this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You can be the first input in such situation then, but I prefer that humans can show they’re capable of better discourse than “eat or be eaten”. That’s kinda limited and trite in light of our more developed cognitive abilities, honestly. Also, the universe is literally limitless, so we don’t need to think in terms of zero sum games or resource limitations 🤷‍♀️

Regarding inputs: Eating fruits and seeds doesn’t kill anything, in fact plants evolved tasty fruits so that they’d be eaten and propagate. Vegetables and fungi can be eaten without killing the organism. You can consume eggs and milk without abusing or killing the animal

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Regarding your first paragraph: I was operating based on a very loose hypothetical question that you posed. So, I think you're unintentionally strawmanning me here a little bit...

As far as the second paragraph is concerned I see your point. However, I specifically said life had to consume other organic material to survive, but not necessarily kill in the process. At some level of the food chain it does ultimately become a necessity though, and I do not see that as an ethical dilemma per se.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

For the first para, I was responding to this

If it was a matter of survival, we would become an input.

I was responding to this for the second para

As far as we know the propagation of life requires the consumption of other life as inputs

The point being there are many ways to survive without consuming life. Fruits and seeds are not living things. Anyway, I think the main point I’d like to highlight is that there’s no need to think we’re constrained to a singular way of being for anything we do