Killing Living Beings

A fly gently lands on your shoulder, do you look to swat it into another dimension or do you just shoo it away?

I have had a problem with killing animals ever since I was a youngin'. I read a whole lot of Buddhist literature when I was 14ish, and even though I found the whole concept of karma and rebirth extremely silly, I still found that the core concept, that of not killing living things, was beautiful and extremely true.

I have never believed that there should be a reason for not killing something, such as "That could have been my dead grandma's reincarnation" or "Snakes should be left alive because they eat rats." I've always strongly believed in not killing for the sake of not killing. Life is so fragile, and yet so vast. I could never understand how easily and thoughtlessly some people could eliminate an entire creature's existence. All in all, existence is all we truly know. We see the world through these eyes. What is left of this world after you die? It all plays out so beautifully in your head after all, no where else as far as your existence in concerned.

Do you kill? How do you justify it? Do you even give it a thought?

I do realize that we kill many organisms by accident or for the sake of our own survival on a daily basis. I am not talking about that murder. You cannot even truly blame a man who kills another without having any intention to cause harm to the person in many cases, not can you blame a man who shoots another in self-defense.

I also understand that people hunt. I myself probably could not bring myself to hunting for recreation, but I do respect and understand hunting for food. At times it seems more noble than simply buying it from the supermarket, even though I have absolutely no aversion to other's killing animals for me for food. I do not feel like I somehow contribute to the cause.

So much fuss is made about killing humans, yet people tend to completely ignore the murder of the other fascinating creatures on this earth until they near extinction.

 

I hunt. It is a very true fact of my heritage. i have hunted since I was a young'un. I do it for practical purposes. I almost always eat what I kill. In fact It has been quite some time that I havent eaten what I killed. I do still hunt for trophies though. i do have pelts and heads on my wall. I know this will not be popular around these parts but it is true to who I am.

 

Oh and yes I will whack the shit outta that fly!

 

No, I don't kill animals if I can help it.
I'm not quite as whimsical as you or have any noble reasons.
I just don't do it - full stop.

 

That makes sense. I can see how hunting can become a part of a person's personality.

I truly dislike trophy hunting, yet one has to realize that it's almost an inevitable part of hunting culture. I've had to face many deer heads in Arkansas, and eventually you get used to them. It's amazing how exposure to things can make you completely immune to them.

 

I only kill the hell out of bugs and irrtating people.

Peace

 

a few days ago I was working on the AC outside. as I opened the unit, a Bee kept messing with me, i knocked it down, but didnt kill it.. I wasnt aggresive but it kept returning, Eventually I did have to kill it. After warning it a number of times to leave me alone, I had work to do..

 

ive never hunted...
but i do like to shoot guns

 

Bees dont bother me so much as wasps do. I will kill a wasp rapidly. I let bees live though.

 

Not being a vegetarian, I do eat things that someone else has killed for me, but other than that, I don't think I've ever killed an animal on purpose.*

For me, it's not just a respect for other living creatures, although that's important, but also that I don't like destroying anything unnecessarily. Of course, I produce trash like everyone else but if something has a value, but I don't want it, I'd much rather give it away than simply throw it out.

So flies get ignored, spiders and other creepy-crawlies are gently carried out of doors, bigger stuff is observed with fascination and a word of thanks to the doGs for sending them my way.

* The exception is mosskeeters - I fuckin' hate those things. Karma-wise though, they've done a lot more harm to me than I have to them. Even so, when I get elected Supreme Omnipotent Being, one of my first tasks is to rid the planet of mosskeeters. I'll find something else for birds to eat.

 

that's about how i feel.

i'll kill an insect if it bites me, but otherwise i just shoo it away, take it outside, or just let it go about its business.

i have butchered several chickens before. killing them was an unpleasant experience, but it wasn't that bad knowing that we were going to eat them. i also killed a couple roosters once, just because they moved in with the chickens and were tearing shit up and causing all sorts of trouble. that felt pretty shitty at the time, and i still feel a little weird looking back on it... but oh well... i also shot a groundhog once because it was clearly very sick and it just kept pacing around right outside the backdoor; i don't have any problem with that one since i probably just sped up the painful process and it allowed my family to go about their business without having to fear attack.

i believe that's pretty much all the intentional killing i've done... at least that i can remember...

 

Good job, I wish that more people would simply adapt to such a natural reaction, instead of the opposite reaction of murder... yet I'm nowhere near idealistic enough to believe that such a thing would actually happen.

 

Lets kill bugs I hate them.

Peace

 

For the record, I also don't have a problem with hunting, although if and when I ever do it, I'll go after things I can eat. After all, if you're a meat eater, there's no ethical high-ground in eating what someone else has killed rather than killing it yourself.

 

same here...

it kind of pisses me off how the idiots like to say that guns can only be used to harm... i've spent hours shooting and have never harmed anything living, except for the roosters and groundhog i mentioned in my earlier post (and maybe my shoulder... some of those guns have a nice kick)

 

Sometimes destroying things unnecessarily can be very therapeutic. Ever smashed a TV with a sledgehammer? It's an extremely primal experience.

On a more serious note... I actually got thinking about this thread because I almost got bit by a black widow at work. It was under a table I was lifting, and I touched it... felt the web, pulled my finger away, and I saw it coming after my finger... it was a female with eggs and stuff, so she was just being territorial... so I got a piece of cardboard, got the spider and the eggs on there, and carried her outside. I showed 'em to a co-worker, and his practically natural reaction was to smash it... I literally had to grab his hand to stop him. Made me think.

I really am fascinated by some of the creatures that come out here to visit me in the middle of nowhere. I had a squirrel sit on my window and crawl around for a good 5 minutes yesterday. Just peeking it, staring at me, and tapping on the window. It was fascinating. Then I had a coyote wonder through at night... might have been lookin' for the squirrel.

 

Me too. Me neither.

I wonder if you harm little insects when you lift them off the ground (G force).
I wonder if it is more animane to just leave them where they are and let fate deal with them.

 

Yeah, I caught some fish a good year or so ago and had to kill them and scale them myself. It was an unpleasant experience, yet the dinner that they provided made me feel great.

I ain't never shot a groundhog, did seem like the right thing to do though. A grasshopper came to die on my kitchen floor today. You can tell when an animal comes somewhere to die, you just can. I was thinking about putting him out of his misery, yet I thought that I might as well let it all play out by itself.

 

i try to limit what i kill. i'll kill flys and cockroaches and stuff. yet, i'll catch the mouse and let it free outside - which will likely be caught by one of the many cats outside. if we had an infestation of mouses, then it would be different. but the random one here or there, i'll try to catch and set free.

my cats catch many animals - thats there nature.

i've never hunted, but i've had meat from a hunted animal, so i don't see anything wrong with hunting to eat. trophy hunting - well, i've kissed a moose head on a wall drunk before, so yea...ahaha

 

I don't really understand what is being asked here. We kill vastly more animals by showering than we ever will with bows, knives, and rat poison in our lives. By multiples of millions and billions. Is it worse to kill an animal that you can see than an animal that you can't see. Is it worse to kill a mammal than an insect?

Some people kill for fun, some people don't. Stop telling people how to live their lives and go create something useful, no?