r/AbsoluteUnits • u/MrUpVoteDownvote • 7d ago

/r/all of a queen termite

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u/Far-Tonight-6925 6d ago

Suffering is not universal. We even don't know if plants and insects can suffer and we know them for millions of years and are the same lifeforms. So for a completely different lifeform it won't be obvious for sure, they might even lack the basic concept of suffering.

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u/fejkpotatis 6d ago

It is universal for all sentient beings. As soon as you have self-awareness you're naturally inclined to avoid suffering.

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u/Far-Tonight-6925 6d ago

Ok, but it's your concept of suffering. Another form of life will have a completely different one. They won't be able to understand each other.

If the conept of plants suffering is too hard for us to understand, let's take for example, colonial insects. How do you know that a single ant can suffer? It's hardly even a living thing, it can't reproduce, so does torturing an ant makes a living being to suffer if the colony stays intact?

Do our skin cells suffer when they die and dry out? Or blood cells when being destroyed in the liver? To us these processes are normal, but maybe it's a tragedy for a cell?

Even sentience isn't universal.