I would say that almost no humans die peacefully and comfortably outside those who are drugged up. Especially those that die of “old age” (which means a slow unstoppable nightmare failure of everything in your body and mind.) The peaceful and comfortable deaths are the ones that happen so quickly and unexpectedly that you don’t know that it happened. A “peaceful and comfortable” death is when someone sneaks up behind you and shoots you in the head while you aren’t noticing.
**Life is a cruel joke for pretty much all living things except for maybe humans.
**
Shh! They will find you now. Because you know. Try to stay distracted by the TV or phone or other media, it is your only hope.
On the plus side, the vast majority of life can’t feel pain. Supposedly only vertebrates can feel physical pain, and supposedly only mammals and birds can feel emotional pain.
So most of the life on earth has no pain. All the single celled organisms, invertebrates, etc.
I get called a pessimist when I point out all the suffering in life. Some people are just desperate to be naive.
Such a pessimist! You’re not seeing that there are so many incredible ways for new life to happen, and there is so much to eat! Unless, of course, you’re in an unfavorable habitat with insufficient food, in which case something else will have so much to eat!
Sunspace was responding to a post that mentioned single-celled organisms and invertebrates, which lack any kind of faculties necessary to process pain. There might be subjective, nonphysical pain, but such a phenomenon is without physical evidence and likely non-falsifiable.
Fortunately, (as far as we know), humans are the only species with a sophisticated enough sense of humor to understand the concept of a “cruel joke” both in its ironic, and un-ironic sense. To all other creatures, that’s just life.
This reminds me of a debate I had with my ex. I argued that life for feral cats doesn’t suck, because that’s the only life they’ve ever known. Sure, life would suck for a homeless domestic cat, because they know how awesome it is to live in an air conditioned house and have humans feed them and give them daily massages.
Hunters know this. I laugh when people wish they could be a wolf, or a tiger, or a cheetah, etc. Every kill I’ve hung on a gambrel is riddled with ticks, pests, burrowing critters, and I’ve watched them fall off the animal as it cools. To me, it looks like the life of a woodland creature is nothing but terror, hunger, cold, and constant gnawing pain.
Don’t get me started on the fools who wish they lived in medieval times, the old west, etc.
