Post No.: 0006
Furrywisepuppy says:
I don’t know why plant weeds are called ‘weeds’ because they are generally hardier than ‘regular plants’ – they can grow in the toughest environments and can be very fast-growing and fast-spreading. But then the strongest, in a world without human activity, aren’t always allowed to survive or thrive in the hands of humans (e.g. elephants with the longest tusks have been hunted by humans and made rare, and some relatively fragile species are conversely conserved when it may arguably be more effective to invest in protecting other flora, fauna or ecosystems more broadly). (This also highlights that a huge dose of pure environmental luck is relied upon, not just genetic fitness, in natural selection e.g. the healthiest humans may be conscripted against their own choice for war, or a meteorite could suddenly annihilate an island, or even nearly an entire world, full of vibrant and diverse life.)
There is no biological basis for defining weeds versus plants, or pests versus other animals – they’re just whatever we don’t particularly personally like or want – whatever plant or animal that’s in our way or competing for the same spaces or other resources as us (often as a result of our own short-sighted or careless actions in the past e.g. animals imported to tackle a ‘pest’ but then became ‘pests’ themselves, or stowaways via trading vessels to places where no natural predators for them are present). As propaganda, we give them different (derogatory) names to make them seem less friendly and more innocent for us to hate/destroy/get rid of them, including within a family, genus or species e.g. ‘pigeons’ versus ‘doves’. It’s the same way that humans dehumanise other groups of humans they don’t like with labels like ‘insurgents’ or ‘infidels’.
Some people ask what’s the point of certain animals or plants (from a biased human perspective, as if everything should exist to please humans)? But there’s no ultimate objective point to anyone or anything. And well humans are probably currently considered pests for much of the rest of the animal kingdom(!) If only the rest of the animal kingdom had voices, or we could hear and understand their voices. Woof.
If something (anything) that is so common is considered weak or inferior in terms of ‘survival of the fittest’ (by our own conception of what’s considered ‘fit’ – not nature’s conception) then consider why are they alive and why are they so common? Pests, weeds, immigrants (if you believe the propaganda of how many there supposedly are in your country) – they survive and thrive where they do, not because they are weak but, because they are equally survivally strong (if not stronger than what used to dominate in a particular environment if you believe they are ‘beating the ‘indigenous’ at their own game’). It’s simply survival of the fittest in its proper understanding, and they’re winning, or at least doing equally fine.
Foxes, for instance, get a bad reputation simply because they are very smart and resourceful animals. Humans frequently hate smart creatures – they fear them; find them a threat. We may value rare things more but common things are favoured by wild, unfettered nature – logically so, otherwise they wouldn’t be so common (hence why any ‘racial supremacist’ from any ethnicity or group who thinks some other well-populated group is lacking, defective or substandard is being myopic and insular). Rare is indeed precious too though, so whether common or rare or anything in-between, everyone and everything has value.
Now whether or not we should actually fight against something that is strong, dominant or genuinely threatening, or help something weak and fragile, is a highly complicated issue that cannot be generalised. The main point here in this post is that we only want to aggressively or systematically get rid of certain things/groups because we find them threatening to us, and we only find strong things/groups threatening – things/groups we fear might actually be so strong that they could defeat us at our own game; hence racism, sexism, etc. is a fear of the strong – and racists, sexists, etc. unconsciously, if not consciously, actually consider themselves the weaker, inferior parties who don’t want to play the game on an equal footing with the strong hence wish to discriminate and handicap these other groups because that’s the only way they feel they can win against them.
We leave things that we don’t consider a threat to us just be (e.g. you’d leave a ladybird alone whilst you might want to shoo a potentially harmful species of spider away. Now if it’s a species of spider that hasn’t, couldn’t and therefore wouldn’t ever hurt you but you wanted to violently get rid of it nonetheless then your beliefs and behaviours speak 100% about you, and the spider would be 0% at fault (and by the way, spiders existed way before humans ever did on this planet so it’s not ‘your land’ – it’s shared)). Violence, exclusion or discrimination is thus always initiated by those who rightly or wrongly consider themselves weak, not strong, and who think they cannot lift themselves up so wish to take other people down.
Woof. As an animal myself, I love creatures of all colours and kinds! Anybody can be my friend and I welcome everybody big and small. I am strong enough to not consider anybody a threat to me, and I first see potential friends not foes.
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