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headspace-hotel · 3 days

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It's important to not force your human morals onto non-human nature, like "this creature, since it disgusts me, is bad" or "this creature, since it has behaviors I interpret as sweet and heartwarming, is good"

But if you study nature whether in life or in profession, nature will make you feel disgusted and uncomfortable, it's not necessary to act as if those feelings don't exist within you, because they are part of your encounter with the otherness of nature, and contain sensitivities that can be sharpened into their own ingredient to knowledge and awareness

Coexisting with discomforting parts of the reality of Nature without trying to resolve them into a moral or aesthetic framework you are happy with, reflects maturity

It is no good to "redeem" a hated animal if the redemption is another false idea of the animal as innocent and good. This implies that a creature's "goodness" is a valid reason it deserves existence. It is also no good to treat a beloved animal with hatred to make things fair.

A good example is with dolphins and sharks, dolphins were seen as good and cute and almost human, whereas sharks were seen as bloodthirsty killers, and this has cost the lives of sharks while dolphins are given more sympathy, so some people have tried to turn it around, portraying sharks as gentle and good while pointing out that dolphins can be violent and rape other dolphins.

A lot of dolphin behaviors are certainly upsetting, definitely it makes sense to be upset that an animal can engage in what appears like cruelty, but human morality isn't made to apply to non- humans, and a particular behavior is not the entire reality of what a whole species is like. Dolphins also engage in behaviors that humans judge as friendly, compassionate, altruistic, curious and playful

Think of a particular dog or cat and the variety of complex behaviors they are capable of—an entire species, made of individuals with their own complexity, must be far more complex. All of your emotional responses to dolphins are recognizing the immense complexity of these animals and how they are both like and unlike you, which is important to think about to expand your understanding of the universe

Fitting a creature to a flat framework for your own comfort or internal resolution is a disrespect to the creature. Certainly with sharks, everyone should know the facts about them rather than sensationalistic misinformation—shark attacks are rare, humans are not a preferred food for sharks, and most shark bites are exploratory investigations of a strange object or animal rather than feeding upon a selected prey item, however this doesn't mean sharks are "good" by human standards and it certainly doesn't mean sharks are "safe."

Seeing a video of an enormous Great White swimming placidly I feel that her presence is not just breathtakingly beautiful, but awesome—in the more archaic sense of something that inspires awe, something so great and powerful it could destroy your fragile human life without malicious intent. Likewise with any shark, it is respectful to recognize that they can be dangerous, it is disrespectful to think of them as ocean puppies and try to touch them and grab them.

Fear, disgust, anger—each is an instinct that functions to protect you and is reactive towards potential or perceived threats. Your brain allows you to evaluate things that cause these responses and choose how to act.

All parts of this whole are important because the natural world contains actual threats but knowledge and intentional behavior are important to protecting yourself.

For example, once when I found a tick crawling on my clothing, I felt disgusted and startled, which is appropriate, but my instinctive reaction was to immediately flick the tick off, flinging it onto the floor or furniture nearby where I no longer knew where it was. In this way my response didn't actually protect me but instead increased the level of risk

There are plenty of other examples—if someone sees a venomous snake they might think it is important to kill it, but trying to kill the snake is much more dangerous than leaving it alone, since the snake will try to defend itself. Spraying pesticides to kill bugs can unbalance the ecosystem causing more harmful pests than you started with because the natural predators are also killed. Using poisons to kill mice and rats will also poison their natural predators. Killing coyotes just causes them to disperse and reproduce at a higher rate, and killing wolves causes overpopulation of prey, which causes disease to proliferate and forests to be stripped bare of saplings that could grow up and regenerate the forest...

...And it also works the opposite way with human responses of affection, love and sociability: humans often may feel that they want to make an animal their friend, but often it would be cruel to take that animal into a human house and treat it as a pet. White-tailed deer may seem cute and sympathetic but hunting some of them is important for the health of the ecosystem, and trying to make them tame puts the deer and the humans in danger. Domestic cats are our friends but they are also invasive species in much of the world, destroying populations of birds, mammals and amphibians.

Domestic cats aren't serial killers or murderers either, they are just predatory animals that instinctively hunt and kill prey.

It is hard for facts about animals to be propagated while those facts must be presented as reasons the animal deserves to live or deserves to die. Virginia opossums are important to their ecosystem and deserve to exist. They also don't actually eat ticks, that came from a very flawed and sloppy scientific study that was contradicted by later studies, and sadly the reason this misinformation got so far is that it was "proof" that opossums are valuable and shouldn't be killed for no reason.

Wolves are keystone species and vital to their ecosystems, but it's not true that they never attack humans, there have been a small handful of wolf attacks on humans, it's very few and wolves generally avoid humans but they're not "safe." They shouldn't have to be "safe" to deserve to live.

Fact is, most animals can harm a human if they feel threatened or end up in an unlucky situation! Most animals can spread disease one way or another! We have to live with this, we have to learn and use strategies to keep ourselves safe, we can't just sterilize the world of animals because of a possibility that an animal could hurt someone, any more than we can cut down every tree because trees fall on people sometimes.

No one likes hearing that there's no way to for-sure eliminate all possibility of ticks from your yard, you just have to take precautions against them, but it's true! Just like there's an inherent possibility a wasp could sting you, an inherent possibility a snake could bite you, an inherent possibility a mountain lion could eat your livestock, but you can dramatically lower your risk of these things by knowing how to coexist with these animals.

#nature #thoughts #random

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what-iz-life · 2 days

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Just because a person has a gorgeous heart and gentle nature doesn't mean they're naive or fragile. You never know the type of chaos it took for someone to become that calm. Don't mistake kindness for weakness...those ppl have survived the worst battles—they're smart & strong af.

#love #life #relationship #friendship #mental health #feelings #love quotes #life quotes #daily quotes #thoughts #lines #literature #writing inspiration #writers on tumblr #qoutes #quotes #post on tumblr #quote #beautiful words

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quotefeeling · 2 days

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I’d sleep so much better with you right next to me

Unknown

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thoughtkick · 3 days

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Sometimes people with low self esteem will try to punish you for caring about them.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

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artbyblastweave · 2 days

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Oh, I get it! All those acquaintances of mine on instagram who I’ve seen doing prom stuff when I know for a fact are too old for it are doing it as a makeup thing because they missed out on the real thing due to graduating high school during lockdown. Another mystery solved! Now I just need to figure out why god allows suffering, and the hot dog packaging thing, and my knowledge of the world will be Akashic

#thoughts #meta

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perfectfeelings · 3 days

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People often forget the eroticism of connecting through mind & spirit. The way a body tingles when its soul has been stroked by another's. The comfort when someone not only understands you, but feels you.

Meredith Marple

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stay-close · 2 days

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There are two people you’ll meet in your life. One will run a finger down the index of who you are and jump straight to the parts of you that pique their interest. The other will take his or her time reading through every one of your chapters and maybe fold corners of you that inspired them most. You will meet these two people; it is a given. It is the third that you’ll never see coming. That one person who not only finishes your sentences, but keeps the book.

Unknown

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resqectable · 2 days

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Butterflies cannot see their wings. But the rest of the world can. - You. You are beautiful and while you may not see it, we can.

Unknown

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perfectquote · 3 days

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My personality is who I am. My attitude depends on who you are.

Frank Ocean

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snakeautistic · 6 months

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People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me

#autism #actually autistic #autistic thoughts #autistic experiences #neurodivergent #autism spectrum #asd #autistic #neurodivergence #thoughts

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fluentisonus · 5 months

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trains will announce you're stopping in places you never knew existed

#this train is apparently going to tring. which is fun to say #thoughts

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thoughtstherapy · 6 months

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#thoughtstherapy #thoughts #therapy #mental health

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homosexualfairy · 2 months

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#quotes #cottagecore #naturecore #thoughts #books #words #books and libraries #dark academia #light academia #facts #memes

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saintmachina · 1 month

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Shipping fictional characters isn’t representative of your moral values. It’s representative of your particular psychic damage and the themes and motifs that haunt you. Hope this helps.

#shipping discourse #thoughts

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thoughtkick · 2 days

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I understand that nobody understands me, but I can’t be someone I’m not.

Audrey Tautou

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jaggedjawjosh · 2 months

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