A new relationship with animals, nature and each other.

Archive for ‘December, 2014’

  • Introducing the Whale Sanctuary Project

    This blog is taking a break for the next few months so that I can devote my energies to the Whale Sanctuary Project. Here's why.

  • Is the Sloth Sanctuary a Zoo?

    The Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica was the first of its kind for these wonderfully engaging animals, and it was a model for others that followed. But questions have arisen. And…

  • Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary

    Tafi Atome looks like a typical forest in Ghana. The monkeys have been revered in this village for two centuries. But being “sacred” is no guarantee of survival.

  • The Great Irony of Animal “Rights”

    The great irony of the animal rights movement is there is still only one species that has any rights at all: humans. But the Nonhuman Rights Project is setting out to change that.

  • Why Mass Extinction Is Part of Human Nature

    Why would a supposedly “intelligent” species behave in a way that’s bringing about a mass extinction – one that will likely take us down along with so many other animals?

    The Birth of Human Exceptionalism

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    How and when did we humans decide we didn’t want to think of ourselves as animals any longer? How did we go from thinking of the other animals as essentially our equals to treating them as commodities that exist to be mined from the oceans by huge factory ships and manufactured from birth to death on factory farms?

    It’s obviously a long and complex story, but we can get an idea of how it took place over thousands of years in various parts of the world.

    (Third in a series about how and why our relationship to our fellow animals has deteriorated to the point of an unfolding mass extinction.)

    The Tree of Knowledge

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    In the story of the Garden of Eden, our early ancestors find themselves confronted by a choice.

    They’re already developing an increasingly complex self-awareness that gives them the ability to think in terms of good and bad. And they’re acquiring an existential understanding of their personal mortality.

    As this awareness grows, they find themselves hearing two voices: one calling them back to a state of innocence in paradise; the other beckoning them forward to a future where they might become “as gods” in their own right, taking dominion over the world, freeing themselves from their animality, and even becoming immortal.

    (Second in a series about how and why our relationship to our fellow animals has deteriorated to the point of an unfolding mass extinction.)