From: Betty Ragan ragan@sdc.org
Neil Faulkner wrote:
<big snip>
No, no, speculations are fine by me. I'm still not entirely sure how to express my own viewpoint properly, actually, but I certainly don't intend to convey the idea that just because something isn't "real" (whatever that means) that it's meaningless or useless. I think it's more that, from my point-of-view, it's *individual people* who are of primary importance.
That's the kind of attitude I tend to file under 'anthropocentricity', but it would be futile to single you out as a practitioner of this heinous practice since I seem to be in the very very small minority that considers it heinous in the first place.
Maybe it's because I'm a birder (who also knows a lot of wild plants, quite a few insects, various bits of marine life and other wildlifey things). Maybe that cultivates a different attitude towards people, both singly and collectively. I can effortlessly regard the entire human race as just another species, and not necessarily the one with the most going for it.