Parasyte Notes & Thoughts

This is absolutely true. In the battle of two thinking beings against each other, one to feed in order to live, the other to protect itself in order to live, neither is right other than to themselves. There is no objective truth to be had here. There is no Golden Rule.

If it is all right to feed on animals by the millions, then why is it wrong to feed on humans by the millions?

Self-preservation above all else is not true of some higher life. Humanity has an evolved biological sense to want to preserve the race as a whole. one would rather sacrifice his/her existence for the whole than keep a single life. The benefit is that it's better for the overall number to be higher than for any one individual to survive. "Nature cares not for the individual."

I will eat humans when I am hungry or die trying. I will eat bacon when I am hungry or die trying. I will infringe upon others' rights or die trying. "When I am hungry, I will eat, and I will destroy anything that gets in my way."







Anyway, Parasyte got me thinking.

Vegetarianism. It goes into the morality of if a higher point on the food chain were introduced. We [humans in generally] eat millions of animals in a day. If that's right, then is it so wrong, if a few thousand parasytes eat millions of humans over many years in order to survive?

the only difference in morality is who you are.
Die or Die, Live or Live
If you're the predator, it's right to kill.
If you're the hunted, it's right to hide, even if it means the hunter will starve.

If it's really always the predator who is in the right as is often a conventional idea towards carnism, then if there were parasytes on our planet, we should all lay down our lives for superior beings. The higher being is always right.
Our moral imperative demands we die.

Is life only valuable if it is close to humans? (Pets matter, but not pigs, unless they are pets.) Are humans only valuable if they are close to you, the individual? No one holds any value if they don't have any value to humans. Why are we so important? Where did they learn to be so selfish? There's no objective morally right thing to do then? Only subjectivity? Whoever wins is right, but whoever loses would've been right to win. Everyone is right and wrong. The only objectively right choice is to forego it entirely. If humans held no value to the dominant species, it would be fine to exterminate every last one of us. Thus is the nature of subjectivity. Survival of the cruelest.





Another question Parasyte raises is if morality is truly just absolutely subjective. I never realized this before a few years ago, but this is a fundamental difference in how someone who values vegetarianism perceives the world. Are the only people who matter those who you're close to? The only animals who matter those that you're close to? Everyone else is a tool or food to be used? In other words, morality only extends as far as those the individual cares about, or those useful, and no further.  We care about dogs and cats, so it's not okay to eat them or for people of other countries to eat them, yet we eat animals just as empathic and intelligent as them, but it's okay because we don't care about them? I don't mean this with any sort of exaggeration or anger but, by this logic there should be nothing wrong with eating a human if you don't care about them.

This continues to nationalism, racism, the most basic "me vs The Other". I've always believed very strongly that if our values towards dogs and cats could have easily been the same towards pigs and cows, but merely as a convenience (more docile, more meat), the animals we consider pets just happened to be dogs and cats as a quirk of history/biological design, then it's very hypocritical of us, as history could have unfolded contrarily very easy, and we'd be yelling at Chinese for eating pigs as we eat our fried dog legs. So does no species matter other than our own? The arrogance required to say that...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3122303/Move-Lassie-IQ-tests-reveal-pigs-outsmart-dogs-chimpanzees.html