Thread 17904684

Did the invention of animal husbandry cause humans to just become complete psychopaths (or even more psychopathic)? Especially thinking about slaves, how they intentionally castrated and crippled them, and sometimes just cut open human guts for fun. A lot of human hierarchy throughout recorded history has seemingly been an extension of livestock.

>>17904684 (OP)
No, we are just cruel.

>>17904684 (OP)
We're hunters by nature anon. At least we kill our prey first. Most animals don't even bother and just eat them alive.

>>17904693
Yes but that's quite different from raising animals over time for the sole intent of slaughtering them no? Not to mention cutting their balls off and crippling them.

You're onto something when it comes to beginning to see people as meat objects for kings and the state, but everything's different with illiterate subsistence goggles on. Some were psychopaths just like now, most weren't. Animals were and had to be thought of differently up until very recently. Now, especially after realizing we're animals too, the barbarity is obvious to anyone willing to pay attention and we hide it in factories and underneath layers of industry and marketing.

>>17904700
We harvest animals the same way we do plants anon. We just empathize with them more because we understand them, whereas plants can't communicate in a manner we can understand.

>>17904684 (OP)
Pythagoras may have thought so.

>>17904708
good post

>>17904684 (OP)
The opposite, husbandry forces you to be somewhat compassionate and prosocial compared to hunting gathering.

>>17904713
Line has to be drawn somewhat arbitrarily probably, but I doubt plants feel/experience nearly as much as animals feel/experience--there's nothing resembling bleating terror and calling out for help when I go out grazing/grass murdering with my sheep (I eat the good grass because I'm entitled to it because I pay for my sheep's grain with money I've worked for, they don't work). Seems like bacteria would be more cognizant than plants but that probably can't be right. But lots of bacteria have to be killed for us to survive still. All sorts of stuff gets genocided when we boil water and walk around and breathe. Just not very obviously sentient mammals with unmistakeable mammal psychologies.

>>17904684 (OP)
>>17904689
This, humans' closest relative is the chimp. We are just a species prone to chimping out.

>>17904684 (OP)
Easy way to get meat
Also dairy and wool
>>17904684 (OP)
You could argue than hunting is more ethical

reminder

>>17904684 (OP)
eugenics is the only way forward
it works for plants & animals
people are next........

If anything we've become less psychopathic. We domesticated dogs, after all.

>>17904700
Not really. If other animals were smart enough they'd do the same. Ensuring you have a steady supply of food is important. And in point of fact, some animals do practice a limited form of husbandry. Ants, for example, farm aphids for their honeydew secretions. They will round up populations of aphids and bring them to the plants with the sap that generates the best honeydew, and will actually stroke the aphids to induce honeydew droplets. They even clip the wings of aphids so they can't fly away.

If ants were bigger and smarter they'd farm the shit out of vertebrates too.