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If you can't marvel at an ant, you have no sense of wonder.
I'm sorry for you.
But I'm much sorrier for other living things which come in contact with you.
If I were reincarnated as an ant, I would hope I didn't run into me or someone like me either.
You're conflating the way I treat ants (admittingly, like dirt) with the way I treat everything else. But I don't know why.
I see a big difference between an ant and any mammal. If I'm in the mood to toy with beings that are much less significant than I see myself as being (ants), why shouldn't I? I can understand from a jains perspective why they see how I treat ants as wrong, but not yours. Even if it were my friend's aunt who I just stepped on, well, too bad for her. Her new home is a patch of mud on my size 12 rubber sole. Better luck in the next life, hah.
But they are just bugs! They can't comprehend having any purpose or meaning.
Also, they don't matter enough to scrape them off my feet. Having some ants exoskeletons gunked up on one of my running shoes for a while won't kill me.
How do you know ?
It just might be that humans aren't smart enough to have figured out how to communicate with other living creatures.
And while humans can contemplate the 'meaning of life' none have ever come up with a definitive answer ...maybe the ants have.
If they are in my house, they will get sprayed, swatted, smashed, vaccuumed up, etc.etc.
If they are outside they will most likely be left to do whatever they are intended to do...unless they annoy me with stings or bites. In that case I will be the one being sprayed and swatted on.
I don't kill even insects for no reason, or because of "boredom" or to feel superior to them. But I do kill insects if they are invading my space. We had thousands of fungus gnats that infested the plants in our house and we went to some lengths to kill them, I can assure you. And I've left ant poison out in the past when there's been an infestation. I've hired termite inspectors, etc.
I think it's a balance between respecting all living things and pragmatic considerations of health and safety. And it's a matter of motivation. There is never an excuse for killing to gain feelings of power. It tends to be indicative of how you would at least like to treat higher beings, including people. Feelings of pleasure or even indifference at killing reflect established thought patterns and habits which need to be brought to awareness and changed.
But they are just bugs! They can't comprehend having any purpose or meaning.
Something you obviously aren't capable of doing. I'd urge you to educate yourself.
The only time I kill ants is if they've infested our food and that doesn't happen very often since we encourage the local lizard population to hang out here. Circle of life.
There is never an excuse for killing to gain feelings of power. .
Wouldn't that be the excuse? That it was necessary in order to gain those feelings of power? Is that really any worse than killing because otherwise you are sharing your home with pests? It remains you deciding that your needs trump any concern for the bugs.
We are on top of the food chain, the food chain is utterly inescapable if you wish to live. Life isn't possible without the destruction of other life forms. Each breath you take slaughters millions of living microorganisms. Your furniture represents the killing of trees, your clothes the killing of animals for their skins. The city in which you dwell was made possible by the genocide/expulsion of all the critters who were there before humans showed up.
We have no social contract with creatures outside our species, they have never agreed to leave us alone in return for the same from them. We do not notice that the food chain is still in full operation because most of us are obtaining our food after someone else has done the killing for us.
We are the big bad bullies on top and I do not notice any humans volunteering to take a step down on the chain.
What is one ant in this great scheme of serial murder? Why should exterminating it cause any pangs of conscious? Even if the motivation was ignoble, such as feeling powerful, so what? How is the human race, the earth, the universe, upset by that death?
Last edited by Grandstander; 01-01-2014 at 10:53 AM..
I'm 21 years old, had to go to a picnic today. I got up to throw something in the garbage and at the garbage can noticed a horde of ants bustling around a little ant mound. I was bored so I lifted my foot over them and stamped it down. After flattening them and their little home under my shoe, I walked back to the blanket.
When I sat back down, I leaned over to check out all the crushed ants stuck to my foot. My friend and I sort of snickered because the ants I carried through the grass on the bottom of my feet were only half-crushed and squirming in the treads of my running shoe. Then out of nowhere some guy who I didn't know saw me and called me a "white bully" and "inhumane" because I step on ants. I told him to bend down and kiss my stinking feet. I know, not nice, heh.
I've been stepping on bugs my whole life. I know jains respect all life and believe that my actions are wrong. But how is that explained? I thought they believed in reincarnation but how does that work? Do they believe that bugs are reincarnated from people?
If I'm stepping on someone's uncle bob, is that really such a bad thing? I guess my thoughts would be eh, better luck next time. There was probably a reason he ended up as a tiny ant on the bottom of my shoe and that by contrast, I'm a giant.
Do you think stepping on bugs is wrong - why or why not?
Yea you are going to H-E- double hockey sticks and be bugged all day long. Life will be a pest.
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