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Hi David and all the other contributors on this
thread
David wrote:
"I've been away from the computer for a
few days and find this thread still running. Tim makes the point
"I give a monkeys' because I see a world that
is being destroyed by people who have lost connection with nature. How to create
that connection is my motivation.
There's
no doubt about this."
I am going to question this very basic premise
i.e. that there is a connection with nature that is now lost. What
connection? The ancient Icelanders had a saying "man is the delight of
man". This wasn't some gay slogan (-: but an _expression_ of the fact
that humans always put human interests (as they perceive
them) first. Always have done. Human affairs are of foremost
interest to the human mind. That's why the ancient Icelanders deforested
Iceland and overgrazed and it's also why modern Aussies sit at home and watch
Big Brother.
As birders trying to conserve birds, we are not
rekindling some lost connection with nature from a past golden age. It's
business as usual. We are trying to make other humans see the
relevance of birds in human terms. To some, we no doubt give a mixed
message eg arguing for the preservation of some rarely seen birds and the
wholesale slaughter of other common ones (Indian mynahs).
I think Pete Woodall has a good point. I
have read historians arguing that a human-animal revolution in thinking occurred
when humans started to keep pets. I have also been in Sweden and heard the
complaints of the locals that those nasty southern Europeans shoot at "our
birds" on their migration north i.e. the birds that turn up at the feeders in
Spring.
David, I hope this isn't all too depressing but
... perhaps it's not that people today are different, but that the technology at
their fingertips gives their usual indifference greater consequence than it used
to? Same endpoint, different route.
Best wishes
Andrew
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