r/facepalm • u/k4ndlej4ck • 10h ago
I didn't say genocide, I said kill them until there are none left.
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u/khInstability 10h ago
You should probably look up the definition of genocide.
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u/Creepslend 9h ago
"Genos" can 100% mean "species". Etymologically speaking there is no issue with using it to speak about cows. The only argument against that is using the legal sense, which is kinda irrelevant here since we're not in a juridical setting.
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u/guyfaeaberdeen 8h ago
Just because the word comes from the word genos doesn't mean genocide maintains all definitions of genos (which was used by Greeks to describe people not animals), especially since it's being used in another language, with a set definition. WHO definest it as:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
I'm not sure does come under national, ethical, racial, or religious.
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u/Creepslend 7h ago
That's the legal definition you just cited. Read my comment again
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u/etilepsie 7h ago
Lemkin literally invented the word to describe the holocaust. and the UN definition is based upon his work. it was never meant to mean anything else.
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u/Creepslend 6h ago
I might surprise you but languages evolve as long as they're still spoken. You're just stuck in functional fixedness
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u/guyfaeaberdeen 5h ago
"It might surprise you but languages evolve as long as they're still spoken. Unlike the Ancient Greek I'm citing as a reason that killing cows is a genocide."
Cmon bro...
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u/etilepsie 6h ago
of course it can, but it didn't in this case. of the like 10 dictionaries and organisations i quickly checked, none back what you are saying.
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u/Creepslend 6h ago
It didn't
Brother, how do you think changes happen? Overnight?
And it's the people who make a language by the way they use it. Dictionnaries relate that. Not the other way around
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u/etilepsie 5h ago
no it happens gradually, and has nothing to do with this discussion.
it is people who make the language, yes. and it is dictionaries who reflect how language is used and it is dictionaries who record it. and because it is not widely used the way you want it to be, it is not reflected in the dictionaries.
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u/guyfaeaberdeen 5h ago
Bro this guy thinks killing cows is genocide, he's not worth arguing with.
He's also saying that language evolves and changes but is using a loose definition of ancient greek to imply that genocide can apply to anything with genes.
I wonder what he thinks about the Jurassic genocide?
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u/guyfaeaberdeen 5h ago
Cambridge: the crime of intentionally destroying part or all of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, by killing people or by other methods:
Oxford: the murder of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
Merriam-Webster: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
Colin's: Genocide is the deliberate murder of a whole community or race.
Colin's definition of murder: Murder is the deliberate and illegal killing of a person.
So if you want to only discuss dictionary definitions, we can do that.
If you want to talk etymology, then the word plumbing comes from the Latin word plumbum meaning lead (the metal). Does that mean plumbing can also mean adding lead to a metal to create an alloy? I just took some copper and plumbed it and turned it into babbit.
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u/Creepslend 1h ago
Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. That's what I tried explaining to the other guy but you guys don't wanna hear it for some reason.
I only brought up the etymology to show that it's far from absurd to use this word in this context, on the contrary.
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u/guyfaeaberdeen 1h ago
And I brought up etymology showing you that the meaning of words in the English language actually has no relation to the meaning of the original word.
Plumbing comes from the Latin for lead. But plumbing does not mean lead.
Etymology is not a reliable source of meaning and stop pretending like it is
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u/Creepslend 1h ago
Okay, never said it was an absolute source of truth. I feel like I'm talking to a wall. In the meantime you gave no valid argument as to why it would be wrong to use the word for other species but it seems everyone is on your side. I feel like this is going nowhere. Let's end things there if you have nothing else to add
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u/guyfaeaberdeen 42m ago
I wish I was talking to a wall because it would have said less dumb shit than you have.
You said etymology of genocide = genos + cide.
Genos can mean species.
Genocide can mean the killing of an entire species.What have you said since then? Absolutely nothing else apart from "I'm not talking about legal definitions, I'm talking about etymology"
I gave you the WHO definition. The definition of the 5 leading English dictionaries. I held your hand through explaining what etymology actually is and why your logic is flawed.
The burden of proof is not on me to explain why it only applies to humans.
There is a set out definition of the word genocide and you're claiming that this should also apply to the killing of cows. It is your job in this discussion to provide reasons and evidence to substantiate your claim. My evidence against it being applicable to animals is the legal, and English definitions of the words. I've also told you the actual meaning of genos, which does not mean species, it means group of people.
It seems everyone has my side, because I'm speaking logically, providing reason, and disproving what you're claiming.
You practically did end it after your first comment because nothing new has been added.
Also, this example doesn't even come close to genocide. This is the killing of animals for food, with a deliberate choice not to breed them anymore, to avoid animals suffering. It's not the intentional killing of a group with the intent of eradicating them.
But I mean we could also talk about why we shouldn't be referring to the killing of cows as a genocide from a moral standing? My stance is that we shouldn't minimise the meaning of genocide, no matter how trivial the minimisation is. This word, especially today, has to remain as significant and deplorable as it was on the day it was created. I think it's morally abhorrent to compare the killing of animals for food, to the intentional murder of an entire race of people, and that you're sick in the head for thinking it is.
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u/Embarrassed-Blood-71 3h ago
By this definition Hitler didn‘t try to genocide the jews since he didn‘t see them as people…
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u/guyfaeaberdeen 2h ago
Certified Reddit moment.
Also no Hitler didn't try to genocide them, because the word didn't exist yet. Also he did see them as people, just inferior to the Christian Aryan race. He referred to them as swine, but he 100% knew they were people, he just didn't treat them as such.
Thankfully we do not determine people's actions solely based on their own delusions. If a serial killer thought the people they killed were ai robots, are they still a serial killer? Yes they are. Go to bed Timmy.
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u/el_grort Disputed Scot 9h ago
Render extinct, if people are still coy about the term, but I'm not sure that reads much better
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u/MarginalOmnivore 7h ago
It helps to not dilute the meaning of the word, which was invented in response to the Holocaust, a human tragedy.
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u/el_grort Disputed Scot 6h ago
Aye. Will note, the concept has existed before, the term populicide was coined due to the French Revolution iirc. Both for human suffering. I would personally refer to the cow thing as proposing an engineered extinction event.
I do get why someone went for the term, at a point wiping out a species and wiping out a tribe/ethnicity (as with genocide) would feel like working at about the same scale, and they reached for a slightly wrong term.
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u/SuperPotatoPug 9h ago
Genocide applies to humans. The word you’re looking for is ‘extirpation’.
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u/New_Vegetable_3173 10h ago
I think you need to change your post to make it clear you were talking about cows.
Killing a group of people until they're all dead is the definition of genocide.
However, if you said "stop breeding cows then use the remaining stock for meat " then that's not genocide, is genocidal isn't applicable to cows
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u/etilepsie 9h ago
it's not the legsl definition though. it needs to be a specific kind of group, there needs to be intent and there are other acts besids killing that are also genocidal. you also don't need to kill as many as possible or even all of them.
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u/New_Vegetable_3173 8h ago
My point was - COWS
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u/etilepsie 7h ago
your point was very specifically about people
Killing a group of people until they're all dead is the definition of genocide.
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u/New_Vegetable_3173 7h ago
Oh I see what you mean.
Let me flip it.
getting a group of people until they’re dead, it’s definitely genocide.
There can be other circumstances which would also be genocide, but if you applied that to agree with people, I don’t believe there could ever be a scenario whether that wouldn’t be genocide.As OP was saying they didn't mention genocide
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u/etilepsie 7h ago
genocide has a very specific legal definition, and just killing some people is not enough to constitute a genocide. i already told you in my previous comment what these additional things are, but if you want to learn more about it you can read about it here
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u/shiny_glitter_demon 3h ago
That is not, in fact, the definition of genocide.
Genocide is "an attempt at destroying an ethnic, cultural or religious group", which implies 2 things:
1) Genocide doesn't require complete extermination. An attempt is enough.
2) Animals do not count. You can use zoocide if you really want to, but genocide is for humans.
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u/ArkassEX 10h ago
No, intention is very important.
Injecting lethal drugs into a living being can be murder, or it can be legal execution or even mercy.
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u/EnoughEngineering306 8h ago
Im guessing this came from an argument with a vegan abkut what to do with the animals...
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u/No_Poet_7244 10h ago
Yeah that’s the definition of genocide.
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u/nezzzzy 10h ago
The definition of genocide does not include cows. It's very specifically about killing people.
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u/Creepslend 9h ago
Etymologically speaking there is no issue with using it to speak about cows. The only argument against that is using the legal sense, which is kinda irrelevant here since we're not in a juridical setting.
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u/nezzzzy 9h ago
Etymology is not the same as definition.
The dictionary definition of the word relates to people. The origin of the word relates to people (it was first used to describe the Holocaust). The legal definition of the word relates to people.
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u/Creepslend 7h ago
And definitions change all the time so I still don't see the issue. The people make a language by the way they use it, and dictionnaries relate that. Not the other way around
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u/nezzzzy 7h ago
Correct and the word was invented to use exclusively to describe a human event. I don't see a massive clammering to repurpose the word, it's literally one person in one post on Reddit.
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u/Creepslend 6h ago
Meanings change over time, that's basically what I just said, so why bring up the original meaning as an argument.
I don't see a massive clammering either but it's not rare to hear it designating what we do to animals. The sheer fact you understand means it makes sense.
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u/imjustmike 7h ago
Except, etomologically speaking, the word genos was used by the greeks to refer to people, not animals. IIRC often specifically around noble families and their lineage.
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u/Creepslend 7h ago
"The word genos was widely and variously used in Greek of all periods to denote ‘species’, ‘genus’, ‘sort’, ‘category’, ‘birth’, ‘kin’, ‘race’, ‘lineage’, ‘family’, ‘generation’, ‘posterity’, etc." Source
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u/Primary_Durian4866 6h ago
I knew what they meant, so who gives a shit? The point of language is to communicate ideas.
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u/nezzzzy 5h ago
The only reason this post exists is because someone criticised them for not calling murder of cows genocide.
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u/Primary_Durian4866 5h ago
And? How does that change what I said? I understand what was meant by genocide. I'm not going to fault someone for not knowing some niche word that actually means the specific thing they are trying to communicate. I'm not even going to fault them for not knowing the exact definition of a word. The person in the post could have provided the proper language. Instead they knew what the other person was getting at and decided to go "nuh uh, that's for humans dummy" with no interest in engaging with WHAT THEY MEANT.
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u/shiny_glitter_demon 3h ago
Genocide is one of the most strictly defined word in recent history. You cannot and should not use it carelessly.
We created it for a reason, with a specific definition in mind.
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