As I write this, close to 700 million humans are living in extreme poverty. I’m sure they suffer so much. It must be so awful to lack food, water, shelter, and healthcare. And there are also millions of humans who, despite having their physical needs met, still experience intense psychological suffering.
And there are billions of animals on factory farms being tortured & slaughtered. There are millions of mice being dissected & disfigured. There are trillions of fish being slowly suffocated. This is incomprehensibly awful.
There are trillions more wild animals dying from hunger & thirst, being eaten alive by predators, suffering from injury & disease. This is again, too much to fathom.
There is so much suffering. So many unbearably painful experiences being had at this very moment. It’s so sad.
Of course, there are also many positive experiences being had. Some people are falling in love, eating delicious food, making friends, laughing. It would be a tragedy to rob these individuals of their experiences.
But honestly, I feel like it’s not enough to tip the scales. If I had to make a choice between:
- Leave everything as it is
- Painlessly destroy everything
I feel like it would be better to destroy everything. For the sake of those who are suffering. Because when I imagine myself as the factory farmed pig having his testicles ripped off, or the gazelle being eaten alive by the lion, or the fish, slowly suffocating, all I can think is… surely nonexistence is better than this? Than this intense agony?
But thankfully, my choices are not limited to this binary. I can choose to help others. To make things better. I should probably spend the rest of my life trying to do that. If I was a suffocating fish, I’d certainly want someone to do that for me.
Taj 