At Sat, 23 Jan 1999 22:23:19 EST, you wrote:
>
>In a message dated 1/23/99 7:17:31 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
><< deny such differences >>
>
>It makes all the difference in the world how you construe such differences,
>and the weight you put upon such differences. Differences are not necessarily
>distinctions are not necessarily separations are definitely not necessarily
>ethical dividing points.
>
>I might point out that certain "retarded" humans can't participate in this
>debate, or certain "senile" humans .. so therefore they aren't "persons",
>they aren't subject to ethical consideration?
>
>Biology makes for no clean break between the animal known as Homo Sapiens
>Sapiens and other animals .. it does allow for significant differences
>between All animals, but not the creation of some new type of dichotomy in
>nature .. that dichotomy is constructed in the minds of some humans in some
>cultures (by no means all), but that is no reason to objectify that dichotomy
>and assume it exists in nature.
>
>I don't deny that there are subtle differences between humanimals and
>nonhumanimals that have, in a historical turbulence, been iterated into a vast
>complex. I think it's egotistical for humans to take all the credit for this
>storm .. we are creatures of the happening, of the historical turbulence that
>iterated our extremely minute initial differences .. and as to whether the
>effects of this historical complex are anything to brag about or set us apart
>ethically, that remains in serious doubt, especially in the century of two
>world wars.
>
There you go guilting again. Humans are the only "bad" animals (because they possess
an ethical sense that they can violate), this, of course, means that they are also the
only "good" ones (because they possess an ethical sense that they can follow). Yes,
humans have fought wars, which other species do not do; despoiled this planet and
discriminated against their own kind; it is also humans who are striving to rectify
these errors, who compose music, create art, mathematics and literature, and are well
on the way to understanding their universe at very central and fundamental levels.
There will never be a nonhuman Hitler; neither will there ever be a nonhuman Gandhi,
because to be either requires self-consciousness. That is both the horror and the
grandeur of humanity.
>
>
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
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