Environmental Fascism
Villages [in Zimbabwe] sell elephant licenses. Hunters currently pay as much as $30,000 for the privilege. It is a lot of money in a country where the per capita annual income is around $2000. What about the morality of sport hunting? Is it something a sane person would do? Winston Churchill once shot a rhinoceros, but failed to kill it. The wounded rhino charged. The hunting party opened fire. The rhino kept coming into a hail of bullets, swerving aside at the last moment before more bullets finally brought it down. Churchill later wrote that, even in the midst of the charge, "There is time to reflect with some detachment that, after all, we it is who have forced the conflict by an unprovoked assault with murderous intent upon a peaceful herbivore; that if there is such a thing as right and wrong between man and beast - and who shall say there is not? - right is plainly on his side.
-pg 19-20
Do we have the right to put a stop to [animal culling]? Animal rights organizations say no. Their approach is individualistic rather than holistic. They focus on each and every animal rather than on larger questions about species or habitat. Their view is particularly salient in the case of elephants. When rangers cull elephants, they take out whole families in order to avoid leaving orphans and other remnants of shattered families. The horrible thing is that, under favorable conditions, elephants can hear the sound of a culling operation up to thirty kilometres away, and elephants are smart -- smart enough to understand and sgare the terror of the ones being shot. Cynthia Moss, who has written fascinating and convincing books about what it is like to be an elephant, says elephants deserve something better than to be exterminated like rodents. She has a point.
Lawrence Johnson, though, argues that there are times when "the interests of species are not adequately protected by a concern for individuals." The individualistic animal rights position is powerful, given the nature of elephants, but it leaves us in a horrible quandary, for the price of absolute rights may be extinction. Nonetheless, elephants are not like zebra. They are not the kind of creature that we have a right to treat as mere means. Cynthia Moss (p.226) said she would rather see elephants go extinct than see individual animals murdered for sake of population control, and she is not alone. If elephants had a voice in the matter, perhaps, they would thank Moss for her stand. Perhaps not.
- pg. 22-23, David Schmidtz: When Preservationism Doesn't Preserve.
I'm with Cynthia Moss on this one, even if the price to pay is the extinction or suffering of the entire herd.
-pg 19-20
Do we have the right to put a stop to [animal culling]? Animal rights organizations say no. Their approach is individualistic rather than holistic. They focus on each and every animal rather than on larger questions about species or habitat. Their view is particularly salient in the case of elephants. When rangers cull elephants, they take out whole families in order to avoid leaving orphans and other remnants of shattered families. The horrible thing is that, under favorable conditions, elephants can hear the sound of a culling operation up to thirty kilometres away, and elephants are smart -- smart enough to understand and sgare the terror of the ones being shot. Cynthia Moss, who has written fascinating and convincing books about what it is like to be an elephant, says elephants deserve something better than to be exterminated like rodents. She has a point.
Lawrence Johnson, though, argues that there are times when "the interests of species are not adequately protected by a concern for individuals." The individualistic animal rights position is powerful, given the nature of elephants, but it leaves us in a horrible quandary, for the price of absolute rights may be extinction. Nonetheless, elephants are not like zebra. They are not the kind of creature that we have a right to treat as mere means. Cynthia Moss (p.226) said she would rather see elephants go extinct than see individual animals murdered for sake of population control, and she is not alone. If elephants had a voice in the matter, perhaps, they would thank Moss for her stand. Perhaps not.
- pg. 22-23, David Schmidtz: When Preservationism Doesn't Preserve.
I'm with Cynthia Moss on this one, even if the price to pay is the extinction or suffering of the entire herd.
8 Comments:
A group of children were playing near two railway tracks, one still in use while the other disused.
Only one child played on the disused track, the rest on the operational track.
The train is coming, and you are just beside the track interchange.
You can make the train change its course to the disused track and save most of the kids.
However, that would also mean the lone child playing by the disused track would be sacrificed.
Or would you rather let the train go its way?
What kind of decision we could make........ ........
Most people might choose to divert the course of the train, and sacrifice only one child. You might think the same way, I guess.
Exactly, to save most of the children at the expense of only one child was rational decision
most people would make, morally and emotionally. But, have you ever thought that the child choosing to play on the disused track had in fact made the right decision to play at a safe place?
Nevertheless, he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was.
This kind of dilemma happens around us everyday.
In the office, community, in politics and especially in a democratic society, the minority is often sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how farsighted and knowledgeable the minority are. The child who chose not to play with the rest on the operational track was sidelined.
And in the case he was sacrificed, no one would shed a tear for him.
The great critic Leo Velski Julian who told the story said he would not try to change the course of the train because he believed that the kids playing on the operational track should have known very well that track was still in use, and that they should have run away if they heard the train's sirens..
If the train was diverted, that lone child would definitely die because he never thought the train could come over to that track! Moreover, that track was not in use probably because it was not safe. If the train was diverted to the track, we could put the lives of all passengers on board at stake!
And in your attempt to save a few kids by sacrificing one child, you might end up sacrificing hundreds of people to save these few kids.
While we are all aware that life is full of tough decisions that need to be made, we may not realize that hasty decisions may not always be the right one.
'Remember that what's right isn't always popular... and what's popular isn't always right.'
Everybody makes mistakes; that's why they put erasers on pencils.
I wouldn't divert the train in the first place.
I would hijack the train and do some indiana jones thing.
would animals give a damn if their species went extinct or not? I think not, since they have no concept of a species or extinction in the first place. So the argument for preserving biodiversity is not as altruistic as it might seem. Humans want to save biodiversity for their own selfish benefit, so that their children don't have to read about elephants in books. but every animal knows suffering.
I feel conservationists have a tendency to objectify animals, to turn them into things, instead of respecting each animal as a sentient individual. The term 'conservation' reveals something about this. We would never talk about the 'conservation' of indigenous peoples, as we routinely talk about the conservation of oil resources, energy, or the expensive saffron condiment that's running out at home. Each animal is rendered anonymous, subsumed against their wishes into a generic 'members of a species', and not respected as beings with feelings, aspirations and wants of their own. Our society talks of conserving tigers and polar bears, yet continue to subject 6 billion chickens everyday to a situation on the magnitude of the Holocaust, the industrialized mass production of murder. If dolphins were to over run the oceans one day, it might very well become acceptable for MacDonald's to sell dolphin steak burger. Already, with declining stock of tuna, there is talk of 'conserving' this species, which only a generation was considered nothing more than food. This logic of value based on scarcity is the same the logic that drives industrial consumer society. Society's belief in the logic of supply/demand was enough to make it true, and for it to start twisting reality in it's own perverted image. For e.g. observe the false dichotomy between Art and Design. Design is anything that is affordable and mass-produced, therefore Art is anything that exists in limited editions. Art has a high value not for it's intrinsic, existential value, but because of it's small production numbers. Similarly, animals are valuable because they are about to disappear, not because they have a right to life, e.g. like unborn foetuses have a right to life.
Although the thought experiment aims to illustrate the thorny ethics of sacrifice and choice, i feel it also reveals certain tendencies about western ways of thinking. Westerns tend to believe that humans can take fate into their own hands, that human effort and reason controls fate. Easterners tend to accept what fate gives them, and to adapt to the circumstances. In reality, there are an infinite number of things that could happen each moment in such a situation, whereas choice in the experiment is premised on the ability of reasoning to predict the future in a finite selection of scenarios. I would just sit back and let fate take it's course, wary of the fact that the best intentions often have unintended consequences. It is a form of humility, acknowledging the smallness of human effort in the face of fate. What if the child playing off the tracks is destined to grow up and engineer the Third World War? Perhaps his death has a reason. The Westerner on the other hand, is compelled by his idea of ethics to 'do something', because his culture puts a high value on the power of human agency. And look where that kind of enterprising spirit has gotten us today, a world on the verge of irreversible climate change. It is a testament to the limitations of human thought. Reality has a tendency to defiantly smack humans right back in the face. And who knows, the universe is not always unforgiving either, e.g. the fuel on the train might run out in time. Our choice to interfere might interfere with the ability of the situation to right itself out.
Also, the experiment privileges the reader as the agent with power and control, and portrays the children as passive recipients of our decisions. It's like how we move to the left when we bump into someone standing in our way, yet the other person moves to the left as well, creating a hilarious impasse. We do so without taking into account the thoughts of the person blocking our way. The problem is because we treat the person as nothing more than an 'obstacle', an object incapable of reacting, something to be avoided. By counter-intuitively walking straight on ahead, we give the other person a chance to react, and move to the side. Suppose the children were actually adept at sports, champions of their school's running teams, if we were to swerve the train's trajectory to 'save' them, we might end up confusing their line of escape and kill them instead.
You kind of summarised what an environmental ethics class might teach. However, it's hard to accomodate things like destiny fate into rational discussion.
You might want to read some environmental ethics stuff..I can lend you. Then you'll find that talk of conservation/preservation don't objectify nature in the way you think they do.
It'd be great if you can comment earlier because sometimes I miss comments made on past entries.
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