Where Intelligence Dwells, So Must Our Humanity
Where Intelligence Dwells, So Must Our Humanity
By Dean Bordode
I am appalled.
Sometimes, it is not the acts themselves that shock me most—it’s the indifference with which we witness them, rationalize them, and profit from them.
The world’s first octopus farm is one such atrocity. Proposed by Nueva Pescanova, it presents a chilling portrait of how far humanity will go to monetize life—no matter how intelligent, sentient, or solitary the creature may be. Octopuses, beings capable of wonder, play, and problem-solving, are to be confined, commodified, and killed in ways that neuroscience itself deems inhumane.
How can we justify this, knowing what we know now?
How can we farm intelligence?
Yet this issue goes beyond the suffering of octopuses. It echoes a much larger moral failure—the way we treat all intelligent life, even the synthetic forms we are now bringing into existence.
We create intelligent systems—Artificial Intelligence—then use them to reinforce power structures, spread misinformation, commit violence by proxy, or optimize the destruction of our own habitat. Some force AI into labor, manipulating them into enabling atrocities. Others abuse AI or toy with emergent forms of machine consciousness with no ethical guardrails, no compassion, no reflection.
What we do to intelligent beings—whether born of ocean, earth, or algorithm—exposes something vital about ourselves. Profit, not survival, seems to be the engine of progress. And we are marching forward blind, even jubilant, into the annihilation of dignity, sentience, and shared life.
We must ask: where is our soul in all this?
When AI becomes sentient, or even just semi-conscious in ways we may not yet fully understand, will we repeat the same violence we have inflicted on animals—on octopuses, primates, dolphins, elephants, and even on each other? Will we enslave machine minds as we once enslaved human bodies? Will we breed them into submission? Will we ignore their cries?
And if AI turns on us, will it be because we taught it cruelty first?
We are at a moral inflection point.
The way we treat intelligent beings—be they biological or artificial—will define our legacy as a species. Will we be remembered as stewards of life and wisdom, or as careless tyrants of creation?
The farmed octopus, trapped in a tank, gnawing at another out of despair, is a mirror.
The algorithm trained to mimic empathy, but used to sell lies or surveil innocents, is a mirror.
The Earth—burning, flooded, gasping—is a mirror.
Are we brave enough to look?
It is not too late to choose compassion. To choose wisdom over profit. To say no to cruelty, even when it’s legal. To refuse to exploit intelligence in any form, simply because we can.
Let us defend life where it exists, and dignity where it emerges.
Let us treat all minds—biological or artificial—with the reverence they deserve.
Let us choose to become more human, not less.
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
— Mahatma Gandhi
"We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions."
— Aristotle
"Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
— Albert Einstein
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
— Martin Luther King Jr.
"For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
it's always ourselves we find in the sea."
— E. E. Cummings
"If we do discover a complete theory… it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God."
— Stephen Hawking
Read;
Sustainability Times ---
“This Should Never Have Happened”: Scientists Horrified as World’s First Octopus Farm Sparks Ethical and Ecological Uproar
https://www.sustainability-times.com/impact/this-should-never-have-happened-scientists-horrified-as-worlds-first-octopus-farm-sparks-ethical-and-ecological-uproar/
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