birding-aus
A big disapointment in the environmental education movement is its
inadequacy (so far) in dealing with the cultural evolution of ethics. an
example of what I mean by cultural evolution: In various cultures
throughout history some people have been treated as property (slaves,
harems, peasants, etc.) rather than as free souls, and have been acquired
and dispensed-with by money and violence. By todays Australian standards
these ethics are barbaric, but they were/are accepted in other cultures,
including the various cultures of our ancestors. Our culture has evolved
beyond treating people as property. Not so, the treatment of wildlife,
nature and land.
To promote nature conservation through the blood-thursty,
testoterone-pumping culture of sport-killing is to condone and perpetuate
the culture of treating wildlife/nature/land as property (rather than as
sacred with its own right to exist beyond the bounds of human ownership and
exploitation). It is short-sighted.
At 17:22 23/03/99 +1200, Kim Sterelny wrote:
> What is the greater threat to Australian wildlife? Hunting, or
>various forms of habitat degredation. To pose this question is to answer it
>- is it at all uncontroversial that habitat destruction is overwhelmingly
>the greater threat? If that is so, the more people who support the
>preservation and reclaimation of wetlands (a particularly threatened and
>degraded habitat type in Australia) the better
snip>>>
David James
PO BOX 5225
Townsville Mail Centre,
Qld 4810, Australia
___________________________
To unsubscribe from this list, please send a message to
Include "unsubscribe birding-aus" in the message body (without the quotes)
|
