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Do You Deliberately Kill Living Beings?

 
  

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Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:17 / 01.06.05
Inspired by seeing my other half go batshit upon discovering ants in the kitchen and going haywire with a bat to squish them all, I pointed out that in the unlikely event that we had discovered a stray cat in there, no doubt the reaction would have been considerably different, which got me to wondering where that line is drawn and why...

Is it fur and the ease with which we are able to anthropomorphise behaviour? Where do folks get off on the 'These creatures are fair game, but these ones must be protected, the poor wee cute things' process?

So, do you kill sttuff? What, and why? Leading maybe to a discussion of whether killing other living beings is acceptable, what, when, why and how this may be so, and so on.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:56 / 01.06.05
For early simplicity's sake, lets ignore eating animals other people have killed.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:58 / 01.06.05
Sorry, I'm at work, and a bit fractured...'Kill' here being out of revulsion or for no apparent purpose other than because the other beings are in your space and you don't like them, or without a second thought.
 
 
mistress_swank
10:20 / 01.06.05
I tend to shoo large bugs or slugs out of my house, but small ones, like midges or ants, sometimes get the squish, depending on my mood. Most of the time, I feel pretty charitable and leave them for my friendly household spiders.

Charles, my bathroom spider, is getting pretty fat. I might need to trade him in for a less brawny spider soon, because my less-bug-friendly housemate will squish him. Charles has a great personality, though, very friendly to people. I'll be sorry to see him go, but really, he's gotten pretty big since I started opening the upstairs windows during the day.

Mosquitos always get the squish, though, because I get really bad welts from mosquito bites.

I can't understand why I behave differently towards certain types of bugs. I'm sure it's got something to do with Charlotte's Web, though.

Mice and rats I pretty much abhor, but would ask that they be trapped by a pro and removed to a field somewhere (although I know that trapped animals are normally killed).
 
 
sleazenation
10:39 / 01.06.05
Roaches get no mercy from me I'm affraid. Bigger animals are more of a problem to catch and I tend to release back into the wild.
 
 
Darumesten's second variety
12:09 / 01.06.05
I usually try no to kill insects and the like even if I dislike them, but sometimes they get too disturbing ( mosquitos when trying to sleep at night can be a real pain in your ass ) ..
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:25 / 01.06.05
Yes, that's true, mozzies are a nightmare...But then so is a cat that won't stop fucking in the back garden and making with the howling and yowling, but you wouldn't kill them would you?

Would you?
 
 
Darumesten's second variety
13:09 / 01.06.05
That's true, I wouldn't, like ( I think ) most of the people ..
 
 
Broomvondle
14:29 / 01.06.05
I used to hate Daddy Longlegs with a passion, but I try not to kill insects these days. There is just something horrible about the way they fly about randomly with their legs flailing everywhere like they have absolutely no bodily control, I just used to think "why do they exist? what is their purpose on this earth?".

The main reason I don't kill Cats for fun is because I empathise with them, they may not be able to think abstract thoughts but I'm pretty damn sure they feel fear and pain. Even if I didn't empathise with Cats and thought that they were mindless automotons I would assume they were someone else's property and treat them with respect.

I think the way animals are treated has a lot to do with the way a culture categorises them, I wonder if cultures where they eat dogs and cats have a word correspending to 'pet'? I think we tollerate certain animals based on the fact that we categorise them as useful, aesthetically pleasing and safe.
 
 
JOY NO WRY
14:31 / 01.06.05
I think I tend to justiy this sort of thing in terms of sentiency - e.g. any animal that my (admittedly limited) knowledge indicates has some sort of self-awareness can't be justifiably killed for convienience.

However, I'm also aware that practicality is a major issue. If I'm in an area rife with malaria I can't be carefully shooing mosquitoes out of my tent, for example. I think it may be because insects tend to assail us in such numbers that we find it much easier just to kill them. I think if I got up every morning and found twenty cats in my kitchen (Instead of the usual ants), my thoughts might begin to turn murderous after a while...
 
 
Tryphena Absent
15:16 / 01.06.05
I never purposefully kill anything. I once killed a moth and felt guilty for days afterwards.
 
 
Darumesten's second variety
15:31 / 01.06.05
I just used to think "why do they exist? what is their purpose on this earth?".

In fact, i've always thought something similar about insects .. doesn't feel like they were from other planet or something ? I think there was some X-Files episode about that ..
 
 
skolld
15:48 / 01.06.05
I think it could be based on our ability to get rid of the evidence.
If you kill a spider (which i try to avoid) you can just throw them in the trash, but what do you do with a dead cat?
I grew up in the country and knew quite a few people that had about the same mentality for insects or small mammals. groundhogs were just as killable as flies. I suspect in part because it's a lot easier to dispose of the body out in the middle of nowhere.
just a thought.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
16:11 / 01.06.05
hey keedz,

don't really kill much stuff since I was much wee-er, bugs and such.

wrt the cute vs the expendable - the notion of relative biomass seems to work with most people. They don't mind killing something with a week-long lifespan, with a bloated nerve cell working as a brain, as opposed to something that lives higher up the food chain, has much more biomass per individual, and lives longer.

personally, I used to throw the undersireables into spider webs - but I've even stopped doing that.

i think that protracted suppression may result in pointless vandalism. or excessive pouting.

ta
pablo
 
 
Broomvondle
16:34 / 01.06.05
as opposed to something that lives higher up the food chain

Mosquitoes drink human blood, that puts them higher on the food chain than people, maybe that’s why we feel okay killing them.
 
 
sleazenation
16:45 / 01.06.05
I'm also quite happy to see the exterminators in the event of an infestation of rats. I'd feel no shame about putting the poison down myself but exterminators tend to have stronger stuff than is easily available...
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
16:48 / 01.06.05
inneresting.

mosquitoes don't eat the blood they suck. they incubate their eggs with it. interesting to know that our DNA might be flowing through millions of little parasites the world over. why would you want to kill my honorary progeny?

had a neighbour who was an exterminator - he moved out because of fleas in his apartment...

stuff 1 killers of stuff 0

ta
pablo
 
 
Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown
16:52 / 01.06.05
::snickers:: THat's a good one.

I've generally stopped killing insects. Spiders I'm A-OK with now, though I used to hate them with a passion. I'll kill mosquitos, becuase I hate itchy bites, and gnats, because its just about the only way to keep them out of my face.

Centipedes...I'll kill centipedes, especially the albino ones that live in the walls of my house. I can't stnad the things. And ants, but only at work to keep them from getting into the food.

Other than that...I really can't find a good excuse to kill them anymore.
 
 
astrojax69
23:43 / 01.06.05
i try to adopt the buddha approach, but don't mind too much the expending of threats - so mozzies get the squish if i catch them on me, as do roaches, though more often i try to catch roaches and expel them from the premises (usually their shoes are all scruffy anyway)

otherwsie, i am very spider tolerant and boris (all spiders are boris by the way, even charles) catches other pesky things. that said, i did trap a couple rats and mice in an old abode 'cause they have germy things and were trying to get into our food. in a trap, that is; snap!

i think fishing is cruel, unless you gone eat the thing. then, yum. (and i was always crap at it anyway, so mebbe it is an inherited bias!)

i always think there is no room to small to swing a cat, but i wouldn't go out of my way to actually harm one.

usually, i try to catch any pesky bug thing - and bigger thing, lizards, snakes, marsupials, etc - and expel it from my space rather than kill it. can't ever see a reason why it should die at my hands, so it usually doesn't.
 
 
Evil Scientist
11:50 / 02.06.05
I try to avoid killing spiders, they're alright in my books. Wasps and other stinging critters are fair game as far as I'm concerned, especially as they have a knack for getting into my room when I'm drifting off to sleep.

Whilst I don't have any particular urge to kill animals I don't swerve to avoid them on the road. Happy to brake if there's time, if not then bad luck for them really.
 
 
Loomis
13:08 / 02.06.05
I do my best never to kill or harm anything. I am terrified of spiders yet I always force myself to catch them in a container and take them outside because I feel guilty otherwise.

Mind you I can't guarantee how I would act if my flat were infested with anything. I've not had that problem.

By the way, should this thread be moved to convo? Just a thought.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
14:10 / 02.06.05
Mmm, I think it is more conversational - unless we are going to start talking about the ethical rights and wrongs of squashing ants.

I don't kill things, even ones I really hate such as big juicy scuttly spiders and daddy-long-legses (greetings to my fellow crane-fly hater upthread). But not so much because I feel I shouldn't, though I do feel I shouldn't, as because I don't like to go near them and would rather leave them to their own ghastly devices.

I did kill some of my pet fish by putting them in water with ice-cubes, but only when they were already floating around the tank halfway to belly-up.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:47 / 02.06.05
Yep, move to convo if that's the way the wind is blowin'. I was antici[ating a bit more of an investigation into what and why, rather than a list of 'I don'ts' and 'I do's', but never mind. It wasn't the most thought through abstract and opener really.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:48 / 02.06.05
Way to bring out some n00bZ in the Head Shop though, eh?
 
 
Shrug
21:45 / 02.06.05
Semi-recently while walking home from a night on the town I noticed a family of snails which were too far out on the pavement to be erring on the side of caution I had a momentary pang of guilt while walking by and then 3 metres or so on thought "No far to far by far poor blighters" and decided to turn back to give them a little nudge onto the grass (for their own safety). To my utter dismay while returning to the rescue site I heard a sickening crunch from beneath my boot.
I felt horrible guilt about that for at least a day.

But then again if some irritant bluebottle is in my room while I'm trying to sleep he's just asking for it.
 
 
astrojax69
22:06 / 02.06.05
ok, why don't i kill things?

mainly because i get an emotional response from putting myself in the shoes of the doomed creature and think that i shouldn't like to be squished... i am familiar with nagel's 'is there something that it is like to be a bat?' and of course am aware of anthropomorphising (don't you just love that word?) as a bad ploy, but the emotional response in me is real and this is a guide for my actions.

i also figure that the eco system has its own ways for these creatures to die and it probably doesn't need to be me - if i kill a bug it might deny another critter a meal...
 
 
Liger Null
00:52 / 03.06.05
I kill mosquitos and cockroaches without hesitation. Mosquitos bite and cockroaches infest and spread germs. Spiders I am reluctant to crush, but the ones I've seen in my place look suspiciously like the highly poisonous brown recluse, so I am forced to lay down the law.

I have a ball python, he eats a whole rodent once a month. I try to get pre-killed frozen rats at the pet shop when I can. But I am occasionally called upon to whack a live rat on the head (rats can be highly aggressive, they can bite, and even kill a snake, if just thrown in alive). I hate having to do this, but I rationalize it with the knowledge that being slowly squeezed to unconsciouness would be much worse.
 
 
alas
01:40 / 03.06.05
Some disjointed thoughts on my whatever-cidal tendencies--

My body attacks and kills viruses and bacteria against my will!

It also harbors thousands of beneficial or at least neutral critters, I'm told--e. coli in the intestines...

I am a part of a flux of life. I try not to kill needlessly, and I do believe that all animals have a basic fear of harm to themselves. That vulnerability seems kind of, well, holy to me, for lack of some less religious term.

But then, my life is like a steamroller--how many critters died in the process of making this computer I'm typing on? (The factory being put into place and being kept free of debris of all kinds, etc.)
 
 
iamus
01:43 / 03.06.05
I killed a seagull once. First year of uni, we had an air gun, you know the story.

They had been baited with bread. I shot one, hitting a wing bone which popped rather sickeningly and the wing twisted around the wrong way. The thing was terrified and it ran across the grass. I knew I had to finish what I'd started so I went after it and had to club it with a stick. Not so much fun when it's looking up and you and it knows exactly what you're about to do. I found it easier to identify with the gull at that point than I did with the other random students cheering around me.

It wasn't just for the hell of it though. My main reasoning was that if I found it alright to eat meat then I should at least experience what it is to kill something. On some level I find it worse that I should happily buy meat at the supermarket while completely distancing myself from how that meat ends up there (the dead seagull got placed somewhere a hungry cat could quickly make use of it).

It's naive to think that killing another creature is just plain wrong, because it's a fundamental pivot to the whole process of evolution that got us here to begin with, but it's not something I can say that I enjoyed.

I try not to kill anything these days if I can help it, from the smallest upwards. I think that everything has as much of a right to life as anything else. But that's not a very stable or defendable viewpoint. How do you debate the right of life of every organism when a simple walk in the park crushes thousands of lives under your boot unintentionally?

I think it's all about context. You can't say it's good or bad really, it's kind of outside that. It (like so many things) is entirely dependant on situation and personal decision. We are very lucky to be at the point where we have the time to debate it without getting munched mid-musing.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:38 / 03.06.05

My body attacks and kills viruses and bacteria against my will!


Really? What is your will as regards bacteria and viruses? I don't think it's useful to equate the healthy functioning of the immune system with the deliberate destruction, initiated by apparent volition, of other living things...

What I'm most interested in I guess, is where is the line drawn about what is and isn't generally 'OK' to kill impunity, and why it should be so...Insects, by most reckoning, are fair game, although they clearly 'own' the planet...as many species of insect as there are actual living humans and all that guff...(Whoever it was also (I forget) who, when asked what, if any, characteristics he would attribute to the mind of the Creator, responded 'An inordinate fondness for beetles').

Most people would not spare a second thought for killing a spider / beetle / moth, where they would a cat / goat / dog...I'm not talking about kill for food, either, which is clearly a part of the 'flux of life' in which we find ourselves, but kill merely because...well, why?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:40 / 03.06.05
Also, mice and rats tend to exist in many peoples kill-without-consideration bracket, although these are domesticated pets as well...

It's also cultural....In Dominica, and I gather other islands in the Windies, dogs are often quite wild, and certainly free, and generally, although kept as pets, not invited inside the home...They are pretty fair game, and regularly get poisoned if they piss someone off.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:43 / 03.06.05
Inrteresting point Meludreen...I myself don't eat meat, but funnily enough was the only person willing to kill a chicken in Dominica for all the carnivores to eat...They all got strangely squeamish...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:12 / 03.06.05
My main reasoning was that if I found it alright to eat meat then I should at least experience what it is to kill something.

Butbut... that makes no sense. It makes sense to kill somethng and then eat it. But to kill one animal in order to to have some sense of the process involved in the creation of the food you eat, and then not eating it? That's just random cruelty to animals.

I think Loomis is probably right - this is not really a Head Shop thread in its current form, and is unlikely to become one now... I'll propose a move to the Convo and see what people think.
 
 
HCE
14:36 / 03.06.05
I have it in for things that try to hurt me or get into my food. This includes insects, muggers, and roommates.
 
 
iamus
17:04 / 03.06.05
That's just random cruelty to animals.

Yeah pretty much, though I did make sure that at least something got a good meal out of it after the fact. I used to eat meat regularly without wondering about how it got in front of me. And an awful lot of that meat no doubt came from processes that could be viewed as being needlessly cruel compared to the alternatives.

There's not really a justification for it because it wasn't done for any discernable purpose other than the experience of it. That's part of why it felt so bad. Had I killed something which I was then going to prepare and eat, then that's a whole other kettle of fish, in fact I would still wish to do this at some point. But, in some way it has helped to bridge the disassociation between the inanimate slab of meat in front of me and the living, breathing things you see all around.

On the topic of random cruelty but completley unrelated to any point I'm trying to make, I've seen my old cat happily squish ants that he had no intention of eating for no other reason than it amused him to do it.
 
  

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