I tell myself that the grief is me feeling bad for myself.

How did they go? Was it mercifully fast or drawn out? Was it painful? Were they ready?

And so I try to channel my grief though empathy for their pain rather then focusing on my own feelings of mood

I’m trying to move to a better area, one where things can get better locally

Even if the country ends, we’re not all going to die. We’re going to have to organize locally, and I’d rather be somewhere where I can do that

There actually might be enough water to help if we warm it up. And that would also release some hidden gasses too

It’ll still probably need more, and there’s sands that make it hard for plants to grow, but it seems like there’s feedback mechanisms that would help massively

I like to watch a streamer and skip through the stream for anything that looks crazy

I’ve definitely been watching less and less because less is happening, but I’m enjoying the highlights

I believe that orcas are out there having philosophical debates and singing stories of their history and mythology that dates back even further than our own. I don’t think they’re doing math proofs, but if they are I’d be curious what base they use

All the cutting edge science suggests we’re not special. We are not different in kind from animals

Since science became a thing, we’ve been drawing lines between us and animals since we could no longer gesture to the soul. We’ve progressively disproven every single one. I’ve had this debate over various lines so many times

It’s human arrogance

But that’s exactly what I’m saying. There are elephants out there contemplating morality. Even dogs do it, even if it’s massively based on the rules we impose on them

Not math though. Math exists in the minds of humans, it doesn’t even exist in the universe. There is no two of anything, there’s one object and another similar object

What does exist are ratios and harmonics, and animals have no problem understanding them

Lol right? It’s crazy how far on a limb they go, despite interacting with dogs

How often do we talk about how dogs want this or that, how they’re thinking of doing something “bad”, how they look so guilty they tell on themselves

But yeah, nothing going on up there. It’s all projection, they’re just dumb animals and humans are super extra special

LMAO okay then. My comment will age like wine, your’s will age like milk

Meet back in 5 years?

What are you even saying? What evidence do you have?

That sounds like a bunch of unfounded nonsense to me.

Elephants seem to clearly understand life and death, cause and effect, who fucked them over and where they ran off to

I’d bet the average elephant has a better grasp on the meaning of life than the average human

Bullshit. You just don’t speak any animal language

I can tell you what a dog is thinking at any given moment. They’re so expressive I can dictate it in real time. They tell you where and how they want to be pet, they can understand time and remember names

Koko was barely special. She spoke a form of sign language, and she enjoyed interspecies communication enough to devote time towards it. That’s what is rare

Do you understand how much more they’ll have to say when we crack their language? Because it’s coming

I don’t think that’s different, I think that’s very related to the topic at hand

And yeah, that’s all true. All living things can suffer, down to single cells

The real question here is where is the line between us and other animals. And I think you’re almost there - you’re on the verge of recognizing there is none, or maybe of internalizing that realization

Most animals don’t often think about the meaning of life, just like most humans. They don’t think to ask us either, because we’re honestly a pretty foolish species. We’re powerful and intelligent, but not wise

An orca, elephant, or corvid is probably the wisest being on earth right now. Possibly even a whole forest

It is the question at hand. It’s a question about the mental process of animals

The question isn’t are they curious - we know they are. The question is why they don’t ask humans questions when you teach them how to speak

The answer is - it’s because you’re not speaking gorilla, the gorilla is learning a foreign language, which it learned by being motivated by food.

Animal languages have a different grammar to human languages. When they ask questions, they often do it by making statements to be agreed with or corrected. They might even disagree, and assert the statement again in reply

You have to meet animals halfway… Well, really like 10% of the way since they’re the ones learning to speak to us in our languages

but also the more esoteric, “what sort of creature are you?” And “what sort of creature am I?”

I agree, but that is the kind of question they do think about. Koko was “a wonderful gorilla person” in her own words

There’s a dog that uses one of those word button mats that thinks small dogs are cats, dogs are dogs, and that she’s a human (or that her owner is also a dog, she’s convinced she’s the same as her owner and always gets confused when it’s explained otherwise)

They don’t ask, because they already know what they think. They aren’t confused about where they stand in the world, it’s learning human categorization that confuses them

They already understand the second order questions though. Why would they ask the humans?

They know what’s outside their enclosures, they know they’re there because the humans want them there, they know strange humans like to see and interact with them through the glass. They just don’t care, so long as they have their tribe around with things to do and they get tasty food

Animals understand existence better than humans do. They understand life and death better than we to. Our higher intelligence makes second order questions complicated because we put ourselves through mental gymnastics

We should be asking apes about the meaning of life, not the other way around

How does it break down? It seems like it would work normally, if a little strangely

That’s crazy. You think monkeys aren’t curious about the world around them?

They just don’t look to humans for answers, they look to humans for treats

That’s just not true. Most of them simply aren’t interested in communicating with humans, they just care about the reward

That’s what made Koko special. She was interested in communicating with humans, and her conversations were wild. It got existential

You’re just doing a whataboutism

This is the wrong place to put in work, we’re already working over here and you’re not helping.

Go find somewhere people aren’t already talking about a genocide, go build unrelated threads about it. Go find someone talking about France

You’re acting like that Republicans right now… No, we don’t want to protect Bill Clinton from the Epstein files, stop bringing him up. We’re talking about Trump right now

No, you fucking organize. Do you think a platform comes for free?

You have to work for it. If you actually cared for the cause, and weren’t bullshitting, you’d put in the work

I was just giving them enough rope to hang themselves with honestly

My positions are real… Cultural genocide is bad, and we should stop it from happening if we can

Is the thing in France happening? Probably not, but if it was I’d want it to stop

That’s the benefit of having real beliefs. When they start dancing around and mudding the waters, you can ignore all that and assert your beliefs proudly

Unfortunately, it also works if you believe in bad things, but luckily tankies (can’t believe they’re self admitted, that’s so rare) have to pretend they believe in good things