Arkangel's response to our
statement on the Small Game Workshop
Re: Small Game Workshop
Thank you for your long and detailed response to my concerns regarding
the inclusion of a Hunting small games workshop at the summer
gathering. Sadly, as eloquently as you argue your point and address the
need to give people the freedom of choice, it is not a choice that the
animals at the end of a barrel or spear will have.
Accepting there's no easy fix in this moral maze is part of the
dilemma that we face but does encouraging the perpetuation of barbaric
practices really sit comfortably within the essence of the framework of
Earth First! principles? Where does one draw the line with freedom of
choice? It seems like a moral minority can have carte blanche because
nonhuman life is at stake yet there would be no dispute if the dispute
were over a comparable human issue!
You could, for example argue that the similarities between Earth First!
principles and those of right wing US Survivalist groups outweigh the
dissimilarities and that barring their fascist tendencies they are
allies. You and I both know that nothing could be further from the
truth. There's that freedom of choice thing again... where does it
begin and end?
As much as we would all like to believe that the anarcho-primitivist
members of Earth First! have an argument, that argument remains
species-centred and could be called Humans First!
You mention the question of introduced species and that it could be
argued that their removal is better for the Earth. The hunting of
animals for food to rebalance ecosystems is an absolute nonsense when
we should be addressing the far more crucial issue of why these
imbalances have come about in the first place, and the answer must
always be: through human intervention.
Who is to be the arbitrator as to what must live and what must die?
Once again,we are making a species-centred value judgement based on our
assessment of wrongs and rights which deny individual life forms their
right to life.
As tragic as the introduction of alien species may be, the threat to
existing ecosystems has long resided in the form of human intervention,
and most if not all the ecosystems we see, at least in this country,
have developed as a direct result of human intervention.
If we look at it from a purely historical perspective, the majority of
these islands were originally forested. The moment humans intervened by
cutting down the forests, the original ecosysytems were destroyed. This
is the nature of a world at the mercy of our activities - nature
adapts, and constantly redefines itself; what has been lost is lost
forever, and no manner of anarcho-primitivist hunting will restore what
has gone.
We should instead - all of us - be uniting to stop the further
destruction, and not use environmental principles to satisfy meat
eating habits with some spurious argument about doing it for the earth!
Lets call a spade a spade and not clothe it with some moral argument!
Earth firsters lean towards the view that what is right for the earth
is right for us; that must certainly be true, but if the predominant
view is that veganism is the way forward, regardless of whether
individuals have animal rights sympathies or not, then surely the
workshops should reflect that predominant view and educate those
opposed to it as to the other basic truth: that hunting animals for
food is how we started out - it is what gave us the basis for the
society we have now - that exploitation of the weak and vulnerable is
acceptable - ie: "fair game".
The life of an animal isn't defined by the game or sport it can
provide for humans - it is defined on its own terms. Its life is worth
everything to it - until some human decides its better it should be
dead! Implicit in the very language used to list the proposed workshop
(ie: game) defines the archaic and unchanging attitudes we have towards
the entire animate world. Why go back to square one? We know how that
ended and it will only come back full circle.
There must be another way, and thats the way any radical voice should
be advocating, surely?
Best Wishes
Robert Cogswell
Danuta Mayer (Assistant Editor)
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