Hay all, going to put all the petty concerns away for a little bit today and ramble about the bigger things. So if you’re looking for my usual practical and pragmatic advice go read “On elected officials: Why we just cannot get it right…” again, cus what follows is more of a “if you don’t know, know you know” type thing.
Currently I have 33 continuous years of life racked up here on Earth, in that time I’ve come to strongly prefer people, opinions, situations ect. that respect life. Now I’ll freely admit my current living state may make me particular bias towards other living things, I’m spouting off how I feel today so a bit of biases will no doubt be in the mix. I’m not a fan of killing (though I support it indirectly all the time… (Taxes paid, food purchased ect..) It always seems so wasteful, especially when it comes to more complex organisms. That is not to say I give a free pass to the killing of “lower” organisms, plants should be entitled to live their plant lives, ants to do their ant thing ( IE take over Earth…) and so on. That is at least what I see as more ideal; letting life do what it wants to do… It’s a cool system we would be well served f-ing with as little as possible.
Humans (an area I have a special understanding of) tend to muck things up when it comes to life, when we are not killing each other en-mass, we regularly kill on small scale, both as indivual and societies. This may all be explained (and solved?) as our collective understanding of empathy ( and empathy gap) progress but when I look at the history of public execution, how violence is portrayed in media and our infantile understanding of “Rights”…I’m not holding my breath.
How valuable is my life? I ask myself this fairly often, I know very well that my life is finite and try to be honest about what I think my life is worth. So far I’ve come up with a lot of different answers, mostly depending on what was going on in my life at the time. The most common answer (the one that came up this week and most) is “Very”, at least to me. That said I do not consider it to be the end all be all of my existence, there are things that I would trade my life for, situations where I would (and have) risked it for something more valuable.
The personal value I place on my life is not the only measure thought, as a member of humanity my life also has value to the species (and if I’m going to look really far out, to all life in the cosmos). Now with the current state of humanity that value may be negative when looking from a cosmic perspective. Regardless life has value, it may be absolute (I don’t see it that way, but I also begrudge no one for fearing death, and acting like an asshat because of that). That is why I fall so strongly on the “let live things live” side of things, I value my life (as I think all humans on some level do).
Getting off the “Humans are everything” train, the value of life anywhere should be something we innately empathize with. From animals to bugs and bacteria, we can see parts of ourselves in them and should respect that as best we are able. Ownership when extended to live things is likely a bad idea, while I paid for him I do not “Own” pups, he’s a companion I try to be worthy of each day. ( Most day’s I’m not, but he’s super cool about it)
In the end we humans are all members of humanity (membership is mandatory^^), further as living beings we are all members of … something… I long for a world where any human will always be happy to see another human, and by extension, where all humans are happy to see life, everywhere it exists, in all it’s forms. Where we abandon the death filled ways of the past and work only to understand life and through that understand ourselves. Once we show that minimal level of dedication to our condition, we can start interactions with intelligent life. (I think there’s a fundamental difference between life and matter, and it’s important to respect that. People who are forced (or by choice) to see life as means to an end are not their brother’s keeper, are being selfish and in need of an environment where they can learn to love.)
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