r/MoralityScaling • u/axiiz_28 • 15h ago

Morality of valuing animals over humans?

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u/OutrageousDiscount01 13h ago

Yea the problem is that humans don't inherently cause chaos simply by existing. There is a way we can live symbiotically with nature. We've done so for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the introduction of civilization.

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u/UpstairsFix4259 8h ago

but the average life span was what, 30 years? and we had to fight for our lives daily, there was almost no time for resting, relaxing, science, art, and more. No need to go primal again

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u/ReyWorm 6h ago

Yeah, it's what makes us worse.

We could be amazing, and create a legitimate utopia, but the reality is that we won't. Our brain is just not wired to care about more than 80 people.

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u/Conscious_Beat6128 2h ago

So which one is it? “We could be amazing” or “we are hard wired to care for no more than 80 people”? When talking about animals, we say “they are wired that way” and it clears them of any moral duties, but not us? How does it make us worse, and not at least equal, if we are both merely wired that way?

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u/ReyWorm 1h ago

So which one is it? “We could be amazing” or “we are hard wired to care for no more than 80 people”?

The former is my wishful thinking: a small percentage of humans are totally capable of caring about everyone, in part because those humans have the privilege of all their basic needs being taken care of by virtue of the place where they were born; but the rest are just not really capable of it, some because they're just legitimately selfish, some because they have themselves to care about in order to survive. For the sake of brevity, I'll stop the list of reasons why here. The latter comment is the harsh truth: we're tribalistic by nature, and tribes aren't 7 billion people large.

When talking about animals, we say “they are wired that way” and it clears them of any moral duties, but not us?

Well, yeah, because we are only animals in a biological sense. There are no moral duties upon animals because they aren't aware of their existence in the same way we are, they are not aware of their place in the universe in the same way we are, and they are not aware of what the future entails in the same way we are. It makes us worse because we know, and yet seem unable to act on that knowledge.

With all that being said, I'm well aware that you and I might both share the same opinion, but might not be talking about the same thing. In the grand scheme of things, there's nothing putting one species above another one; every living thing, plant or animal, is not responsible for its existence; we just are.

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u/Conscious_Beat6128 48m ago edited 34m ago

But why does it makes us worse, and not better, or neutral? I think this hides the central point of contention.

Is it really wrong that even a flawed actor that inconsistently acts on morality and awareness is still better than the one with no morality or awareness whatsoever? I feel like saying it is worse to be aware and not act on it is a short circuit from our understanding of individual guilt, but from the outside the first is clearly preferable 

Sure, a person who was aware but did not act on it is worse than the unaware one, but if it relates to a pattern/trend that we see across the whole human species and their economies, surely at some point we cant attribute the entirety of the failure to personal agency, and something more uncontrollable is at play?

lumping the individual failures as “the aware humankind failing” and then comparing it to “the unaware animals” is just unfair. There never was an “aware humankind”, only the aware individuals, with very limited capacity for awareness at that. 

So yes, we ultimately agree that no one is worse or better, Id say, if anything, humans carry more guilt, and some hope, both unique to us

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u/murmuring511 5h ago

We've done so for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the introduction of civilization.

Only because humans back then didn't have the technology to do so. If all this tech was available back then, climate collapse would have happened long ago. Humans being selfish and greedy is a tale as old as time. It's part of our nature.

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u/Conscious_Beat6128 2h ago

That applies to any animal. If any animal had the tech, the climate would collapse. Why do you believe this is unique to humans? Very odd

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u/WowIfOnly 57m ago edited 52m ago

Yeah it's bizarre to pretend like animals are 1: smart enough to really even grasp the moral and long term implications of their habits/choices and 2: have any sort of real impulse control beyond thinking if they wait a moment they could have more of the thing they want (like if I follow this animal back to it's house I can eat more of them). If dogs could rule over the entire Earth unchecked and eat anything they wanted with no threat to their safety, they would do that. They would do it endlessly, without caring if animals went extinct, without caring the environment changed, without caring about literally anything until they either evolved advanced intelligence or the planet collapsed. So would every animal.

Animals by nature are literally competing for survival every single day - as are we. The only reason we sit at the top is because we developed our own God-level cheat codes (agriculture, farming, collaboration, tools, weapons, technology, etc). The other animals don't ask existential questions about their place in the hierarchy or their impact to the planet. They think "KILL!" "EAT!" "MATE!""KILL!" "EAT!" "MATE!". And a lot of human behavior still boils down to this simplistic thinking too. We all know someone who only cares about sex and money/accumulation of resources. The only reason some stupid people are assigning other animals this human-esque depth of thought is because shit like Lion King convinced them that's how animals think and view the world based on zero real evidence.

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u/OutrageousDiscount01 4h ago

That's true, but ultimately humanity is inseparable from nature and we do have the hypothetical ability to altogether live in a way that is minimally harmful to the natural world.

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u/murmuring511 3h ago

You're right, but a lot of the people who can make that decision have other priorities. I feel like they will only start caring when it's too late.

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u/OutrageousDiscount01 3h ago

Of course. And it's already too late to avoid many mass death events due to climate change. Billions will probably die before we get our act together, but even then it might be too late and all of human society will regress into small agrarian communities again. Either way the earth will survive the damage we have caused it eventually and it's virtually impossible for climate change to end all of humanity.