Poll: Should our species be exempt from culling?

[TiefBlau]

Stop trying to make me give a shit about animals.

 

[Valkyrie101]

Human wellbeing > planet's wellbeing.

The planet is, ultimately, irrelevant. Humanity is the only thing that matters, Earth is just a temporary home base for us. You call us disgusting for destroying the environment, but what's the point of the environment without us?

The audacity of this train of thought that humanity is the focal point of existence is the reason why some would elect to "cull" the human species. Honestly, it'd be best if humanity as a whole was extinguished, but striving towards such a goal would prove futile and counterproductive to my own existence. I lack an answer to solve the problem that is humanity, but it certainly is troubling. I would prefer if you would not add to my dismay by making such dismal statements.

Get rid of humanity and replace it with what? Trees? Flowers? What's the point of existence without sentient civilization?

Also, interesting fact: Earth is doomed. It will take a few billion years, but sooner or later the Sun is going to blow up and eat this planet. The only hope for life, long term, is humanity.

 

[Titan Buttons]

World War 3 is the answer to that problem.

I actually agree with you there. At least it's 'justified' as opposed to just say nuking a densely populated country.

I have to agree with you there, I don't think murder is right, especially just because people have unwanted traits or cos there are too many in one place. Yahtzee best explains this in his Black Ops review

 

[Hookman]

You're right, we should!
To the fallout bunkers!!!

 

[o_O]

Sure, if you can answer one question of mine:

Why the fuck should you, your family, or anyone you care about be spared? Think you or they aren't monsters? Ha.

Also, what is the primary directive of life? To live. Good luck getting people to voluntarily kill themselves. Oh, wait, you want to wield that power yourself and choose who lives or dies, right?

Megalomaniac. You border on sociopathic.

 

[Altorin]

As for humans... well, as obstinate as people can sometimes be, you can still reason with them. You can't reason with an entire species of animal.

However, some countries have overpopulation problems. It's not that I'd ever consider culling, but let's say you and I were entities entirely detached form the human race, with no emotional ties to humans greater than what we feel to elephants or gophers: Wouldn't we think some places, the human race needed culling?

If we were aliens that looked on humans like animals? sure. They'd kill us all, take our resources and fly away back out into space looking for the next planet to mug. But humans culling other humans? Who the fuck gave them the right to decide that someone else should die? Just because their country has fewer people? what sort of fucking sense does that make.

 

[Murray Whitwell]

Human wellbeing > planet's wellbeing.

The planet is, ultimately, irrelevant. Humanity is the only thing that matters, Earth is just a temporary home base for us. You call us disgusting for destroying the environment, but what's the point of the environment without us?

It's point is to foster life, and we're not the only species appreciative of the lives we're given. There are millions of species on the planet, and we're ruining it for all of them

Colonize other planetary bodies. Problem solved.

And the whole disgusting cycle starts all over again. It's not enough for you that we're already destroying our native planet?

 

[Daverson]

We recycle a lot of things. We can recycle people too. Or at least, put some of them to better, albeit somewhat more lethal, use.

Transplant organs, test subjects, medical cadavers and even food. These are things we need, roles that could easily be assigned to some of the less useful elements of our society.

It wouldn't be hard to implement in a capitalist system, either, where the usefulness of someone is directly proportional to their income. Just have people buy their lives on, say, their 40th Birthday (the point they'd be less useful for manual labour), if they can't afford to buy themselves, they can be recycled.

Some people would say being owned by the state for the first 40 years of your life is slavery. But let's face it, you already are owned by your state. You pay taxes, don't you?

 

[Bobzer77]

I have to say that most of you guys are sick fucks.

If you want to "cull" the human population, there is something seriously wrong with you.

If you are worried about population growth, chill the fuck out, we aren't anywhere near the predicted limit of the population the earth can sustain and by the time we get there there will be a bunch of new technology that pushes that limit even further.

If you are up for limiting reproduction or preventing overpopulation or the destruction of the human race do us and your ideology a favour and fucking kill yourselves.

 

[GLo Jones]

In all that time, we are the only species to be aiding in the planets destruction.

Define 'destruction'.

Nothing is being lost, simply being changed. Every animal has an effect on it's environment, we're simply the most influential. I'm pretty sure that if lions could eat the o-zone at the expense of our atmosphere, they wouldn't give a damn about anyone else.

 

[rabidmidget]

hmm, a mass human culling, when has that happened before? Oh that's right in [statement censored to prevent someone calling "Godwin's Law"].

Slowing down population growth is fine, but to actually kill people to lower the population is just sick, either you're just trying to look edgy or you're a moral vacuum.

 

[viranimus]

Ok, im not one for hippy bullshit, but Im sorry, this is EXACTLY what the planet needs. Ok perhaps not a proactive culling, but a viable agreed upon method of limiting population growth and a method of forcibly moving that number down with a short period of time (like 3 generations) when the need should arise.

Its true, no other species purposely curtails its own population growth, but there is a huge difference. We are THE apex predator on the planet. Competitor wise we have nothing that will cut our population numbers under the normal laws of the wild. So because we dont we NEED something to cut our numbers down.

Our largest modern problems right now would evaporate if the worlds population were cut in half. Environmental, national, Economical. We need to do this, for the good of the species, and to help ensure our future long enough until colonization can begin.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Nothing is being lost, simply being changed. Every animal has an effect on it's environment, we're simply the most influential. I'm pretty sure that if lions could eat the o-zone at the expense of our atmosphere, they wouldn't give a damn about anyone else.

Eh, if it wasn't for plants, we'd not have accumulated large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere. Which gave rise to animals to eat the plants. Yeah, that's what you get for fucking up the atmosphere with your O2 emissions, stupid plants.

Also, interesting fact: Earth is doomed. It will take a few billion years, but sooner or later the Sun is going to blow up and eat this planet. The only hope for life, long term, is humanity.

It isn't, actually. The Earth won't actually be engulfed, though the surface isn't going to be much fun for most forms of life. In any case, if we are talking about massive amounts of time, nothing lives past (or even up to, really) heat death.

Neither am I, I'm sure there are other planets out there that are ripe to be colonized. I guess from your standpoint it makes sense, but why should you or I care? We will be long dead before that even occurs.

It also won't matter so much for the people on Earth at the time. It's unlikely that everyone migrates offworld, there will be people on the Earth stuck with the same problems, even if people are living elsewhere.

 

[babinro]

There are far better ways to deal with the major problem of overpopulation than inhumane culling.

Population control laws really need to be put in effect for the entire world (not just the massively populated countries).

Limit woman to 1 child only without heavy taxation or penalty. Exceptions would of course exist as someone giving birth to twins would have not be punished for something outside of their control.

Families looking for more children could either adopt or pay some extreme cost to mitigate the costs of human life's effect on global resources. I'd arbitrarily make it about the cost of buying a house; $300,000 upfront and increased taxation on the family for each year ongoing. This would prevent all by the upper-middle classes or higher from considering the option and having to choose adoption first.

 

[Seriphina]

O god do people not understand the question?! What is this!!
We cull dumb animals, not that I agree with culling by any means but they cant understand what they do or why they do it so they will detrpy crops and overpopulate certain areas.
You think going into a major city and just shooting down everyone in sight is the answer to the worlds problems? What if it was your city?
Excapist is mental today. Too many morbid crazy threads. Think you all had too much yesterday. <3

 

[The Lunatic]

No, hurdur the kill the humans.

 

[The Gnome King]

As the most destructive species on the planet, why are we not taking more drastic measures to lower our population? We're quick to kill thousands of animals for overpopulating, yet they aren't nearly as dangerous to the planet's wellbeing as we are.
Are we collectively too arrogant to see how disgusting our species really is?

I don't support killing people to control population; every single study done shows women, when better educated and obtaining access to birth control, will limit their family size willingly. It has happened in every 3rd world nation that has improved the living conditions and education of its women.

So I'd say that through a combination of education, birth control, improving the lot of life to poor countries... we could "cull" our population in a way that wouldn't be painful and in fact the opposite; it would be a Good and Kind thing to do.

I do place human life over animal life; and I'm a vegan myself. I don't go out of my way to kill or eat animals, but I do believe that humans have more intrinsic value. Humans have a capacity for emotional depth, pain, suffering, love, and joy that I believe animals might have to some degree, but not to the degree of humans and humanity in general.

In other words, while I'm a vegan, if I had to, say, kill off half the world's horse population to save one human life I'd do it in a heartbeat. I also support animal testing for medical reasons. (And I'm a vegan. How weird, huh? I'm just not one of those militant PETA vegans.)

 

[Daverson]

Some people would say being owned by the state for the first 40 years of your life is slavery. But let's face it, you already are owned by your state. You pay taxes, don't you?

Taxes that pay for the roads we drive on, the garbage collectors that clean up our streets, the police who protect us from internal threat, the army who protects us from external threat and other things.

The police are the example we want here. I'm glad you mentioned them.

So, let's say you're fed up with a particular law (such as, not being allowed to own a certain make of car), and decide you don't want the police, what do you do? Stop paying taxes? The thing is, the social contract isn't something you can just decide you don't want to be part of anymore, whether you like it or not, you have to obey the law. You have to pay taxes. You have[i/] to do these things, because if you don't, you'll be locked up. That's what society does to people who don't do what it wants.

You aren't owned by any one person in particular, but you're not a free man, not by a long stretch.

 

[b3nn3tt]

A cull simply would not work. Who decides who gets culled? And are they then exempt from the cull?

There's no feasible way to implement it, so the only way forward is to look into possible ways to make other planets livable, so that when the earth finally gets over-crowded there is an alternative place for people to live

 

[2718]

Why is it any more wrong than killing any other species?

We are sentient to a higher degree than animals.

That is the big point of my question. What makes us so special?

Our ability to reason.

For hundreds of millions of years, animals have lived harmoniously with the planet. In all that time, we are the only species to be aiding in the planets destruction. Why are we so deserving of existence but other more respectable species aren't?

No matter how beautiful something is, without intelligence to appreciate that beauty, it is absolutely pointless. No matter how "harmonious" and "natural" any biosphere might be, it has absolutely no point or purpose whatsoever. Without intelligence it's worthless. And as far as we know, humans are the only intelligent species in the entire universe. Until we prove otherwise, human survival is more important than ANYTHING else.

This is why I am in favour of enviromental destruction; if we make the Earth less habitable, we will be more motivated to get off this rock. If we spread to more worlds than one, our chances of survival are greatly increased. Staying on one world is incredibly dangerous, and the destruction of ONE biosphere is a very small price to pay for preserved intelligence. What I am saying is that it's worth sacrificing an infinite number of non-sentient species if it gives humans any increase in chance of survival, no matter how slight.