The One Thing We Have in Common

“Everyone dies. That’s always been how it is. You got now and you got the second your lights go out. Meantime is the only time there is. All that matters is what we do during it.”

Another topic I've failed to clearly explain: I don't care about death. 

This came up in response to my regular criticism of individuals wasting time and resources on "wild animal suffering." A reader brought up roadkill, building strikes, outdoor cats - the things humans could do to reduce human-caused wild animal deaths.

I understand that we are sad when an animal dies. We are angry when an animal is killed.

But our reactions distract us. Every animal dies. Something kills every animal. 

The ethical question we should care about is how much suffering each individual life contains.  

I would rather be run over by an SUV than die a slow, "natural" death of disease. I would rather die young than have a drawn-out, miserable, "natural" end.

There is an irrational liberal fetisization of "nature" and "natural." But there is nothing desirable about "nature." Just the opposite.

Conscious life didn't evolve in order to create joyful, meaningful lives. Sentience only evolved* to compel creatures to survive and get their genes to the next generation in an increasingly-complex, resource-limited, predator-infested world. Negative emotions (hunger, fear) and the pursuit of positive feelings (orgasms, eating tasty food) serve this purpose.

"Natural" selection actively selects against lasting happiness and contentment. 

Natural selection's earth wasn't a bucolic paradise before humans evolved. Just the opposite.

The problem of humanity isn't that some wild animals now die in different ways. The problem is that humans intentionally bring more sentient individuals into existence in order to torture them. 

As animal scientist John Webster pointed out, humans have bred birds to be in chronic pain. And then we bring billions and billions into being and cram them in horrible conditions - an existence so bad it makes a wild animal's life look bucolic in contrast.   

That should be our concern. 

*In humans, self-awareness led to a fear of death and "valuing" our own existence above all else. And then we can't help but project our inner lives into anything that moves, including objects on a screen. All this makes is basically impossible to think clearly about addressing actual, tractable, severe suffering.