> For what it's worth, I am an ecologist, and I walk around in the woods a
> lot studying nature.
For what it's worth, I am an ecologist also. This is not, however, how
you learn about these things.
> Rocks die? Rocks prefer respect to life? Gee, gonna have to think on
> that one.
Read "Grandfather" by Tom Brown Jr. before you do. You may well disagree,
but you will at least be thinking about it from a more informed perspective.
>
> Well, what are they? Cruelty free and respectful ways to kill, I mean.
Never having had to kill an animal to survive, I could not tell you first
hand, and would not trust myself to relay another persons account
properly. I would suggest another Tom Brown book, "The Search."
I think LaChapelle also has some views on this in "Sacred Land..."
> I've never discussed respect and cruelty with the birds and
> hte bees,
Perhaps you should.
> but I sure have watched animals treat each other with cruelty
> and disrespect, causing pain, mutilation, and sometimes they don't even
> have enough respect to kill the maimed animal!
Wait a moment, I thought you said that life was paramount. Now you are
upset at an animal who may agree with you? Besides, I thought you said
that these were human ideas. Is it not inappropriate to evaluate nature
in these terms?
> I have no problems, moral
> or otherwise, with what animals do to each other. We are talking moral
> issues, and only humans are moral agents (at least until other animals or
> plants tell us about their morality in no uncertain terms).
Ah!! So what your saying is we are not animals. We are "above" that. We
and we alone have the sacred ability to be moral.
Call it what you will, this view will always be the arrogance of humanism
to me.
> Oh, by the way, I take my views from nature too, but not my morality.
Which views? Nature "red in tooth and claw?" If what you mean is your
views about the world, life and what our human experience is about, I
would be very interested to know how you sepperate this from your morality.
> My morality comes from my wish to keep and cherish a beautiful nature
> all over the world.
What exactly do you mean by this? You say that you dislike much of what
you see in nature, enough so to avoid using it as an example (which is
NOT by the way what I advocated, but without a common vocabulary and
metaphysics it would be useless to discuss the distinction), yet your
morality is based on preserving it. All of it? Hmmm. It has often been
suggested that the world as a whole would be better off without people,
at least the "beautiful nature" would be. Seems to me it would be logical
of you to not be morally object to infanticide, war, the holocost and so
on. This is not meant mockingly, there are misanthropes who have moral
codes that are just so, based on the same principle you just outlined.
A moral code which does not come from nature is a creation of the human
imagination. This is where "ivory towers" come into it. You basically
supported my thesis (if not my choice of words) when you said that
"cruelty" and "respect" were human constructs. I would say that is where
we differ. The concepts you use may well be human constructs. The
concepts I try (key word) to use are ones I have learned from nature, not
ones I have imposed on it.
Jon Poppele
Ecology, Evolution and Behavior
University of Minnesota
