Do you think it's immoral to step on bugs?

It SADDENS me to admit that my own mother agreed with u.
Too many times she said to me (in my childhood):
"David, u r like someone from another planet. . . ."

My friends, who have known me, have agreed,
but (for whatever it is worth) I have to call them as I see them.

I cannot do less. I offer my supporting reasoning
for the evaluation of each of u. See what u think.





David

Hey - you don't want to be part of the regular pack - what makes you so interesting.

I enjoy walking to the sound of a different beat myself. I don't care if others think I am a bit odd. Fortunately my kids just think I'm funny. I do try not to embarass them though - so I try to act normal around their friends.

Hey have you ever tried zapping bugs with the bug zapper thing - looks like a tennis racket - not quite the same impact as a gun though.

Was that before, during or after the exorcism?

No, but a friend of mine
had an electric floor mounted bug zapper.
It put out blue colored light. It worked well in the summer time.





David

OBJECTION, as to form. Counsel is assuming facts not in evidence.





David

Why would I ask for clarification? Most people I know have no problem swatting a fly or sliding their foot over an anthill. Does that make us all f'ing assholes? I think that argument is flawed.

I believe part of it is cultural. Americans tend to have little respect for the lives of bugs. I have to admit that holds true for me, at least.

OBJECTION, as to form. Counsel is assuming facts not in evidence.[/quote]

As an American lawyer didn't you feel a bit silly in the courtroom, not wearing a wig?

I don't view them as insignificant just because they are small. There are some insects I wouldn't ever kill, like a praying mantis. They're rare, interesting looking, and useful. I'd feel very guilty if I accidentally hurt one. I probably wouldn't kill a butterfly either.

But if I'm at a picnic and ants start crawling around, I won't hesitate to get up and stamp my feet on them. Same with spiders, beetles, flies.

Actually, my question was



Is there any response he could possibly give you that might cause you to think

"OK, maybe in that light I am a ******* asshole."

Or do you think that maybe he just misunderstood what you wrote, and that now that he knows you don't kill people, he'll change his mind?

Most intriguing, I guess, is why you would care what reason someone, you've never met and who is prepared to call you "a ******* asshole" in an internet forum, has for reaching such a fervent assessment of you?

I'm not trying to pick a fight with you, but I'm also still interested in whether or not you understand why so many of the posters in this thread consider going out of your way to kill living thing (bugs or otherwise) doesn't exactly reflect well on you?

Since you chose how to pose the original question, you must have had some clue that a sizeable portion of those around you were not only not apathetic about your behavior, they actually disapproved.

The behavior you described was not simply swatting a fly or scuffing out an anthill. You were very clear that you deiberately go out of your way to kill bugs; whether or not you feel they pose either a threat or even a nusiance to you.

I can accept that there are cultural origins to the behavior of taking pains not to kill an insect or including them in your diet, but not wantonly killing them. That sort of behavior seems to have pathological, not cultural roots.

I don't think you should be speaking for Americans, in this regard, either.

Kuvy may have an unusual affection for Hungarian dogs, but he's as American as baseball, apple pie, President Obama and the NY Times.

What a load of codswallop. Do you allege that other nationalities universally and demonstrably have more regard for insects? You're just making **** up now to try to prolong a stupid thread.

Yes, I did NOT. Of course, it did not occur to me.
I shoud be glad just not to be bald.

I met a friend of mine, at a convention last month
after an absence of several years; maybe 25 or 30 years.
I was rather taken aback by his choice to have shaven his head; kinda shocking.
That woud not have been my choice. (Truth be told, I had trouble recognizing him.)





David

Are you trying to murky up the debate by making us want to feel all buggy huggy for the bugsters Izzie?

Rabid Commie bug love propaganda is all that is is!

probuganda iz moi

Do u think it's immoral to kill phototropic bugs (on a racial basis)
who r so injudicious as to step on our computer monitors ???

A bug doesn't have much more significance than a microbe, to me. I don't think it's any less moral for me to squash a bug than to clean a surface.

I see there are no Jain among us.

I see there are no Jain among us.

I see you still don't get it, or you are just being stubborn.

Going out of your way to squash a bug is not the same as cleaning a table and killing bacteria.

Tilling a field and destroying hundreds of bugs is similar, but that's not the premise with which you started this thread.

When I happen to kill a bug, I'm not consumed with remorse, but I only kill bugs inadvertently or if I consider them a nuisance or a threat.

When I was a young lad I deliberately killed bugs wantonly and with pleasure. I particularly targeted inch worms which were a blight on my locale. My favorite methods were dropping one on an ant's nest or on the surface of a car that had been sitting for hours in the sun. Simply squashing them seemed far too blunt.

This is the sort of things boys do, and although I had an artistic bent to my wanton cruelty, as it turned out, I didn't become a serial killer when I grew up.

Bugs are biological machines and it is tough to grant them any sort of meaningful presence, but they are alive, and there is something off kilter about deliberately and wantonly extinguishing life.

I was with you when I was a kid, but I don't think that says much for you.

Life abounds on the earth to such an extent that it is quite easy to consider it
cheap, but to varying degrees we all consider it precious.

Clearly, you and the very many who are like you are not horrible people because you like to squash bugs. Maybe by squashing bugs, you are exorcising violence that might otherwise be directed at higher life forms, even humans.

You should, as a rational adult, recognize that there is a difference between stepping on a bug you never saw while walking down the street, and crossing the street to stomp on a bug you did see.

Not, in my opinion, a huge disorder on your part, but you asked the original question and seem intent upon considering only one answer.

Bottom line: Kill them if you want, but spare the pollinators and the predators that offer no threat to mankind.

If you have to go mad murderous, focus it on ticks, leeches and other blood suckers. I would cross the street to kill a tick!

Although this may be seen as a silly thread by some, it does center on a quite significant subject: The sanctity of life.

Jains and others who regard life so highly that they go out of their way to protect it, or at least not end it, in all it's forms, are hardly silly kooks.

It is interesting, at least to me, to consider what step in the evolutionary ladder people draw a distinction between life than can be ended without regard or pity and life that invokes moral reactions.

I'll never hunt mammals, but I love to fish and happily eat my catches.

I'll eat reptiles and amphibians if they are properly served to me, but I don't ever find myself out there gigging them.

Birds, I'm not sure about. I don't hunt them, but I think I could.

So for me, the bright line starts with mammals, which is probably not unusual, and yet I really have no problem eating mammals that others are willing to kill, butcher, and (for me) disguise as red and white hunks.

There is so much rationalizing within this calculation, that it's not difficult to imagine the dynamic extending to human life.

We're already there. We often accept the deaths of the few to preserve the many, even when that preservation is somewhat abstract: As when we accept "collateral damage" in war.

I have often warned "Never underestimate the ability of people to rationalize," and that rationalization, as respect the ending of human life, it quite dynamic.

Maybe the Jains have the best, least ambiguous approach.