• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Money tends to be less painful than getting mauled by a predator trying to scavenge food

    Easy to say when you’re ensconced in the imperial core. But I wouldn’t want to be living on the periphery. Humans are far crueler and more destructive than any natural predator.

    A jaguar won’t double-tap your house with a missile strike, to make sure it kills everyone inside and then any neighbors who rush in to help. An orca won’t spend six years running caricatures of you in a tabloid newspaper, in order to build up enough bigotry and fear against your neighborhood that there’s no push back when local politicians green light it for “slum clearance”. No chimpanzee ever worked at Abu Ghraib or Vladimir Prison.

    What humans do for money is far worse than what any predator has ever done for a meal.

    • cm0002@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That’s because they’re not capable of doing those things, of the animals you listed, I could absolutely see them doing those things if they had the intelligence and capabilities to do so.

      Especially Orcas, what you listed would be an easy day for them, they’re a bit of an asshole.

      Most animals on this planet will do whatever it takes for their next meal that their capabilities will allow for because that’s the only way to survive in the wild.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I could absolutely see them doing those things if they had the intelligence and capabilities

        If you reduce other species to aesthetics, sure. Big Orange Man ultimately behaves the same as Smaller Brunette Man. But there are a bunch of sociological elements you’re leaving on the table. Different species organize and interact with each other and their peers very differently. The Chimpanzees and Bonobos have night-and-day different social hierarchies and organizing principles, despite only minor variances in genetic traits.

        Most animals on this planet will do whatever it takes for their next meal

        But then what? We’ve long since solved the problem of the next meal. You don’t need to send a man to the moon looking for the next meal.

        If anything, we’ve seriously lost sight of solving for “the next meal” on a long term scale, as we engage in the kind of industrial activity that degrades and collapses our arable biome.