Can a beetle love? Can a beetle fear for it's future? Can a beetle know tragedy, joy, sadness, despair or triumph?
No.
A beetle's life is virtually worthless. What little brain they have is mostly geared towards automatic functions. A beetle's life is about finding food, avoiding predators, and reproducing.
A beetle's life is short, and without meaning - it is an almost entirely mindless creature that can only obey the neurological programming present within its brain as dictated by its genes.
What can a human accomplish? A human being can create meaning for their lives, a human being can invent, explore, write, pontificate and love. Not all humans will do that, but they are at least capable of doing it.
A human being can look at the stars themselves and contemplate the vast distances, the intense inferno created by the process of nuclear fusion resulting in all the higher elements being created - a human mind can comprehend and understand all of that - understand its own evolution, understand its own place in the universe, understand beauty and despair.
A beetle cannot.
They aren't human. Not even close. What I value in this world are human values - values of compassion and creativity. A beetle possesses and indeed, cannot possess, any of those values. A beetle is nothing more than a biological automaton. Yes, they can probably feel pain to some degree, they do have nerves - so we should not needless torture them or make them suffer.
But if we must experiment on them in order to further the knowledge and capability of the human species, so be it.
Humanity is the only thing in the known universe worth saving. No other creature is capable of science, no other creature is capable of making more of its life than what it was born with. Only we can. Only we have the potential to travel to the stars or perceive the inner workings of the universe. Only we have history and self-awareness of that history. We are the only fragment of life that truly comprehends itself in terms of its evolution and biological workings. We are the ultimate expression of self-awareness. We are literally the mind of the universe, because without us, what else is there?
Can a chimpanzee listen to a piece of music by Bach or Strauss and understand it and enjoy it? Can a cat comprehend the way peptide bonds form between amino acids to create proteins? Can a rat fully realize the history of its own species and its destiny? No. They cannot.
Only humans can. Thus, we have the highest priority. I would kill 1000 animals to save one human life. I would experiment and use the tissues of hundreds of mice to understand more about the workings of a disease or understand more about the process of mammalian development.
I have my priorities straight. I haven't been watching disney films and gotten the idea that anthropomorphic lions and crabs and deer somehow reflect reality.
Animals are just as vicious and cruel as humanity could ever be. What limits their capacity for violence isn't kindness, but their own stupidity. Give cats and dogs guns and explosives and knowledge to use them, and they'd kill themselves five times over by breakfast. Animals are not any more "nicer" than humans - they're just far more simple minded.
I value intelligence, creativity, science, mathematics, music and logic. Animals are not capable of these things. The things I love, the things I enjoy, are only created by humans. Why shouldn't I value humans more than anything else?
Of course, I did a few ecology courses when I was an undergrad, so I am aware how we (currently) need other species in order to survive. It's why I am an environmentalist (within reason). We need to preserve the planet to preserve us - nature is our resource generator, and the various species are parts of that resource generator, so we should take care of it.
But we take care of it to save humanity. The universe is inherently meaningless - only a sufficiently advanced intelligence can create meaning. As the only sufficiently advanced intelligence in the known universe, we are currently the only species capable of creating meaning. Without us, everything else has no meaning, because there would be no one to give it meaning.
We call a forest beautiful. It cannot call itself beautiful. We look at a waterfall and find joy in it. It itself does not - how can it? It's a waterfall! It doesn't have a brain! We survey the amazon rainforest and are delighted by the complex interactions of its many species. But the animals and insects and plants cannot themselves understand that complexity or admire it.
People make the mistake of assuming that human values are somehow "imbedded" in the universe. They aren't. The universe has no values. The values we love, come FROM US AND US ALONE. Without humanity, the concept of beauty, love, kindness or friendship, would vanish.
Thus, we are the most important species. And if anyone says otherwise, just as them this "why aren't animals fighting for their own rights? Why do only humans stick up for animal rights? Oh right, because they don't have the concept of rights in the first place".
No.
A beetle's life is virtually worthless. What little brain they have is mostly geared towards automatic functions. A beetle's life is about finding food, avoiding predators, and reproducing.
A beetle's life is short, and without meaning - it is an almost entirely mindless creature that can only obey the neurological programming present within its brain as dictated by its genes.
What can a human accomplish? A human being can create meaning for their lives, a human being can invent, explore, write, pontificate and love. Not all humans will do that, but they are at least capable of doing it.
A human being can look at the stars themselves and contemplate the vast distances, the intense inferno created by the process of nuclear fusion resulting in all the higher elements being created - a human mind can comprehend and understand all of that - understand its own evolution, understand its own place in the universe, understand beauty and despair.
A beetle cannot.
They aren't human. Not even close. What I value in this world are human values - values of compassion and creativity. A beetle possesses and indeed, cannot possess, any of those values. A beetle is nothing more than a biological automaton. Yes, they can probably feel pain to some degree, they do have nerves - so we should not needless torture them or make them suffer.
But if we must experiment on them in order to further the knowledge and capability of the human species, so be it.
Humanity is the only thing in the known universe worth saving. No other creature is capable of science, no other creature is capable of making more of its life than what it was born with. Only we can. Only we have the potential to travel to the stars or perceive the inner workings of the universe. Only we have history and self-awareness of that history. We are the only fragment of life that truly comprehends itself in terms of its evolution and biological workings. We are the ultimate expression of self-awareness. We are literally the mind of the universe, because without us, what else is there?
Can a chimpanzee listen to a piece of music by Bach or Strauss and understand it and enjoy it? Can a cat comprehend the way peptide bonds form between amino acids to create proteins? Can a rat fully realize the history of its own species and its destiny? No. They cannot.
Only humans can. Thus, we have the highest priority. I would kill 1000 animals to save one human life. I would experiment and use the tissues of hundreds of mice to understand more about the workings of a disease or understand more about the process of mammalian development.
I have my priorities straight. I haven't been watching disney films and gotten the idea that anthropomorphic lions and crabs and deer somehow reflect reality.
Animals are just as vicious and cruel as humanity could ever be. What limits their capacity for violence isn't kindness, but their own stupidity. Give cats and dogs guns and explosives and knowledge to use them, and they'd kill themselves five times over by breakfast. Animals are not any more "nicer" than humans - they're just far more simple minded.
I value intelligence, creativity, science, mathematics, music and logic. Animals are not capable of these things. The things I love, the things I enjoy, are only created by humans. Why shouldn't I value humans more than anything else?
Of course, I did a few ecology courses when I was an undergrad, so I am aware how we (currently) need other species in order to survive. It's why I am an environmentalist (within reason). We need to preserve the planet to preserve us - nature is our resource generator, and the various species are parts of that resource generator, so we should take care of it.
But we take care of it to save humanity. The universe is inherently meaningless - only a sufficiently advanced intelligence can create meaning. As the only sufficiently advanced intelligence in the known universe, we are currently the only species capable of creating meaning. Without us, everything else has no meaning, because there would be no one to give it meaning.
We call a forest beautiful. It cannot call itself beautiful. We look at a waterfall and find joy in it. It itself does not - how can it? It's a waterfall! It doesn't have a brain! We survey the amazon rainforest and are delighted by the complex interactions of its many species. But the animals and insects and plants cannot themselves understand that complexity or admire it.
People make the mistake of assuming that human values are somehow "imbedded" in the universe. They aren't. The universe has no values. The values we love, come FROM US AND US ALONE. Without humanity, the concept of beauty, love, kindness or friendship, would vanish.
Thus, we are the most important species. And if anyone says otherwise, just as them this "why aren't animals fighting for their own rights? Why do only humans stick up for animal rights? Oh right, because they don't have the concept of rights in the first place".
