Good people doing evil things scare the hell out of me!

in #morality5 years ago (edited)

Bad people doing evil things doesn't bother me as much. That's expected, and life is dotted with evil people and bad things. I've adjusted to that reality.

But all around me, I'm seeing otherwise good people doing malevolent acts on a regular basis.

  • injecting their trusting children with diseases and toxic chemicals
  • memorizing and encouraging others to memorize fake versions of history
  • torturing and raping cows for their breastmilk, which we needlessly put into almost everything we eat
  • enslaving and murdering sentient animals to produce food we that isn't good for us

The list goes on, but does it need to? Any one of those things is a recipe for tragedy on a personal and societal scale. Yet we can't turn around in public without seeing evidence of these evils. Many otherwise wonderful people are participating in these heinous acts. It's an evil world, and it seems almost everyone is participating.

I myself have done all the things on that list at various times in my life. I carry huge regrets over them. I have almost no other regrets in my 4.5 decades, but I absolutely wish I hadn't hurt so many others. You can't take back the past, so don't put things there you're going to later wish you hadn't.

I'm sorry, SO sorry, for all the violence, tyranny, suffering, and harm I have caused, and continue to cause.

I look for ways every day that I can reduce my 'harm footprint'. I'm plagued by the guilt and shame for what I did as an ignorant meat-eating person who didn't know better, but thankful I stopped doing harm once I realized it. Now, I search for more ways to reduce the harm I'm doing, just as I continually look for ways I can improve the lives of myself and everyone else.

When I see parents forcing untested vaccines and pharmaceuticals into their children, knowing nothing of the science and merely trusting the system, I feel angry, sad, and helpless. I'm not swayed by propaganda telling me only crazy people fear government injections, because I know it's a lie. But so many people have fallen for it, and fear questioning the vaccines because they'll be called "paranoid anti-vaccers". So they line their children and teens up for the syringes, silencing their questions.

Otherwise moral and sweet people I know are paying someone to needlessly torture and kill other animals. The factory farm meat industry contains billions of frightened, traumatized, suffering animals that want to live, and want freedom. BILLIONS. Who is responsible? Every person who contributes. If you eat meat you didn't hunt yourself, you stand guilty of this crime. Otherwise good and intelligent people, conditioned to believe it's normal, or healthy, or natural. And they have no insight into their evil. No amount of information or emotion can move these people. They're just doing what many others are doing, and this gives them a feeling of normalcy bias, that if it's common, it's okay. These people are themselves livestock, having fallen under the control of elite social engineers, who have tricked the humans into believing they require flesh to stay healthy. A world full of bloodsucking leeches, vampires, zombies, and vultures... that don't see themselves that way.

If they don't know they're doing evil and don't consider themselves monsters...

Am I like them?

Am I also delusional about my major lifestyle choices? Do I cause harm with my diet, clothing, actions? Am I a monster too, and simply don't know it?

I really hate the idea of being a monster, doing evil. I hate the idea that I'm making the world a worse place. I hate the idea that I'm wrong about who I am, that I'm going down the wrong path, that I'm creating future regrets. I hate the idea of being ignorant.

We probably all hate those things. I guess I just hate them more than most.

DRutter

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Harm footprint now that's a good concept!

I like that turn of phrase too, but it seems to hinge on the subjective definition of harm.

Are you opposed to people eating animals and animal products they have husbanded themselves?

Would that be harm reduction?
I see things (and wrote this)) from a personal standpoint, not from a standpoint of judging (or approving of) others and their actions.
So the only question I can really answer is would I 'husband' and eat other animals, but you already know the answer to that.
What I was really going for with this post was to express how it feels to see family and friends, otherwise decent people, doing what I consider terrible things, and not considering them terrible. It makes me ask if I'm like them, doing terrible things, and considering them totally acceptable.
I don't want to think I'm going down the right road, only to regret every step later, when I find out it was the wrong way.
I don't want to pile on any more regrets.
The most hopelessly enslaved is the one who falsely believes himself to be free. I don't want anymore false beliefs causing me to remain enslaved.

If you eat meat you didn't hunt yourself, you stand guilty of this crime.

It's hard to believe that you're not really judging other peoples' decisions when you make statements like this.

Let me rephrase the question: Do you think it is unethical to eat animals outside of (presumably wild) animals attained by hunting? And are people who eat non-hunted animal meat guilty of a crime?

"It's hard to believe that you're not really judging"

I said I didn't write the post from a standpoint of judging, not that I never judge. We're all judging on a regular basis, it's impossible not to, and perfectly healthy. It's how we decide how to act - by judging people and situations.

If there's any other judgment implied, it's in the same way I'm judging a human who murders another human and eats them. Almost all the harm in killing a human is present in the killing of a pig, dog, goat, etc. Somehow, many people see one as terrible (worthy of punishment by life in prison or death), and one as completely fine. I see a very thin line between the two acts. I judge that needlessly killing humans is only marginally worse than needlessly killing other animals. It's just my opinion, of course. Nobody knows for sure what right and wrong actually are. We have to do the best we can with finite ideas and words. Your own judgments form your own opinion.

Also keep in mind the quote you selected is specifically talking about the 'crime' of contributing to the factory farming of billions of sentient mammals, not a broader meaning.

"Do you think it is unethical to eat animals outside of (presumably wild) animals attained by hunting?"

I consider it unethical to contribute to the factory farming of mammals, and probably birds, too.

We no longer eat them to survive, we farm them for pleasure and profit, and they suffer in many ways just as deeply as humans. I don't see how anyone sees it as ethical in any way.

I may be a little early in my thinking about this, but I don't think I'm wrong. Definitely appreciate the discussion though, the more the better.

I guess you could answer the opposite of your own question: Is it ethical to farm and eat animals the way we do today?

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