![]() ![]() First, I adored Quammen's Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind, and on the basis of this adoration added Quammen's entire naturalist oeuvre to my Amazon wishlist. I had certain expectations going into this book that I feel I need to declare up front. Huh? Not every crisp line represents a triumph of ethical clarity. I will eat stir-fried shrimp, sitr-fried beef, even stir-fried elk, but not stir-fried lion. ![]() I will let the butcher do all of my killing, I will destroy habitat but not animals. ![]() Moral philosophy, unfortunately, is not one of the mathmatical sciences. We all draw our lines in diferent places, at different angles, and for different reasons, each line's position reflecting a mix of individual factors that include sensibility, emotions, experience, and taste (in both the broad and the narrow senses of that word), as well as sheer righteous logic. There's a fuddling welter of such crisscrossing strictures, each observed by its own faction of conscientious people. I'm a Jainist, I will harm no living thing - except when I breathe or walk down the street, and then only unintentionally. I will squash an earwig in the kitchen but not a beetle in the yard. I will kill if my family is threatened but I won't aggress. I will fight if attacked but I won't kill. I will defend myself against physical menace but only pacifically. Personal ethics involves the drawing of lines: I will go as far as this boundary, here, but I will not go beyond. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |