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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17898 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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'I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.’

Which is to say that nature's idea of optimal human life is "nasty, brutish and short" and I do not care much about how hubristic it is for individuals to interfere unless they do worse on at least two out of three.

How I see it, nature's idea of optimal human life is what it is now. Nature wants humans to interfere, it wants "fit" species to survive (defined by their survival). But preserving elderly who waste resources and seem to be unaware and unhappy, it doesn't help us or seem to be helping them, and nature is leaving the decision to collective us.

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