental if you want, but deriving pleasure from causing needless cruelty to a living creature marks you as a bad person in my books.

 

[The Claudia]

"I don't think it's accurate to say I kill for fun. Spiders don't belong inside anyway. And in the grand scheme their lives are pretty insignificant. Hell, the smell of my feet could probably kill these guys."

What a ridiculous conclusion.

No bug has a concept of "inside" and to say they don't belong "inside" makes no sense. People don't naturally "belong inside" either. Where ever you are living, some kind of a habitat was destroyed for that place to be there, and as such I believe people have no right to complain (and especially no right to kill) when an insect is inside of their house.

To take a life for the no purpose IS wrong, no question. Who are you to think you understand just how much pain an insect does or does not feel? Why does the intelligence of a creature determine its right to live on Earth in the first place?

Just because there are trillions of insects and they easily replace any losses in their population is no reason to kill them. It's as if saying it would be okay to kill you and your entire family and friends because, ultimately, it wouldn't matter and the world would keep on spinning. In the "grand scheme of things" your life is equally insignificant.

Not only do you clearly have no understanding of life on this planet, and absolutely no empathy towards it, but yes-- I believe you are a bad person because of that.

 

[JimB]

If a bug is in my home, I kill it. I live in a trailer; I don't need insect life burrowing through the cheap plywood that forms my floor, my walls, my ceiling. The place is flimsy enough as is. Otherwise, I don't kill them because I have no reason to. No insect wants anything more to do with me than I want to do with it, and I am happy to live and let live.

"Evil" is a tricky word to define, but my best effort is, "Doing harm for a reason other than necessity." Harming another being for the pleasure it gives you to do so is, as best I can pin the word down, an evil thing to do.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Bugs don't really bother me too much, so I usually just leave them alone. The only exceptions being if the bug is somehow dangerous to me or my property, or if it's a mosquito because fuck mosquitoes.

That said, I'm arachnophobic. I'm terrified of spiders, and for most of my life I've killed them on sight. Over the past couple years though I've been trying to get over my fear by letting them go about their business. These days if I see a spider that's set up shop in a corner, I'll just leave it there, figuring that it's eating the more harmful (albeit less terrifying) insects in my home.

That said, I have three exceptions. The first is that the spider cannot come within three feet of my bed, my dresser, or my computer desk. The second is that the spider cannot touch me. The third is that the spider cannot be of the larger variety if it's in my home (the two largest spiders in my state are the Wolf Spider [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_spider] and the Grass Spider [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_spider]). If the spider fails any of these three things I will attempt to capture it and set it outside, but there's no promises they won't get squished (especially if they're Wolf or Grass Spiders).

 

[Mr Cwtchy]

Like other people have said, if it's in my home, it dies. With the rare exception of (small!)spiders that reside in the corners of rooms, since they generally mind their own business.

But anything that flies around, is noisy or scares the crap outta me(bees, wasps, daddy-long-legs, etc) dies.

The outside I generally regard as 'their turf', so I leave them be in those cases.

 

[Navvan]

The troubling thing about your scenerio isn't that you killed a spider. Its that you're actively taking some sort of sadistic pleasure from crushing a spider.

 

[Homosapian]

I guess it comes down to personal opinion.
I used to feel bad about killing them when I was young but nowadays I don't give it a second thought. Insects and spiders have been everywhere around here recently though because it's been an unusually long summer and are very annoying. I found a nest of spiders in my house the other day and sprayed fly killer right in there for atleast 30 seconds and as bad as it sounds, it was very cathartic and slightly entertaining to watch them flee.

 

[laggyteabag]

I wont kill a bug just for the hell of it, especially if it is a spider (They kill flies, and flies are way more irritating), but if an insect is pretty much intent on being irritating, then it is going down (ie, constantly buzzing, flying onto my screen). If I can let it out, then I will (usually for ladybirds, butterflies, moths, insects that fly against a window or spiders), but otherwise, it had better stop, or get ready to be dead.

 

[jakeyjakey]

Killing insects just for the fun of it is enough to make me instantly dislike someone. If there's any kind of valid reason, I can understand it, though I personally try to spare them when I can. Cruelty for the sake of cruelty however is just sad. Surely that's obvious if you have any kind of moral conscience?

Also, spiders are pretty smart. They've been proven to be capable of learning and adapting to different kinds of prey using trial and error, so I'd say they're far removed from "robots".

Cruelty? A spider isn't sentient; it has no self awareness. How can you be exhibit cruelty to something so mindless? Robots and AI are capable of learning and adapting through trial and error, so I don't think spiders are that far removed. They do what they're programmed by nature to do. They have no capacity for thinking. Same goes for ants; they're an extension of a colony.

And yeah, if a spider is crawling under my desk, it's in my space. Just because it doesn't know it's in my space doesn't mean it isn't in the space that I claimed for myself. Is it hurting me? No, but that doesn't mean I want some creepy crawly thing near me.. stepping on it solves the problem. It made the mistake of crawling too close to a giant foot.. that's life. Has nothing to do with enjoying cruelty or sadism.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

If I find one in my house, car, workplace, basically wherever I dwell on a regular basis...then sorry little guy, you're getting crushed. I promise to make it quick and painless

Bugs probably outnumber humans a billion to one, and they have most of the planet to themselves where they can roam free without getting crushed by people.