nowadays, to get rid of every single organism capable of feeling pain is as imposible as my suggestion: controlling all creatures behavior
I am not doubting your knowledge and personal experience since I don’t know you but I do doubt your decisiveness. How do you know that? Have you tried? And if you did, does it mean that it is impossible? Isn’t the whole idea of science that something is right until proved wrong? So we all must try until someone, somewhere, sometime will succeed. I don’t want to specify here what the world would look like if we won’t, since we’ve done it all along the website, but taking that under consideration and we don’t need we must. And although we disagree with you that it is impossible, we acknowledge that it is so complex and extremely difficult to operate such a mission and that’s why our first decision as a group was to create more of us. That’s why we think everyone who cares about stopping all the suffering in the world must try. Acknowledging how difficult the mission is, as written in the what can I do? Question in the FAQ, the first thing we focused on is how to create a movement and before we conduct our own research group.
We realize what we are dealing with here and we also realize that the complexity and lack of believe in the accomplishment of the goal is what prevents most activists from trying. So we decided to construct a serious moral argument supporting the idea and tried to show in every single article, slideshow and the manifest of course why the bad old conventional campaigning won’t change the world.
The chances to succeed might be small but the chances to stop all the suffering with conventional methods are zero. We don’t think so because we are tired and weary or because we personally failed to change things within our community or anything subjective and personal, but since by definition it won’t solve all the problems.
The animal rights movement is not even aiming at stopping all the suffering. Two major examples are the total ignore of the tremendous scales of suffering happening in what they call nature as if this word is magical and can eliminate all the suffering involve in it just by pronouncing it, and the horrible veganism “solution” which is cruel, oppressive and violent and the only reason why it is considered cruelty free is that the rest of the options are much much worse. However that fact can’t purify veganism obviously. Nothing can purify and justify hurting someone else. And by eating we sacrifice someone else. Always! The world can be defined as a huge battleground over resources between creatures who unpurposely and unintentionally brought into it and are now bound to compete and so to hurt, no matter if they like it or not (like us). You drink, someone else won’t, you eat someone else won’t, you build someone else would be poisoned, slowly gassed or suffocate by the pollution of air or water, will starve or dehydrate since you destroyed the habitat and many would literally be crushed to death in their lairs and etc.
As hard as it is to imagine the world without speciesism it is even harder to imagine it without violence. It is too basic and inherent. If it is not speciesism it will be powerism - discrimination on the basis of weakness. Humans for example are of the same species and are supposedly equal but are still systematically discriminated against on the basis of power - social power, economic power, sexual power and muscle power. Equality is not an option even theoretically because all the creatures are in a constant fight over the same resources (not just food). The stronger will always prevail. This is how humans got their current total dominancy in the first place. Unfortunately they prevailed the rest of the species in the fight over the world’s resources and over time got to the current position. And since humans have gained a lot of knowledge and skills it’s clear that even if the imaginary scenario of a vegan and non speciesist world would become realized, fight over resources will always be relevant no matter what is politically correct. And if equal distribution of the resources was such a failure when it was examined in relatively small scale human societies for a relatively very short time and regarding one species only, how can it be implemented on the whole world with all its inhabitants? The distribution will be on the basis of power. Whom who is weak enough to be in the position of exploitation will be exploited.
And by the way who will decide what the new world model is? What are the desirable amounts of each species? What is the desirable amount of resources for each species? The one in power would decide of course. Meaning humans, the ones who created this horrible state of affairs in the first place, would also be the ones who will decide that this current state of affairs would be the model of the new vegan world to be based on. After they already destroyed most of the planet and its inhabitants and filled it with plastic, glass and concrete and conquered most of it violently, you think it is fair that they would call all the shots based on that?! Do you think it plausible that humans would truly represent all the species’ interests? Do you think the rest of the species would agree for this settlement after all they have been through by humans?
Do you think it is plausible for any species to represent any other species interests while they all compete for the same resources? This model is inherently not relevant as we would further explain in this reply.
Being capable of doing that and with a bit of bioengineering perhaps to modify certain biologic requirements, we could be able to make all creatures to eat human produced food and live a life free of suffering.
My reply is long as it is without getting into that topic so please watch/read the multimedia article vegan suffering who shows how conceptually and practically it is impossible.
As opposed to the annihilation idea which might feel impossible but you can’t prove it, it is easy to realize that a world with sentient creatures and the current biological imperative they hold can’t theoretically be sufferingless. There is a constant direct and indirect collision of interests that ending up factory farming and the rest of the systematical animal abuse won’t solve and so does feeding the whole animal kingdom with human made food.
Don’t think classic predators only, think bottom of the ocean, think about the undergrowth, the underground, think of all the chemical wars between insects which are usually disregarded, think about every battle over every single crevice in our violent world.
Some creatures are based on violence and the rest are based on exploitation or at least indirect harm, but that’s pretty rare. If you think about herbivores consider that many of the species that probably come up to your mind endure the most violent inner-species battles for the right to mate, from beetles to turtles to musk and moose. The male Topis even use paint wars to intimidate their competitors covering their horns and faces with mud.
Human produced food can’t stop male angonoka tortoises from flipping one another over their backs when fighting over mating rights, leaving the loser to be boiled alive in the sun.
Most rodents don’t eat other animals but do fight each other violently over territories all the time. Adult female marmots for example severely beat their daughters if they got pregnant to cause them a miscarriage if the provisions are not sufficient.
Even what seems as a peaceful sunbathing of lizards is misleading.
Lizards choice of the pile of boulders they sit on is not random but involves with their rank, as the most dominant male gets the best pile of boulders after fighting over it as the rest are doing to get better piles.
With toque macaques for example lack of resources is not at all the case.
They maintain very stressful social lives with extremely harsh hierarchy and very prevalent violence outbreaks. Just one customary everyday example, when berries are stashed in the chick bags of a low rank macaque, a higher rank monkey can forcefully open the low rank's mouth and take what she/he wants from there. The low rank try to keep their mouth close but that's as far as their resistance goes because they know if they'll do more than that they will be beaten by the whole group. So they just sit downcastly waiting for the humiliation to end. Think how they feel, the conflict between their desire to keep their food and the fear of the consequence of challenging the strict hierarchy.
Meerkats like dolphins have adorable appearance but it disguises extremely violent creatures who live in extremely violent societies. The human produced food if it works would stop them from tearing apart dozens of scorpions a day but it won’t stop their savage fights over territories with other groups.
Moreover of the "adorable" meerkats is that usually only the alpha pair reserves the right to mate and "normally" they kill any young not their own, to ensure that their offspring has the best chance of survival. When they don’t kill them they violently evict their mothers out of the group. Subordinate meerkats have been seen killing the offspring of more senior members in order to improve their own offspring's position.
In some social structures, usually when the alpha female dies, pregnant females tend to kill and eat any pups born to other females to inherit her position.
The meerkats are not unique, in many species there is lot of violence involving ancestry and in some species the violence begins in the womb. Some types of sharks perform embryonic cannibalism as the first embryo to grow teeth eats his sisters and brothers inside the womb. This brutal violent behavior is subsequent to another brutal violent behavior –rape. The male shark chases a female beating and biting her until he manages to turn her over and penetrate one of his two claspers under his belly and shoot a ball of sperm into her. This will happen several times with several different males.
In many bird species violent nesting is awfully common.
Black-headed gulls nest in large colonies when the nests are only a few feet apart. When the chicks first hatch, they are small and defenseless and easy to swallow. It is quite common for a Black-headed gull to wait until neighbor gulls leave their nest to search for food and then pounce on one of the neighbor’s chicks and eat him, obtaining food without having to go to the trouble of catching a fish, and without having to leave his own nest unprotected.
So many species have an awfully violent courtship behavior, many have an awfully violent mating behavior, many have an awfully violent nesting behavior and sharks have an awfully violent pregnancy. Besides awfully violent pregnancy, wasps also have an awfully violent "birth".
There are many types of parasitic wasps that inject their eggs inside other creatures’ bodies that are then used as surrogate wombs for the wasp’s descendants. Common victims are spiders, aphides, moth and caterpillars which their case is probably the worst as they are fully conscious while 20 wasp larvas are slowly slicing their skin from the inside out when they are ready to transform to their next phase. Their mother also injects a virus she produce in her ovaries that destroys the caterpillars’ immune system to protect her eggs and a certain chemical that cause the caterpillar to protect the larvas while they cocoon themselves and while they are in their cocoons and until he dies of hunger or disease since his immune system is destroyed.
Just a few examples of the world’s horror that the animal rights movement don’t even try to stop and neither does your idea which by the way sounds at least as impossible as destroying this whole planet of suffering.
Another thing is that you focus on the feeding issue but ignoring other inherent suffering elements of life such as diseases, aging, social hierarchy (a huge suffering cause among many species as mentioned earlier), congenital physical and mental dysfunctions, it is really an endless list and I guess you got the picture.
So, no your proposal about creating a world free of suffering could even be more plausible than eliminating all life on Earth, is not right since by definition it’s not even trying to do that. Life is inherently sufferingfull. It is not something you can change by trying to feed all the creatures in the world with human made food, even if you could accomplish that extremely complicated mission. As we specified here the violence, exploitation and suffering is much too basic and inherent.
The only way to stop all the suffering in this world is to stop all the lives of the sentients.
Our belief whether the mission is possible or not is not relevant because we haven’t tried yet. We realize it seems impossible but life without violence don’t seem impossible, they are impossible.
However, by erradicating all that life, you would be causing suffering and death of trillions of organisms
The annihilation idea is for good. While your counter argument is relevant to one generation only and as we explained in the answer to the question in the FAQ what about the animals who are in captivity now? Even for that one generation it is better. So we ask you what about the future generations?
As you know things are only getting worse. Animal consumption is growing rapidly and persistently. Every year more animals are being exploited. And it is not only a quantitative matter, every year the industry manages to make the exploitation more efficient on the expense of the animals’ broken bodies. The genetic invasion is getting more harmful and violent every year. Farm animals are already twisted freaks - born to be cripples.
Needless to say, we hope that the process will cause as little suffering as possible. But remember that no matter what the method is, if it causes suffering it will be for one generation only and then the suffering will be stopped forever. So even if a specific annihilation idea has a potential of causing a lot of suffering, there is no doubt that it is still better compared with the suffering amounts that a decision not to do it will cause.
Otherwise the suffering will never end. Generation after generation will be born to this decayed world as the new sufferers, only to become a steak, omelet, shoes, coat, hat, shampoo, pizza or entertainment.
The next generation will suffer more than the present and less than the one after it. If you are thinking that it is wrong to "sacrifice" a generation for the sake of all the creatures that will ever suffer on this planet, we ask you, don’t you think it is wrong to "sacrifice" all the creatures that will ever live for the sake of one generation?
Perhaps, if we could destroy Earth as a whole
Focusing on the earth is one of the suggestions we made in the practical implementation documents we made. The planet has some major weak spots which we mentioned in these documents such as the atmosphere (mainly the ozone layer), the earth’s core, the huge carbon stores, the huge Methane Hydrates stores and etc.
We gave these examples after a relatively short research mainly to trigger the readers’ creativity and not fix anyone’s mind on them. It is easier to start when you got some lead.
So all in all we agree that focusing on the earth destruction is the best and maybe more plausible.
You might refer to this idea as a fantasy or as a too complicated project, but you can't tell or even make any rough estimation since you haven’t started yet.
Maybe it is much simpler than it seems. Maybe some of the activists out there already have some of the needed knowledge. Maybe some of the activists are already connected to people that have access to information or means required. We still don’t have enough data to estimate the complexity.
For now, two things are for sure - the first is that none of us knows until we start conducting research and the second is a simple statistic fact - the more of us trying, the greater the chances of success. On the other hand, as long as nobody tries, it would never happen and the suffering will continue.
We see the O.O.S project as a future vision as well as an option that might be nearer and can be executed in the present. Anyway we tried to construct an argument around an idea and a feeling that many activists and people share. The hardest part is probably switching from the wishful thinking to the actual attempt, to actually try to do it. It is extremely hard to seriously start and many people think like you that there is no way, it is too big on me and I would probably waste my time on this. That’s why we have invested so much time showing people the conventional activism is also a waste of precious time. The difference is, in one way there is a chance to convert some people to veganism and in the other there is a chance to stop all the suffering.
Think about all the time you have wasted on the efforts to convince such a small number of people. Can you really hand out another leaflet or shout another slogan knowing that at the same time you could start building a new O.O.S cell?!
If you agree this insane world must be stopped, if you wish for suffering to cease, then you must try. Initial thoughts about the likelihood of success are irrelevant because you don’t know what the chances are and because as extensively explained all along the website the conventional activism can’t stop the suffering.
The image of a world with no battery cages, no slaughterhouses, restraining devices, rapes, diseases or wars is the strongest motivation of all.
Our power lies in our numbers and diversity. Each single cell may stand a small chance of success, but this is not the case for hundreds of cells with hundreds of different varied points of view, approaches, ideas, abilities, resources and methods. The cell with the right lead and the right resources and resourcefulness is bound to come along. It's simple statistics. All it takes is for one group to succeed, and the suffering will be stopped forever.
