2!

1/26/2011 4:27:42 PM

I hope to christ these motherfuckers get discovered, and someone takes a baseball bat to their fucking legs...

1/26/2011 4:28:35 PM

Quote :

"I mean, unless you're doing enough damage to cause harm to the habitat of sentient beings, do you really consider damaging flora "morally repugnant and fucked up in the head?""

Whenever you destroy plants, even if just one, you are damaging some animals' habitats (usually creepy crawlies, yeah, I know, aside from plants, creepy crawlies also are exempt from protection in most people's minds, and fair game for torture and killing).

But that's not even my reason. Plants are also living. Teenagers who destroy shrubs/bushes/flowers by pulling them out/burning them/etc for no reason at all, are truly fucked up in the head. Destroying living beings for fun is never 'cool' or 'ok', and is always morally repugnant. If you want to take the life of a living being for a legit reason (food, materials, defense, protecting others, whatever), do it quickly and without taking some kind of sadistic pleasure.


[Edited on January 26, 2011 at 4:50 PM. Reason : ]

1/26/2011 4:49:19 PM

You just called a plant a "being". Without a nervous system I don't believe a plant has any sense of suffering and therefore from the perspective of the plant at least doesn't "care" whether or why you chop it down.

I'm not sure the philosophy that destroying non-sentient living tissue as a moral repugnance is tenable with existing. I mean you probably just killed thousands of microbes by taking a breath.

I agree that the wastefulness of pointlessly destroying plants is stupid, but to compare stepping on a plant on equal moral footing as crushing a living, feeling, and suffering animal is an alien concept to me. Plants aren't "beings."

1/26/2011 5:03:23 PM

Sorry, living things, so as to encompass all alive matter.

Quote :

"I'm not sure the philosophy that destroying non-sentient living tissue as a moral repugnance is tenable with existing. I mean you probably just killed thousands of microbes by taking a breath."

I said damaging/killing "for fun". Did you not see that? I abhor people who kill damage/kill living things for fun, or torture them while killing them for a legit reason, be it moths, lizards, squirrels, dogs, deer, sharks, whales, trees, shrubs, etc.

1/26/2011 5:12:58 PM

Quote :

"or torture them while killing them for a legit reason, be it moths, lizards, squirrels, dogs, deer, sharks, whales, trees, shrubs, etc."

I'm guilty of this. I'll often force a shrub to shit and watch as I prune it's entire family in front of it.

1/26/2011 5:15:11 PM

Do you also cut their fingers tiny branches one by one and mail them to their relatives as a ransom demand?!

Quote :

"but to compare stepping on a plant on equal moral footing as crushing a living, feeling, and suffering animal is an alien concept to me."

Sorry if I implied an equal footing, but no, it is not.

People who damage/kill animals for fun are millions of times more fucked up morally and neurochemically than those who do the same to plants.

1/26/2011 5:18:09 PM

I would recommend Jainism to 0EPII1

1/26/2011 5:32:59 PM

Nah, religion isn't for me... at least not at this stage in my life.

Sorry, I know it is not cool seriously uncool among this [and all future] generation, but I have a deep respect for life and the environment.

1/26/2011 5:35:08 PM

Quote :

"Sorry, I know it is not cool seriously uncool among this [and all future] generation, but I have a deep respect for life and the environment."

i dont think i agree with that ha.

tdub is not a good sample representation of the future

1/26/2011 7:11:04 PM

i saw this guy, or another opossum, outside of dh hill the other day. it was pretty sweet.

leave it to rednecks to ruin it.

1/26/2011 7:18:06 PM

I think the people who did it should be found and I agree with kicking the shit out of them.

1/26/2011 7:26:14 PM

people kill animals before they start doing crazier shit. could be a psycho

1/26/2011 7:34:57 PM

1/26/2011 8:40:28 PM

Life isn't special. A plant is only nominally different than a rock in that its molecules happen to be arranged in a specific self-replicating manner. Using words like "torture" or "sadistic" in regards to destroying a plant makes as much sense as torturing a cardboard box.

Without sentience, without the necessary organs to have feeling, it's just matter. It's complex to be sure, but it's just organic matter which has no "essence" to set it apart from non-living matter. Just DNA. (or RNA)

That aside, please update this thread when we figure out who those scum bags were and how they were punished.

1/26/2011 8:42:37 PM

i know who it was.

1/26/2011 9:02:54 PM

racraig9137

1/26/2011 9:06:52 PM

i fucking love possums

1/26/2011 9:12:38 PM

this thread disturbs me

of all the shit on tww, this fucking bothers me

poor little possum

1/26/2011 10:20:07 PM

Opossum fact I didn't know - they only live up to 3 years, and that isn't including the high mortality rate from vehicles. I thought they lived longer than that, as they just don't look like the kind of animals that would have a life expectancy of 3 years.

1/26/2011 10:32:33 PM

Quote :

"It's complex to be sure, but it's just organic matter which has no "essence" to set it apart from non-living matter. Just DNA. (or RNA)"

It has nothing to set it apart yet you tell us something major that it DOES have to set it apart.

Quote :

"Without sentience, without the necessary organs to have feeling, it's just matter."

You have set your 'essence' to set something apart from a cardboard box at having sentience. Why? That's arbitrary as well. Having said that, I could go on to say [nonsensical] stuff like this as well:

An animal is only nominally different than a rock in that its molecules happen to be arranged in a specific self-replicating manner.

I have set the 'essence' at being alive (having DNA, growing, reproducing, etc.).

Yes, there are levels of complexity, and so sentient life is a solid level above non-sentient life, but all life deserves respect and protection. Plants take up the earth's resources too, so when you destroy plants for fun, you waste all the resources that the went into making that plant so far.

And there have been studies to show that some/all? plants feel pain too. There was a thread in chit chat with a link to a study.

But again, it is not necessarily about pain, but about respect for the environment.

Some of the asshole football players at my undergrad school used to take several apples on the way out from the dining hall after dinner pretty much every day, then hurl them at high speed against a wall 30 feet away and laugh like little girls. It used to piss me off so much... I wished somebody could show them that was wrong, but if you are doing that at that age, there is no turning back. Anybody who has been raised properly by 2 loving parents and given attention and taught about life and manners would never do that.

Sorry, I will stop being uncool. All the cool kids can go throw apples at walls, which is no different than throwing pebbles at walls!


[Edited on January 27, 2011 at 2:52 AM. Reason : ]

1/27/2011 2:43:22 AM

...If you want to respect the environment stop driving your car.

1/27/2011 3:27:31 PM

If people need to take their frustrations out on a defenseless plant, it's better than a defenseless animal or person. Plenty of people get seized with the urge to destroy things. Unfortunately, that kind of violence escalates in some people. Maybe the perp has already assaulted another person, seemingly for no reason.

1/27/2011 3:36:31 PM

I don't know how we got from opossums to plant murdering

1/27/2011 3:52:09 PM

1/27/2011 9:44:12 PM

Hey mrfrog, just curious...was the woman you took the little guy to someone you might label as the 'crazy opossum lady'?

I don't mean that in annnnny kind of negative way. If this is the same woman, she really impressed me when I met her. Just has a serious thing with the opossums. Some kind of, opossum whisperer.

1/27/2011 10:41:37 PM

I can't say, my interactions with her were not that extensive. But that would fit with the information that I do have. She was incredibly distraught about what I told her, and was really heartfelt, and extremely specific about its injuries.

1/27/2011 10:55:46 PM

Yeah, distraught about the injuries would fit well with her (most animal lovers actually).

I just specifically recall an incident with someone I can only imagine is her at the Nat History Museum. We had a pretty nasty/fat/angry opossum that tried to bite everyone. She came in and picked it up like a baby to burp it and put it over her shoulder while kissing on it. I was so intruiged I moved behind her to get a better look and over her should her it hissed angrily at me and then nuzzled her neck lovingly. Still an awesome animal moment. Her opossum powers were amazing.

1/27/2011 11:01:35 PM

Opossums are neat animals. When I was younger, my father rescued some baby opossums from the pouch of a mother that had been hit by a car. They were bottle-raised and three of them survived to live full, healthy lives and were eventually released back into the woods. We didn't get a permit, but oh well. Below are my younger sisters with two opossum babies. I'm sure they would be flattered to know I posted this picture of them looking their best.

1/31/2011 7:59:38 PM

permit? whatever permit. you shouldn't need a permit to raise semi-wild animals and stick it to them Earth-haters out there.

I used to love to get wild mice and keep them. Never very friendly though...

1/31/2011 8:43:02 PM