Quote:
Originally Posted by Ea
I was thinking about suffering of other species than our own. I could see a point in relation to food animals, as the quality of meat definitely is affected by how the animal is treated. But I'm less sure about whether relieving suffering in general helps anything. I wondered if you have an example of that?
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It depends on your relationship to the other species. I would not expect you to be directly affected by the suffering of some animal if it was somehow isolated from you. But I do think that your life would be affected if your neighbour beat his horses every day and you had to constantly hear their cries. Or if your local plant life was suffering from a disease and there was no green in your world. Or a disease was ravaging the local small animal population and going outside meant hearing their cries, stepping over their bodies, smelling their corpses. How would those change your quality of life and therefore impact you and those around you?
To some killing a 5000 year old tree may be insignificant:
Prometheus
But, it still makes me sick when I think about it. Killed the year before I was born - and for nothing. But has influenced me ever since I learned about it.
Troy