3
3
3
warmt
h. You can see the benevolence with which a mother keeps a cub
from playfully tearing her tail apart. She lifts her huge paw and gently
shoves the infant aside when his nipping becomes too painful.
But nature has given these lion mothers only one way of feeding
their children. The hunt. This afternoon, these peaceful creatures will
tear a gazelle limb from limb. The panicked beast will try frantically to
avoid the felines closing in on her. But they will break her neck and
drag her across the plain still alive and kicking. Her eyes will be open
and aware as her flesh is gashed and torn.
Suppose for a minute that lions were suddenly stricken with
guilt about their feeding habits and swore off meat. What would they
accomplish? They would starve themselves and their children. For
nature has given them only one option: to kill. Killing is not an
invention of man. It is an invention of nature.
Nature's amusements are cruel. A female sea turtle crawls
painfully up the beach of a tropical island, dragging her bulk across the
sand. Slowly she digs a nest with her hind flippers and lays her eggs.
From those eggs come a thousand tiny, irresistible babies, digging out
of the sand, blinking at the light for the first time, rapidly gaining their
orientation from a genetically preprogrammed internal compass, then
taking their first walk, a race toward the sea. As the infants scoot
awkwardly across the beach, propelling themselves with flippers built
for an entirely different task, sea birds who have been waiting for this
feast swoop down to enjoy meal after high protein meal. Of a
thousand newborns, perhaps three will make it to the safety of the
ocean waves.7
Are the birds sadistic creatures whose instincts been twisted by
an overdose of television? No, they're engaged in the same effort as the
baby turtles--the effort to survive.
Hegel, the 19th century German philosopher, said that true
tragedy occurs not when good battles evil, but when one good battles
another. Nature has made that form of tragedy a basic law of her
<< < GO > >>
3
3
3
warmt
h. You can see the benevolence with which a mother keeps a cub
from playfully tearing her tail apart. She lifts her huge paw and gently
shoves the infant aside when his nipping becomes too painful.
But nature has given these lion mothers only one way of feeding
their children. The hunt. This afternoon, these peaceful creatures will
tear a gazelle limb from limb. The panicked beast will try frantically to
avoid the felines closing in on her. But they will break her neck and
drag her across the plain still alive and kicking. Her eyes will be open
and aware as her flesh is gashed and torn.
Suppose for a minute that lions were suddenly stricken with
guilt about their feeding habits and swore off meat. What would they
accomplish? They would starve themselves and their children. For
nature has given them only one option: to kill. Killing is not an
invention of man. It is an invention of nature.
Nature's amusements are cruel. A female sea turtle crawls
painfully up the beach of a tropical island, dragging her bulk across the
sand. Slowly she digs a nest with her hind flippers and lays her eggs.
From those eggs come a thousand tiny, irresistible babies, digging out
of the sand, blinking at the light for the first time, rapidly gaining their
orientation from a genetically preprogrammed internal compass, then
taking their first walk, a race toward the sea. As the infants scoot
awkwardly across the beach, propelling themselves with flippers built
for an entirely different task, sea birds who have been waiting for this
feast swoop down to enjoy meal after high protein meal. Of a
thousand newborns, perhaps three will make it to the safety of the
ocean waves.7
Are the birds sadistic creatures whose instincts been twisted by
an overdose of television? No, they're engaged in the same effort as the
baby turtles--the effort to survive.
Hegel, the 19th century German philosopher, said that true
tragedy occurs not when good battles evil, but when one good battles
another. Nature has made that form of tragedy a basic law of her
<< < GO > >>