numbers, and walking with the dog
Sunday, August 10th, 2003 12:28 amread yesterday about the Buckeye egg farm in Ohio closing.
15 million hens there for them to get rid of.
a shelter took one thousand.
even if they allowed all the hens to go to shelters
instead of killing them,
and even if each shelter took a whole thousand hens,
there would need to be 15 thousand shelters.
that would be about 300 shelters per state in the United States.
impossible.
what can they do but kill them?
so many chickens. doomed.
and that's just from one big egg "farm".
of course farm is a misnomer.
it's one big factory.
one big disgusting factory.
and even if that place weren't closing down,
considering that the lifespan of hens
is 1 to 2 years in these places,
that means they've been going through 15 million hens
every couple of years they've been in operation.
not even counting the chicks that were killed after hatching
for being male and incapable of laying eggs.
..
numbers.
large numbers.
i try to remind myself
that no matter how many beings suffer in the world,
it's not the numbers that really matter.
each being is an individual.
like me.
each being only suffers for a single lifetime.
at a time, at least.
each being only feels the pain of their own body and mind.
it's not suffering multiplied by n million.
it's just one.
one at a time.
each hen at that place doesn't feel fifteen million times worse
for there being that many other hens there experiencing the same thing.
i don't feel uncountably worse than i do
for the existence of everyone else's pain.
i only feel my own ration of it.
while it may cause me mental misery
to consider all the suffering that exists elsewhere,
i don't actually experience that suffering.
each individual only experiences the amount of suffering
that one individual can experience.
unless the universe has its own consciousness
which feels everything.
who hears every single voice cry out?
who hears the past and the future,
the near and the far?
i only hear myself and the things around me.
everything else is imagined.
not quite real.
and yet, even if i truly did feel someone else's pain...
there's a thought here that i can't put into words right now.
an old thought.
something related to whether a hundred mosquito bites
is really any worse than ten.
..
having a dog
gives one an excuse to go for walks.
it gives one a reason
to do that which one otherwise might like to do,
but wouldn't for there being no real purpose to it.
and one doesn't have to go alone.
and one doesn't have to listen to someone else chattering
while one is trying to listen to the outside world
and to one's own inner voice.
15 million hens there for them to get rid of.
a shelter took one thousand.
even if they allowed all the hens to go to shelters
instead of killing them,
and even if each shelter took a whole thousand hens,
there would need to be 15 thousand shelters.
that would be about 300 shelters per state in the United States.
impossible.
what can they do but kill them?
so many chickens. doomed.
and that's just from one big egg "farm".
of course farm is a misnomer.
it's one big factory.
one big disgusting factory.
and even if that place weren't closing down,
considering that the lifespan of hens
is 1 to 2 years in these places,
that means they've been going through 15 million hens
every couple of years they've been in operation.
not even counting the chicks that were killed after hatching
for being male and incapable of laying eggs.
..
numbers.
large numbers.
i try to remind myself
that no matter how many beings suffer in the world,
it's not the numbers that really matter.
each being is an individual.
like me.
each being only suffers for a single lifetime.
at a time, at least.
each being only feels the pain of their own body and mind.
it's not suffering multiplied by n million.
it's just one.
one at a time.
each hen at that place doesn't feel fifteen million times worse
for there being that many other hens there experiencing the same thing.
i don't feel uncountably worse than i do
for the existence of everyone else's pain.
i only feel my own ration of it.
while it may cause me mental misery
to consider all the suffering that exists elsewhere,
i don't actually experience that suffering.
each individual only experiences the amount of suffering
that one individual can experience.
unless the universe has its own consciousness
which feels everything.
who hears every single voice cry out?
who hears the past and the future,
the near and the far?
i only hear myself and the things around me.
everything else is imagined.
not quite real.
and yet, even if i truly did feel someone else's pain...
there's a thought here that i can't put into words right now.
an old thought.
something related to whether a hundred mosquito bites
is really any worse than ten.
..
having a dog
gives one an excuse to go for walks.
it gives one a reason
to do that which one otherwise might like to do,
but wouldn't for there being no real purpose to it.
and one doesn't have to go alone.
and one doesn't have to listen to someone else chattering
while one is trying to listen to the outside world
and to one's own inner voice.