Perhaps there is also something to be learned from the mass outpouring of sympathy for endangered animals. In a biting essay at the peak of the Darfur genocide, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof complained that Americans would care more about Darfur if the victims were puppies. He recalled that the public contributed $45,000 to rescue a terrier stranded on a burned-out oil tanker in the Pacific in 2002. And the eviction of a red-tailed hawk from its nest atop a Manhattan apartment building in 2004 sparked an international outcry, with actress Mary Tyler Moore and others rising up in passionate defense of the bird’s rights. “A single homeless hawk aroused more indignation than 2 million homeless Sudanese,” Kristof commented. Given my posting guidelines, this one (h/t Vid Beldavs) might be shot down as both off-topic and politically incendiary. Still, I believe what I quote here speaks to an important design issue for exovivaria: how to use biophilia without losing our humanity, or at least without becoming hypocritical in our humanitarian ideals. How do we properly value all human beings, while also leveraging biophilia to make telepresence in orbital ecosystems compelling? What justifies /that/ expense when malnutrition and mayhem still take so many lives? Ive sometimes wondered if the Christian notion of Original Sin arises (in part) out of an instinctive distrust of cultures strange to us - animals being virtually cultureless and, by the same instinctive token, innocent, even when known to be dangerous. Innocent until proven guilty is a legal abstraction that we must force-feed our brains, and it isnt even common to all legal systems. Im sure Dawn can contribute a very interesting perspective on these questions.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 13:21:28 +0000
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