From Richard Smyth in NewScientist (15 April 2023):
“We believe all species should be herbivorous” seems an ambitious mission statement. It doesn’t seem any less ambitious when it is followed by the declaration that “currently we use donations for… online promotion, and equipment needed for podcasting. In the future we would like to have enough to hire researchers.”
But this is where the “herbivorisation” project, an idea taking shape on the fringe of the fringe, is at. Headed by philosopher David Pearce, futurist Adam James Davis and ethicist Stijn Bruers, Herbivorize Predators aims to develop a way “to safely transform carnivorous species into herbivorous ones”, thereby minimising the sum total of suffering in the world.
“Tough On The Green Things” reflects the first thoughts of both my Arts Editor and myself.
But I have to wonder how earnest this sort of thing might be, and how much of it reflects MLK, Jr. Syndrome – the desire for being part of the Next Big Good Thing. A concealed self-glorification, if you will.
And, being a software engineer and not a philosopher, I have to wonder how much the various philosophical schools connect morality with Nature, or if they are considered unconnected, even antithetical. Perhaps a holdover from the glory days of the steam engine, where passengers on the steam engine considered soot to be a symbolic separator from the Evil Nature that deprived them of infants, children, friends, and their own lives prematurely.
In the end, morality must have an end, by which I do not mean a finish, but rather the secondary meaning of a goal. It’d be interesting to have Gallup do a poll on such an odd and abstract question.
