Killing Bugs Guilt

[Ryusaki]

I adopted a more spiritual aproach after i met some shipibo curanderos.

They where operating under the motto: if it annoys you, kill it!
But not without a warning. It seems like they where communicating with the insects to leave the area, if they didn't comply, they used industrial manufactored flyswatters to splash them flat.

If i have a fly in my room thats what i do: i open a window wide, i tell them loud and telepathically that they have to leave, or i WILL kill them.

Some leave the room IMMIDIATLY, some end up flat.

Everything crawling goes out of the window too.

There is one kind of insect i declared a jihad upon and thats ticks, i kill them everytime (and burn them).

Bee's and bumblebees get a nice and gently threatment, most spider guests are small and can stay, the bigger ones > window.

 

[Jin]

dark entities regularly mess with people who kill insects , an entity told me that

negative entity encounters is always a result of violence on small creatures

edit : for some resson i feel i must elaboate on this and much other information the entity shared with me .....

some people are disgusted at the sight of cockroaches , some might get irritated when a mosquito bites and others even feel guilty for killing them ,the truth is feelings of disgust , irritation and guilt , this is not something we should carry on our backs , neither through life and neither should we bring these feelings to hyperspace

i remember times when i blasted through hyperspace while mosquitos bit me and all i wondered was are they seeing this ? are they in hyperspace too ? are they feeling it with me

i used to be disgusted at the sight of cockroaches but this isn't really about the roaches , its about how we feel ,there might be situations in life and even in hyperspace that might evoke responses of disgust , irritation or guilt ,

so what are we going to do ? kill it
are we really going to kill life ? are we ready to kill life ?
for life can make us feel disgusted , irritated or guilty

we must stop feeling disgusted , irritated or guilty , instead we should embrace and feel love for all life

there are always various non-violent solutions to everything , please consider what life is to you before killing anything

 

[universecannon]

I kill mosquitoes if they're biting me, but they don't seem to like me too much...

fruit flies are shown no mercy since I eat a lot of fruit and they can become a problem in the summer. And if I find a flea on my dog I'll squish it to. That's about it, but I'm sure I eat some insects when eating food from the garden. Yum! Everything else I just release outside.

 

[SnozzleBerry]

there are always various non-violent solutions to everything , please consider what life is to you before killing anything

Life is predicated on death and vice versa. Existence is violent. You can't live without killing things, or at least being complicit in the death of things. That's ok...let's not whitewash it and pretend it's something other than what it is.

 

[HumbleTraveler]

I think Jin is saying if you specifically come to a fork in the road and have to decide to kill something versus let it live and relocate it, one should always air on the side of allowing the creature to live and just put him some place it'll be happier.

They mean no harm to us. Most of them are smaller than the nails on our pinky. There's really no reason to the end the life of something just because it inconveniences us for a few seconds of our day. Unless it REALLY is life threatening.

But a lady bug? Or a moth? No reason to act out against something harmless.


Especially kids, there's a lot a child could learn from being taught just to respect nature rather than smash all the ants they find just for fun.

Its incredible to just take a look at a little bug and think that we share most of the biological processes with something thousands of times smaller than we are.

 

[SnozzleBerry]

I would continue to play devil's advocate and question that assertion as well.

Could you not appreciate the shared biological processes of a bug...and then squish it?

Do cats disrespect nature when they kill things "unnecessarily"?

This thread is filled with arbitrary (or at least personally-defined) lines about what people feel comfortable or uncomfortable about killing.

Every time you eat you are answering the question of whether you would rather kill something or not, no? Does the plant/animal on the other end feel better dying because they know they are being eaten rather than "wasted" (especially when the devoured entity is not used its entirety)?

I'm not advocating that people kill bugs or other life arbitrarily, I'm merely questioning some of the assertions, assumptions, and self-justifications that I see in this thread.

 

[hug46]

Do cats disrespect nature when they kill things "unnecessarily"?

It depends on how much of a moral conscience a cat has.
Moral conscience can lead to guilt and guilt can lead to self justification.

In the case of unnecessarily killing other living things without guilt is it ok for kids to burn ants with a magnifying glass but if they move up to eviscerating cats it becomes a bit disturbing? But maybe it"s ok to do that because cats do it. If a cat was feral and not been fed each day by a human it would eat it"s prey. So maybe children killing bugs is a throwback to hunter gatherer days and they are learning about the thrill of the chase and the kill.

Where do you draw the line with regard to bug slaughter Snozz?

 

[SnozzleBerry]

Where do you draw the line with regard to bug slaughter Snozz?

I don't know that I have a solidly defined "line" when it comes to the types of bugs I kill, which is part of the reason I decided to play devil's advocate here.

I guess my line would be drawn at not dragging out the killing of any bugs I decide to kill or finding glee/joy/entertainment in killing them. Swift death to those that I kill. I'm not interested in the mechanics of death; I think vivisection is abhorrent, even on insects.

I generally don't kill arachnids...in part because they kill insects and keep the overall bug population in my immediate vicinity down (sparing those that kill others...as they do my dirty work for me).

I kill anything that's a threat to my plants. I kill anything that's a threat to my cats. I kill anything that interferes with me living in my space in the manner I wish and is not easily transported outside. For example, we get citronella ants in the summer here, which are both unsanitary and a nuisance. Trapping them and taking them outside is really not an option, so I kill them as I can.

I guess this is my point though. My killing is about me, it is an inherently "selfish" act. Choosing not to kill something...is that respect? Maybe, but that would seem, to me, to be the absolute lowest level of respect we could offer. So much so, imo, that I'm not sure I would use that particular term. Acceptance, toleration, or endurance feel like better candidates, to me, unless we are truly talking about feeling a sense of reverence, admiration, etc..."true respect" for the bugs, if you will.

Just some thoughts

 

[Guyomech]

Snozz, I would agree that most of these assertions are personal and arbitrary... But in a way, isn't that the purpose of this thread? We are sharing where we draw our personal (arbitrary) lines about killing small things. But I would also agree that we each need to acknowledge that our lines are personal and arbitrary lest we start prostheletizing about where these lines should be for us all, before we end up like the followers of Jain, walking stooped over the sidewalk, watching every step they take to keep the squishing to a minimum. That's just silly.

 

[SnozzleBerry]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, Guyomech. I did not post in this thread until I saw what I thought could very well turn into proselytizing of sorts, and even then it was not to say anyone is right or wrong, but to point out that these are self-defined notions within the broader context of life/death cycles.

It's funny that you bring up Jain, as I kept having mental flashes of such practitioners as I was writing my earlier post.

 

[Guyomech]

I read this fun historic novel once (part of Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle) where our hapless main character ends up volunteering at a Jain temple in India. His job? Feed the bugs. With himself. I'm not sure how much reality is in that chapter but it's a metaphor that pops into my head often. Our house is in the backwoods and if we don't take constant measures, the local critters just take over. Now, do we belong here? That's another argument altogether. We do what we can to not be overtly disruptive and disrespectful, but I don't need to make large self-sacrifice gestures to feel good about being here.

 

[universecannon]

I feel as though many of us these days are somewhat brought up with this ingrained fear-and-squish reaction to a lot of harmless bugs and spiders when we encounter them, especially inside. I always found insects interesting but I still had this conditioning to some degree I think. Psychedelics etc. helped me see around that somewhat, and also tapped me back into that childlike wonder that infuses everything, stirring a level of empathy to other living things I had lost growing up. So now I just don't feel the need to kill things that I could let live, so long as they aren't a problem. It just boils down to personal preference and there isn't really any need to over complicate it I guess.

A somewhat related thing I've noticed is that there seems to be a disturbing sort of satisfaction with needlessly killing things (or the idea of it, or hostile/aggressive behavior in general) among many people these days (especially young people). I used to dismiss the idea that video games had influenced this in myself when I was younger (I used to go around the neighborhood with a bb-gun all the time and then cry when I actually killed something) but after working with kids the last few years, many of whom these days start on really violent video games and things like that extremely early on in life, I do think it can have some kind of major desensitization effect on us and promote more hostile and aggressive tendencies generally, especially in people that young whose reality-tunnels are still in very formative stages. A personal example is my cousin who played call of duty all day for years and then thought it would be fun to go be a sniper and kill people in the marines. He was in for a rude awakening.

This vid comes to mind.

[YOUTUBE]

As a side note I mostly just eat fruit, which imo probably doesn't suffer anywhere near the degree that an animal or insect might, if at all, and has in many cases basically evolved to be eaten (for seed dissemination). But that's just a fun fact I thought I'd throw in, and not really the main reason I eat it.

 

[HumbleTraveler]

That short was spectacular.

Ive always thought something like that with extraterrestrials. They're out there watching, with their heads in their hands just rolling their eyes.

-"Hey, earth's sending out more signals. Should we answer yet?"
-"No way, they cant get along with each other, they cant get along with nature, and they're probably going to try to have us use currency to survive and create social classes. I think they need more time"

 

[hug46]

Ive always thought something like that with extraterrestrials. They're out there watching, with their heads in their hands just rolling their eyes.

-"Hey, earth's sending out more signals. Should we answer yet?"
-"No way, they cant get along with each other, they cant get along with nature, and they're probably going to try to have us use currency to survive and create social classes. I think they need more time"

Or they might just see us as inconsequential bugs, maggots feeding off of a rotting corpse of a planet, and come down and squish us before we turn into annoying houseflies .

 

[Guyomech]

I just showed our three year old that short and she was blown away. "That's a CRAZY movie. It's a good thing that's not really happening!" Ah, the task of explaining this world to her.

 

[universecannon]

LOL