You ever thought about how fukked up it is that life propagates itself by consuming other life?

[get these nets]

 

[Thatrogueassdiaz]

No. The earth has a way of keeping balance to keep itself alive and keep producing life. Without this balance life would eventually cease to exist. We are all children of this planet; that which has given us the precious gift of life. In order for it to keep giving that gift, a balance must be maintained. Because we are human does not meant we live outside the realm of the laws thst govern life itself. It is brutal and mean but everything we have is a gift and should be treated that way.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

No. The earth has a way of keeping balance to keep itself alive and keep producing life. Without this balance life would eventually cease to exist. We are all children of this planet; that which has given us the precious gift of life. In order for it to keep giving that gift, a balance must be maintained. Because we are human does not meant we live outside the realm of the laws thst govern life itself. It is brutal and mean but everything we have is a gift and should be treated that way.

That isn’t really true though. Nothing about the world is balanced. It’s all chaotic. Always has been. The earth’s history is full of extinction level events and geological catastrophes. What lives lives and what dies dies. If anything threw things out of my balance it is human life. Humans have greatly reduced populations of almost every species.

 

[Ididit]

Instead of looking at things from a narrow perspective over years or centuries we need to look at things over an expensive perspective of millions or billions of years. Unless we go interstellar we will consume ourselves into extinction.

 

[Take It In Blood]

It's sad


Even our sun consumes energy to survive

 

[MischievousMonkey]

Yes, I had a similar thought at some point. I thought conflict could be said to be an inherent part of life since at the most basic level, it is the mechanism by which life forms sustain themselves by destroying others.

But it has some major caveats: the most obvious is it's an inaccurate picture of how life works.

Life doesn't necessarily propagate by consuming other life forms.

Bacteria feed on materials as varied as soybean oil, sugar, starch, sulfur, amino acids, iron, milk, meat and even wood compounds. Some types of bacteria are photosynthetic, making their own food from sunlight. Others absorb nutrition from the surface where they live.

Bacteria exist as a single cell and there are thousands of species. The diet of bacteria is generally determined by their metabolic category. The categories are broad but loosely fall into one of three groups: lithotrophs, organotrophs or phototrophs. Lithotrophic bacteria consume inorganic material, while organotrophic bacteria get their energy from organic compounds. The process of bacteria breaking down food to get energy is called respiration. Phototrophic bacteria get their energy directly from the sun. Some bacteria feed on decaying matter and help break down environmental waste. Others get their food by breaking down chemicals in their surrounding environments. Some even consume harmful products such as oil, arsenic and nuclear waste.

What Do Bacteria Eat?

The same can be said for more complex organisms, plants, mammals, etc. They're not all carnivores. Moreover, all carnivores are not predators; some are scavengers and eat from already-dead animals. Plus most carnivores are not obligate carnivores.

So saying that life has to consume other life to be is inaccurate. It happens.

The second caveat is that this perspective is an anthropomorphization of the living material. The fact that you separate living beings individually and see the breakdown of one to reinforce an other as fukked up/violent/incompatible with benevolence is already an a priori that might have limited meaning.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

Yes, I had a similar thought at some point. I thought conflict could be said to be an inherent part of life since at the most basic level, it is the mechanism by which life forms sustain themselves by destroying others.

But it has some major caveats: the most obvious is it's an inaccurate picture of how life works.

Life doesn't necessarily propagate by consuming other life forms. Bacteria were just grazers of compounds, both organic and inorganic for



The same can be said for more complex organisms, plants, mammals, etc. They're not all carnivores. Moreover, all carnivores are not predators; some are scavengers and eat from already-dead animals. Plus most carnivores are not obligate carnivores.

So saying that life has to consume other life to be is inaccurate. It happens.

The second caveat is that this perspective is an anthropomorphization of the living material. The fact that you separate living beings individually and see the breakdown of one to reinforce an other as fukked up/violent/incompatible with benevolence is already an a priori that might have limited meaning.

Yes, it’s a fair distinction that not all energy consumption that sustains organisms comes in the form of being violently taken from others. Bacteria probably existed for billions of years grazing on organic and inorganic compounds, but at some point many did start eating and consuming other live bacteria and they still do today. I don’t know what percentage of bacteria are bacteriavorous, but they engage in intense predation and warfare using toxins.

Anthropomorphizing is attributing human characteristics to animals that don’t exist. I’m looking at the natural world as is and just commenting on the intense brutal violence, killing and taking of resources for consumption as largely the mechanism by which life propagates itself. I didn’t say life has to consume and kill to be. Perhaps I needed to be more specific, but what I meant was without this intense violent arms race, we and the world as we see would not be here, as natural selection is the engine of speciation.

So basically if the first single celled organism didn’t eat another one, we wouldn’t be here. That’s obviously an oversimplification but this was spurned by a lot of weed and a conversation with a Christian believer in God while watching birds of prey attack videos on YT lol.

 

[MischievousMonkey]

Yes, it’s a fair distinction that not all energy consumption that sustains organisms comes in the form of being violently taken from others. Bacteria probably existed for billions of years grazing on organic and inorganic compounds, but at some point many did start eating and consuming other live bacteria and they still do today. I don’t know what percentage of bacteria are bacteriavorous, but they engage in intense predation and warfare using toxins.

Anthropomorphizing is attributing human characteristics to animals that don’t exist. I’m looking at the natural world as is and just commenting on the intense brutal violence, killing and taking of resources for consumption as largely the mechanism by which life propagates itself. I didn’t say life has to consume and kill to be. Perhaps I needed to be more specific, but what I meant was without this intense violent arms race, we and the world as we see would not be here, as natural selection is the engine of speciation.

So basically if the first single celled organism didn’t eat another one, we wouldn’t be here. That’s obviously an oversimplification but this was spurned by a lot of weed and a conversation with a Christian believer in God while watching birds of prey attack videos on YT lol.

I don't know the percentages neither to be honest... But if I had to take a guess, among all the different types of consumption bacteria practice, or even more complex organisms, I'd wager feeding off other life forms would be the minority.

That's not even taking into account mutually beneficial relationships existing in nature, such as plants and trees communicating with each other, sharing resources, different species helping each other... This other perspective emerges clearly when considering living beings in the ecosystems they inhabit. That's part of why I brought up anthropomorphization; "killing" is just part of these networks of interactions that favor the existence of the entire system. To even consider it "killing" requires us to think of each animal and bacteria as individuals and not merely moving parts of larger living system at work.

Let me ask you this question: do you believe abortion is killing?

And lol at the last sentence, that's why I can't ever smoke. I be having this type of thoughts sober

 

[null]

It’s kinda crazy that the driving force of life is in many ways the taking of other life.

it wasn't like that in the garden of eden breh

 

[MischievousMonkey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota

Microbiota are the range of microorganisms that may be commensal, symbiotic, or pathogenic found in and on all multicellular organisms, including plants. Microbiota include bacteria, archaea, protists, fungi, and viruses,[2][3] and have been found to be crucial for immunologic, hormonal, and metabolic homeostasis of their host.

[...]

The microbiome and host emerged during evolution as a synergistic unit from epigenetics and genetic characteristics, sometimes collectively referred to as a holobiont.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea

Archaea are a major part of Earth's life. They are part of the microbiota of all organisms. In the human microbiome, they are important in the gut, mouth, and on the skin.[8] Their morphological, metabolic, and geographical diversity permits them to play multiple ecological roles: carbon fixation; nitrogen cycling; organic compound turnover; and maintaining microbial symbiotic and syntrophic communities, for example.[7][9]

No clear examples of archaeal pathogens or parasites are known. Instead they are often mutualists or commensals, such as the methanogens (methane-producing strains) that inhabit the gastrointestinal tract in humans and ruminants, where their vast numbers facilitate digestion. Methanogens are also used in biogas production and sewage treatment, and biotechnology exploits enzymes from extremophile archaea that can endure high temperatures and organic solvents.

Life's parts also work together, and it seems to me it was necessary for complex forms of it to emerge.

 

[Ciggavelli]

I've had these thoughts before as well. It's fukked up. The most fukked up part of it is the pain aspect. If you take the pain aspect out of killing, it's a lot easier to see consumption of other living things as an energy transfer. However, the pain aspect is what gets me. There is so much pain involved with animals killing other animals. You can hear them scream when they are being eaten alive. Can you image being eaten alive?

The pain aspect is what bothers me the most. I get that pain is helpful to alert you to potential hazards, but the pain associated with being killed or being eaten alive seems unnecessarily cruel.