From: Richard Ridge (richard_ridge@tao-group.com)
Date: Tue Feb 26 2002 - 02:55:29 MST
A simply stunning post from Mr Roh, if I may say so :-)
> Sometimes I think that the Vegans only experience with nature is
> from children's
> shows, and preachers books. The ones where the lamb lies with the lion as
> something other than food.
Yes - one of my problems with certain strains of vegetarianism is that it
seems to be a kind of moral squeamishness, an attempt to sanitise nature,
rather than having anything to do with 'inter-species ethics.' If such an
ethics could be firmly elaborated, I would probably think a good deal better
of vegetarianism than I can currently claim to. I'm not sure I would suggest
that such feelings are necessarily to be denigrated, but it would be nice if
choices of that kind could be firmly defended in rational terms.
> It is natural for humans to learn mathematics,
> drive cars and build buildings. Living in nature really means to
> live a modern
> lifestyle. We are nature and whatever we do is what defines human nature.
I'm always amazed at how quickly the Aquinan notion of 'natural' behaviour
is wheeled out, a notion that I've always found risible. The obvious point
is that it is the essence of civilisation to engage in 'unnatural' behaviour
rather than how Hobbes described the state of nature - ' nasty, brutish and
short.' For example, enormous amounts of our behaviour today is 'unnatural'
when compared against the behaviour of our hunter-gatherer ancestors - and a
good thing too.
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