I have been thinking of the different manifestations of life and their relative value. Triggered by a recent local report of a man who had two dogs and had to relocate and could not take his dogs with him. He approached neighbors to take his dogs and when no one was interested he shot them. And was arrested. I cannot locate the news article and there may be more to it than I recall, but I can only speculate – maybe he didn’t take them to a shelter because they would be separated and maybe he thought it was better they were dead than lead a miserable life. I don’t know. But if he had killed a couple of chicken he would not have been charged. And so, is the life of a dog worth more than the life of a chicken?
And what is life anyway? There was a recent debate ( Intelligence Squared 120413 ) titled “Don’t Eat Anything with a Face” which included Joel Salatin, a well known grass fed cattle farmer, who argued against the motion, and Neal Barnard an equally well known vegan who argued for the emotion. The debate turned on both the health aspects and the morality of eating anything with a face. Salatin became frustrated with the emotional appeal of the proposition and argued that not only animals but even plants and “every tablespoon of soil……has a million living organisms that are communicating, reacting, exuding auxins, creating DNA memories…,” and therefore if we think it is ethically wrong to eat animals we also shouldn’t eat plants and bacteria. In similar vein a recent article by Michael Pollan (The Intelligent Plant – The New Yorker 122313) describes the new field of plant neurobiology and the view that plants have intelligence and consciousness (much turns on definition of these words), can communicate with each other and do things humans can’t. So are they also a form of life?
Is the life of a big thing (elephant, giraffe, whale) worth more than the life of a small thing like a squirrel or mouse or insect? We view human life as different from and more valuable than animal life so therefore a human life is of higher value than the life of a chimpanzee.
Is “value” the right word to use since it connotes $ value and then you have to think of the Davos forum report this week that the world’s 85 richest people have as much $ wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion – in simpler terms on average one of the 85 richest has as much wealth as +40 million of the poorest. But we ignore wealth when we value human life and say all human life is equally valuable and stick with this convention, though an argument could be made about the relative merits of an infant vs. a geriatric and the fact is the wealthy through good eating, good healthcare and costly new life enhancing procedures can overcome genetic deficiencies and extend the duration and quality of their lives compared with a poor person. But all human lives are treated as equally valuable and we hew that road – to do otherwise would result in an arbiter and the hysterically titled “death panels”.
We only value what we cannot get enough of – good air and water were previously not highly valued but in China good air in the cities is increasingly a critical concern and water in drought ravaged California could be a big issue in 2014. So as we become more aware of our environment and why it makes sense to be good custodians, I predict we will expand our horizons to accept animals as sentient beings, stall the continuing extinction of species and extend a considerate hand to fellow sojourners on our earth.