Eats, shoots and leaves - part deux
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While we have had multiple conversations on the environment and conservation, a poster recently turned the question around with regards to humans. Three statements of interest were: Are we special? Are we worth saving? Does it all matter? For those who eagerly await my profound answers, they are yes to the first two and ‘it doesn’t matter’ to the last one. Now you can skip the rest 
Are we special?
I think it is self-evident that we are a pretty special species and will not bother enumerating the reasons. Are we superior to other species? As a general statement, no. In the things that we do well, yes and no for the others. Are we insignificant parts of this universe? Yes, but that does not make us less special.
Are we worth saving?
Thankfully, the ranters on this blog are quite strong proponents of other species both great and small, cute and ugly. I don’t see anything wrong in being proponents for ourselves, faults and all. Its not like other species are running to our rescue. A counter to this argument is that we care about the environment because of selfish motives. Though people like to box human motives into neat little packages like selfishness, it is rarely so neat.
According to The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences which has an entry for Human Universals, which are behaviors and language which have been observed in all societies, one of them is ‘interest in bioforms’. I think the term interest is too weak, but that’s what it says. These ‘universals’ predate any real understanding of the environment or how we negatively impact it, and pervade all manner of religious texts, art forms and pop culture. I can in all honesty say that I loved animals as a child (to the point of feeling sad about the loss of T.rex, which I knew could eat up selfish little me) and so does my daughter.
But wait. So what if we like animals? Ultimately, it is ingrained in our genes that without a balanced mother nature, we cannot survive. So it is merely self serving. All our behaviors have ultimate (Darwinist) causes, but that in no way makes the proximate ones less real. I know my long suffering wife loves me not because our genetic destinies are forever intertwined, but because I once overheard her saying “I love him! I love him for the man he wants to be. And I love him for the man he almost is. ” My daughter was not taught to love animals (and to a lesser degree plants). She just does.
Does it all matter?
Before I briefly comment on this, I don’t believe that trying to save ourselves and the planet for the future is in any way at odds with making the present a better place. The two goals are quite complementary in my view.
So, in the end, the universe is supposed to become a dark, cold, empty place. What’s the point of self preservation? Here, I turn to religion. These are two verses from Ecclesiastes in the Bible.
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
And a while later:
So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?
This is also eloquently dealt with in the concept of dharma in the Bhagwad Gita. To end by paraphrasing Mother Teresa. “We are here to do. Not to succeed.”
Why not? I don’t even understand why we are having this discussion (about our specialness). On planet Earth, of course we are superior to other species. We have won (for now) the battle of survival and we deserve to enjoy it for a while.
I didn’t want to make the blog longer than it already was. If you choose to define superiority as the winner of the battle of survival, what is the measure that you use? If you count it by number of individuals, we are only more successful than other animals of similar size and weight - not bacteria, insects, maybe rats, etc. If you count it by total biomass, even then we are nowhere near a lot of other species. We could possibly define a measure of superiority where we come out on top in some absolute sense, but I think it may sound contrived - like a meaningless sports stat.
And I agree with you, I feel the discussion is somewhat pointless, but I wouldn’t want to disappoint the readership of this blog with something of note, would I?
I’m not sure what exactly you’re trying to argue here. Is it that the love for animals and the environment is not based on Darwinian or social conditioning, but rather an act of free will on the part of individual humans? If so, it’s a very weak argument. Does your daughter love snakes? I’m guessing not. Most self-professed ‘animal-lovers’ would confess to a revulsion or even hatred for snakes. My point here is that your daughter does not need to be ‘taught’ explicitly to love animals. The social conditioning that she experiences right from the womb is powerful enough. Books, movies, songs, toys… all of these are filled with kindly animal and plant images. Most kids in the West love lions and tigers as cuddly animals that show up in cartoons, and romp around in the safe confines of zoos. But ask a child from a village in India that’s on the outskirts of a tiger sanctuary, and you’re likely to a get a far less benign image of this animal.
Sorry, I’m a worse communicator than I thought
To the contrary, I think the ‘love’ or the aforementioned interest in bioforms is very much part of Darwinian or social conditioning - that is why it is a human universal. Most definitely, according to your particular situation you may have a certain degree of healthy revulsion or fear, but that does not change the fact that as a species we have an innate ‘respect’ for nature.
I’m arguing that even though there are ultimate causes (Darwinistic) of our proximate feelings (love, respect, fear, etc), that does not make our proximate feelings any less real or relevant (actually I can’t claim to be making an original argument here, I’m just regurgitating things that resonated with me). In other words, we can attempt to boil down all our myriad feelings to the Dawkins Selfish Gene, but that does not negate them whatsoever.
Oh and by the way, the first time my daughter saw a snake in the backyard (a little one), she was actually more curious than anything else.
Thanks for clarifying. I agree completely.
The other day, a behavioral scientist (sorry, forget his name) was on the radio, and he made a rather curious statement. He said that the scientific understanding of human behavior had now reached a point where, according to him, free will had pretty much been exploded as a myth. Harsh words to the individualists among us, but he backed it with quite convincing arguments.
I guess the opinion of at least some of the people responding is that we are special, and / or if we are special, we deserve to exist and keep existing, even at the cost of other forms of life? In which case, hypothetically if we make a bunch of robots who become even more intelligent, and capable of all the myriad feelings of humans and more ( i.e., more special), but who don’t like us, I guess we should just let them take over? Say if these robots don’t like us, but they like all other forms of life, will we give up without a fight? Or, less hypothetically, suppose an even more special alien race comes visiting and wants to eliminate us, we should let them, because they’re more special, right? And we have to be fair, because that’s what we’ve done to life less special than us, right? Anyone more special than us should be able to do whatever, we shouldn’t question it, lots of us don’t question God, for instance..we just ask, even if we don’t get it, we still keep asking..even though God, through the human hand, has killed millions of humans, it’s still going on, how about girls getting raped, getting their eyes gouged out, and then getting burnt..I guess God’s different, because he’s supposed to love us, maybe these girls end up in heaven, and are happy in the long run.
And I don’t how we can bring what kids feel into this, I remember killing scores of ants just for the heck of it, with a rubber band, one day long ago..kids do stuff. So do adults, I was a friend’s place recently, a garden bug came into the house, the wife of the friend killed it without even thinking about it..it wasn’t a bug that comes into the house and eats stuff, it was just a garden bug that’d lost its way. It could’ve been easily shooed out. And as Papi says, I also think most kids just decide what’s good and not from what inputs they get. At least till they become teenagers, I guess, from what I’ve been told.
As usual, I’m all over the place..
Don’t want to unnecessarily prolong the discussion, but without a doubt, our experience of free will (or love, etc) is real. Nobody can accuse us of faking these feelings. But I have a sinking fear that the experience may be a grand illusion of our complex but deterministic minds (quantum mechanical uncertainity notwithstanding; randomness does not equate to free will). This obviously raises very deep ethical and moral questions - for starters, it completely throws out the basis of culpability in the legal system. Oh well….
I hope I made it clear that being ’special’ (I did not even claim that we were more special in an absolute sense) does not give us the right to willy nilly trample over everything else; which unfortunately goes on today. So in my morality, the robots would be wrong (unless we in some way threatened their existence). Besides, if I created them, I would make sure that I was part of their spiritual machine
And I must admit to being completely perplexed by your position. You seem to be arguing at once to laissez faire Darwinism and ahimsa. It would help if you picked a side or a point on the spectrum. And yes, you’re all over the map, some I agree with and some I don’t.
Anyway, I don’t have a life so I blog on a Saturday night. What’s your excuse?
My point is many people seem to think because we’re special in some way, we should keep on propagating..and it’s supposed to be logical to think that way. I don’t think it should be logical to think that way, and it’s not humane :). That’s the reason for the “more special” robot and alien example, if we’re suddenly not the most special, would people suddenly start to think, no, every species should be happy, humans should be left alone, every species should have its space?
Signs of old age - no life, and don’t care too much either..Saturday night just meant going and beating a bunch of people at poker (not real money, though), and coming back and watching “The Jacket”. Keira Knightley (the blonde girl in “Bend it ..”, Vinod) is definitely a sight for “no life” eyes. The movie was ok, 3/5. Adrien Brody is watchable, too, and the new Bond had a small part.
Yes.
Yes. While I won’t be a happy camper if this happens during my lifetime, if that does happen — I don’t have a “moral” issue with this. I am a firm believer in “survival of the fittest”. Morality and “humaneness” be damned.
You still have not expressed your position. Your interest seems to be more in pointing out a fallacy in the ‘Dog eat dog as long as it ain’t my dog’ position. Agreed, the position is untenable to any rational person.
So yours is a ‘Dog eat dog’ position, which is internally self consistent. But I find it hard to believe that you can completely accept it. You know a discussion has taken a turn towards flames or banality when Hitler is mentioned, so my apologies in advance
By your logic, Hitler exterminating millions was fine, since he was fittest at the time?
No.
Hitler belonged to the human species and he killed others of the same species. I thought this whole discussion was about a superior species eliminating an inferior one. I already stated my position on that one.
This could be a bit of a slippery slope. Many proponents of the eugenics movement (which Nazism relied on heavily) considered Jews and other ‘inferior’ races members of a different species.
Well, I am not a proponent of the eugenics movement. You are trying to steer this discussion towards an unnecessary path which is not what this post (and subsequent discussion) is about. It’s not me who is on the slippery slope here.
Didn’t want to imply that you support the eugenics movement. Time to move on I guess - the post is growing a little long in the tooth.