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There is a reason the Church Fathers put humans at the top of the Great Chain of Being. Otherwise, we devolve into the kind of useless navel-gazing I engaged in yesterday when my husband put a pigeon with a broken wing "out of its misery." Something in me doesn't buy that death is better than life..and yeah I even worry about plants. It's kind of a sickness. Catholic as I am, I am a product of secular childhood.
Without a rational God, there is no reason to elevate one species over another besides sheer egoism, and humans have a natural altruism that will undermine their own interests.
Cassandra, if you don't mind my saying so, it seems fine to me that you were saddened by the pigeon's plight. That is empathy.
But putting the pigeon on the same level as a human child is insanity. Or willful blindness (Nature is horrifically cruel; far more cruel than humans have ever been).
Konrad Lorenz wrote a great book on ethology called "King Solomon's Ring." In it, Lorenz notes that we label wolves are warlike and martial, and doves as the symbols of peace.
Yet when one wolf yields to another in battle, and shows its throat in submission, the winning wolf literally cannot bring itself to attack.
Yet the dove---well, two doves in a cage will peck each other to bloody bits.
I am very softhearted about animals. I think it has to do with intent, and stewardship.
I don't eat veal, for example.
Just my two cents. But I used to cry my eyes out when a little pet lizard would die.
Well it's worse than that, and more troubling to me than it should be.
Suffice it to say that I can certainly see how people could get themselves worked up about animal and plant life, politically, if they recognize no grand scheme that gives priority to human life. I think the Chain of Being concept predates the Church..was it Aristotle?
Time for review!
Here is a relevant link, Cassandra:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ahi...imsa_in_Jainism
I don't know where the barriers should be place, either. Again, I think it comes down to intent.
I've long wondered how devout Jainists can keep from losing their minds, given that fact that nearly everyday we inadvertently kill some form of life (insects, usually).
They breathe through kerchiefs, Professor LaRoche.
I like the idea of consuming only fruit that falls from trees. This is an expensive and low calorie philosophy. Modern Jainists keep moving the bar downward to smaller and smaller forms of life.
I expect that they will begin worry about killing the bacteria that leave their gut with every bowel movement. Sorry about that.
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