Killing comes easy.
That's what the lions in Cameroon would say, I suppose. To protect the dead and to provide for the living, now, that is a difficult task. I'm sure the Cameroon thieves would agree.
So my question is: who do we protect and preserve over others?
It is as I heard Mr Seervai quote Hegel in a discussion: The greatest moral dilemmas are not between right and wrong; they are between right and right.
For it seems to me highly deplorable to have conservationists say that they're worried about the lives of lions, because hungry villagers are stealing their kills. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for animal protection and conservation, but I'm also for eradication of poverty and hunger, so that the world can see at least one less starving child or mother, and one less man who kills himself working (and not because they die).
I'm not saying prioritize man over the lions either; they're both integral to Earth, and they both have equal rights over Earth - the lions more so, perhaps, because man has exploited their lands as well. But the solution can't only be to lament the impending death of lions, surely? The specialization of labour doesn't need to make one indifferent to other, equally pressing, problems, does it? And these definitely aren't issues of different degrees of importance.
Africa is still the world's sympathy lab. And we're experimenting.
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I suppose it makes me a hypocrite, for I speak, but do nothing.
5 comments:
If you want the root of the problem, it's the exploitation of man by man. Two hundred years ago, the tribesmen wouldn't have needed to do this.
@ Piper-of-dawn: Very true.
@ Pariv: Perhaps then the only solution is to kill all the humans. :)
@thepiper:
Where is our knowledge of 200 years ago sourced from?
@verun:
Please, let's. The world belongs so much more to others than to us. Number is no indication of ownership, though it may be of brute power.
If number would be considered an indication of ownership, ants would rule the world! :D
I wouldn't mind that, actually. All humans are bonkers.
I can't cite two eminent authors off the cuff, but this is clearly something abnormal, and born out of a destruction of their natural way of life... which was still in existence two hundred years ago.
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