#pessimism

No, seriously, can someone tell me what is the point of all this?

People cry about the declining insect populations and how sad it is that they don't hear thousands of flies exploding to death against their car windshields anymore.

Why do they cry? What is so sad about extinction?

Is extinction sad for the animals? Certainly not. I doubt bug angels are weeping in bug purgatory that they never got to be splattered.

Did you know spiders inject their prey with enzymes that break down the tissues and then slurp up the dissolved innards? Do you have any idea how much it sucks to be a bug? To be digested alive? Have you ever even given it a thought?

Do bugs suffer? Of course they do. The very notion that they have no subjective experience of pain, because they have different brain structures from us, is suspect because - as stated by Asher A. Soryl, Andrew J. Moore, Philip J. Seddon & Mike R. King - accepting that sentience is an evolved trait resulting from the same selective pressures that drive the evolution of other trait within an organism, it is not clear that multiple configurations of neurons could not perform the same functions in relation to mental states in other animals. Mikhalevich & Powell (2020) state: The assumption that small brains are unlikely to support cognition or sentience likewise persists, despite growing evidence that arthropods have converged on cognitive functions comparable to those found in vertebrates. Exclusion of invertebrates with central nervous systems from bioethics and science policy is not justified by the current state of the evidence. Moral consistency dictates that the same standards of evidence and risk management that justify policy protections for vertebrates also support extending moral consideration to certain invertebrates. Invertebrate brains comprise upwards of 99% of the brains that exist on Earth. Cognitive theorists have begun to appreciate the intellectual rewards of studying invertebrate cognition and sentience. It is time that ethicists and policy makers do the same. According to Asher Soryl - Ph.D candidate researching the proposed discipline Welfare Biology at the University of Otago Bioethics Centre - even if we assume that there is only a 0.01 likelihood that terrestrial arthropods have a mental welfare, and if they do, that their moral standing is only 0.01 compared to the full moral standing of a regular mammal or bird the case for considering terrestrial arthropods is upwards of ten thousand times more than the case for considering mammals and birds. Snoozing on the pressing questions regarding their welfare is a recipe for moral catastrophe.

And it's not just bugs; It's the rodents and the fowl and the fish and the amphibians and the reptiles. The overwhelming majority of the animals of the overwhelming majority of species appear to have significant suffering but little (or no) happiness in their lives. They live painful lives and die painful deaths. Atlantic cod can lay from a few thousand to several million eggs. It entails that each time these animals reproduce, 6337.7529 years consisting of nothing but suffering is experienced. If this continues over an average human lifespan, the number of years of pure suffering generated would be 380,265.174. All this for a very specific species in a very specific area. And the rest of animal kind ain't much better. All animals reproduce in excess of the carrying capacity of their environments. Even the 'luckiest one', let's say, a wildebeest - who wasn't spawn camped by a cackle of hyenas while still inside the amniotic sac - doesn't have much to celebrate. Did you know predators often start to eat their prey from genital and anal regions? Like yea he got eaten alive balls first (maybe don't click this one), but at least he got to like. eat grass. yippee.

It's a fucking Ragnarök out there.

Life is mostly dying. Torturous dying. Why should such lives be lived? They should not. If a human baby would know such a short and painful life, we would abort the thing before they draw their first breath. Flush the slink down the toilet and say "it is only merciful". I'm telling you all, the whole animal kingdom is deserving of mercy. Why should anyone be condemned to live a life of absurd torment? Because it's the life they are expected to have? But what justification is there in thinking, that the life a creature is expected to have is therefore good by default? Could it not be, that a creature kind has been cursed with life that is wholly wretched? Nature is nothing but a mechanism that pushes genes into the future; there is no reason to believe that the lives a blind and mindless mechanism produces are automatically worth living.

People claim that reducing wild animal suffering is not possible, but plausible estimate is that the average person on Earth prevents ~1.4 * 10^7 insect-years by their environmental impact each year. So we already have. By accident.

Is nature good? If a system isn't good for those who live within it, then who is it good for? Who are you fighting for?

Yes no shit we need nature to maintain mankind. But doesn't it seem absurd to anyone, that quintillion sentient creatures should live in perpetual cloning-shredding-machine, for the sake of these ridiculous apes, who good portion of the time, use those natural resources only to spread further misery amongst themselves? There are approximately 1.4 billion insects for every person on Earth. And the average human lumbering about isn't even all that happy. I wake up 6:30 and prepare myself for servitude for our bourgeois overlords. I take a shower and wash away the sweat and bacterial gunk culminated all over my decaying body, thinking thoughts that lead to nowhere. And when I brush my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror and see pair of dead eyes staring, how could I seriously think that my vapid existence is worth all the torture it takes to maintain it? How could anyone? I already talked about how life itself is the Omelas, except way worse; billions of children tortured to death in filth and in darkness for every fuckass Bob.

Is anyone else disturbed by this? No? Just me? Ok.

What is the solution? IS there a solution?

Tumblrinas out here hallucinating the revolution is happening soon - that people will overthrow capitalism and establish some solarpunk hippie commune where people live "in harmony with nature" aww! Reblogging some shit like "maybe a system where for some thrive, many have to suffer is a bad system". What do you girlies think nature IS? Mother nature is a cruel bitch that feeds itself by cannibalizing its weakest babies. I can't stand this pseudo-spiritual hippie wankerism. If even the best world people can come up with (already propaganda by the Big Cheery) only benefits 0.0000001% of it's inhabitants, then a better world is not possible.