Today I saved the life of a helpless robin.

[steve_bank]

And today I had a ham sandwich. Tomorrow chicken or steak.

 

[untermensche]

And today I had a ham sandwich. Tomorrow chicken or steak.

Yes.

Your empathy does not extend past your needs and desires like so many.

 

[southernhybrid]

It is not about good or bad.

It is about the strangeness of caring about the bird but not the living things the bird is eating.

You have some birds that eat small mammals.

Do we feel empathy for the bird or the mammal?

We can feel empathy for both, while realizing that predators are necessary in order to keep the environment healthy. So, I can have empathy for the deer who is eaten by the wolf, while understanding that without the wolf, the deer population would become overly populated, leading to an absence of plants that the deer eat to survive, which would eventually lead to starvation in the deer population etc. It's all about a balance. We need both the predator and the prey to keep the balance of nature intact. ( I stole that from a "Nature" program that I watched yesterday ) How else would we omnivores be able to eat meat? We are strange creatures.

Having said that, I not claiming that we need human predators to keep humanity in balance, but that's a totally different discussion.

 

[untermensche]

Unbounded pure empathy does not recognize the rights of predators to kill.

It is horrified by the spectacle.

Empathy has empathy for the life taken by the predator.

But "empathy" in humans does not usually even extend to the next tribe of humans.

So having empathy for a bird shows a more sensitive mind than the norm.

But we must never be surprised by how little empathy humans can have.

Humans are free to suppress emotions if they choose and can get very good at it with practice.

 

[southernhybrid]

Well, there is a lot that I don't agree with in your most recent post, but I don't have the will to discuss it with you, so I'll leave it at that. I see no point in arguing back and forth relentlessly when it's obvious that we have different viewpoints on things like empathy and how much we are able to control our emotions.

 

[abaddon]

A prey animal gets eaten and we feel "ah, poor animal". And we should - it's a conscious and emotional being. But also it's a part of a bigger organism than its individual self (like we all are). The biosystem lives by the death of living beings and its life matters to them all. By all means, expand the ability to sympathize with the rest of life.

30% of the birds in North America are GONE. Caring more might lead some people to help slow down the loss of life on earth. The individual animals matter but their individual lives are a part of a bigger Life which matters.

Helping a small bird was a highly moral act. But creating a bird-friendly back yard is more-so. Many more home-owners should do it.

 

[untermensche]

Well, there is a lot that I don't agree with in your most recent post, but I don't have the will to discuss it with you, so I'll leave it at that. I see no point in arguing back and forth relentlessly when it's obvious that we have different viewpoints on things like empathy and how much we are able to control our emotions.

That's passive aggressive but fine.

There is a reason for somebody trying to save a bird to have empathy. It might help.

There is no reason for me to create emotions about some bird I never saw that is already dead.

When thinking about the dead I always remember.

That is you some day.

 

[steve_bank]

And today I had a ham sandwich. Tomorrow chicken or steak.

Yes.

Your empathy does not extend past your needs and desires like so many.

I read an anthology of Twain's essays. One he called The Big Loe.

He was in a city in an open carriage with an upsacle fried, His friend sees a stray cat, stops the carriage, walked past needy people to get the cat, and continued on.

Selective feel good morality.

We have trouble providing nutrition d medical service to all ur kids, yet peole donate money to fix broken wings of birds. We spend billions on pet care.

In some areas birds are pests, like swarming starlings. Sea gulls are flying rats.

I am not religious but I read Mother Teresa's book, remarkable person. She would literally pick up wretched stinking peple on the street and take then to her hospital.



Yes we need to protect the ecosystem if anything out of enlightened self interest. As the eco system defares including bio diversity we will suffer. Restoring the bald eagle was a worthy cause. When I livd n North Idaho I used to eatch them fish on Lake Coer D'Alene.

I regularly took my jeep into the back country and saw a lot of wild life. One winter early in the morning I heard screeching and a tussle outside my house. I went outside and saw blood on the snow, housecat footprints, and bob cat footprints. Breakfast for the bob cat. Mountain lions were known to go after kids in yards, and so on. The natural order of things as they are. I never went off by myself without being armed.

As it was put in nature there is a natural balance and also natural selection.

The problem with us humans is our science and technology at least for now isolates is from that reality, but it is catching up with us.

In the end 'nature' will eventually limit us humans probably with a reduction in population as water and food diminish with climate change.

Some cultures raise monkeys and dogs as pets, then eats then.

So in summary, fixing a bird in the grand scheme of things...meh.

 

[Bronzeage]

An old sermon:

There has been a tremendous storm during the night and the beach is covered in starfish. They are far away from the water and the sun is drying them. All are near death. A small boy is carrying them back to the water, one at a time. A man watches him for a few minutes and says, "Son, what you're doing is noble, but you can't save all these starfish. It won't make a difference." The boy tosses one more starfish in the ocean and says, "It'll make a difference to that one."

 

[steve_bank]

A dead bird is food for other creatures and decomposes back to nutrients retuned to the environment.

Is it moral to damper with Mother Nature as if we are god?

 

[thebeave]

A dead bird is food for other creatures and decomposes back to nutrients retuned to the environment.

Is it moral to damper with Mother Nature as if we are god?

But humans are part of Mother Nature. So how are we tampering?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

A dead bird is food for other creatures and decomposes back to nutrients retuned to the environment.

Is it moral to damper with Mother Nature as if we are god?

But humans are part of Mother Nature. So how are we tampering?

Precisely.

 

[Swammerdami]

My wife, a devout Buddhist, is intent on saving lives. We have five different varieties of lizard, umpteen varieties of bird (hoopoes, herons, crows, owls, sunbirds, starlings, mynahs, etc. etc), squirrels and more on our property. My wife has nurtured several injured birds back to health. Sometimes one ends up in our house and can't find the way out. We open doors and windows and gently shoo them out.

The Hoopoe bird, which I'd never heard of until we wanted to figure out what we were seeing several years ago, is the Most Beautiful Bird in the world. We have an extended family of hoopoes living near our house now. In a corner of the roof, a tile is broken giving a little sanctuary — easy entrance to a place protected from rain — and that sanctuary has been the nest for several baby hoopoes over the years. We take care to keep trees and bushes pruned to deny snakes access to the hoopoe nest.

There is a family of chickens living in our old (haunted?) orchard. My wife insists they are a different variety — they fly much better than ordinary chickens — but I'd have guessed them to be ordinary chickens who somehow fled from any of several neighbors who raise chicken. Occasionally a neighbor's cat comes to our property and is forced up a tree to escape from our dogs. Rescuing that cat becomes high priority.

When she sees a poisonous scorpion, she doesn't kill it — she sweeps it into a bottle and escorts it back to the orchard. Mosquitoes and poisonous centipedes are about the only creatures we deliberately kill ourselves. (We also get poisonous snakes, but one of the primary duties of our dogs is to banish or kill snakes!) The last time we had a snake (Russell's viper! ) inside the house, I asked a neighbor for help. He caught the snake's head in a noose and escorted him alive to the old orchard. Buddhism forbids killing creatures. Monks don't even swat mosquitoes.

 

[steve_bank]

A dead bird is food for other creatures and decomposes back to nutrients retuned to the environment.

Is it moral to damper with Mother Nature as if we are god?

But humans are part of Mother Nature. So how are we tampering?

A manner of speaking, metaphor,, a witty saying....

 

[untermensche]

The human mind transcends "mother nature".

It peeks under mother nature's clothing to see what is there.

It knows about itself and mother nature. Mother nature knows nothing. Evolution is a blind process.

Free will does not exist until brains evolve.

 

[Jarhyn]

A dead bird is food for other creatures and decomposes back to nutrients retuned to the environment.

Is it moral to damper with Mother Nature as if we are god?

Yes, because to say otherwise is to proclaim "nature, just so" as god in the place of the god you claim you do not worship.

 

[Thomas II]

My wife, a devout Buddhist, is intent on saving lives. We have five different varieties of lizard, umpteen varieties of bird (hoopoes, herons, crows, owls, sunbirds, starlings, mynahs, etc. etc), squirrels and more on our property. My wife has nurtured several injured birds back to health. Sometimes one ends up in our house and can't find the way out. We open doors and windows and gently shoo them out.

The Hoopoe bird, which I'd never heard of until we wanted to figure out what we were seeing several years ago, is the Most Beautiful Bird in the world. We have an extended family of hoopoes living near our house now. In a corner of the roof, a tile is broken giving a little sanctuary — easy entrance to a place protected from rain — and that sanctuary has been the nest for several baby hoopoes over the years. We take care to keep trees and bushes pruned to deny snakes access to the hoopoe nest.

There is a family of chickens living in our old (haunted?) orchard. My wife insists they are a different variety — they fly much better than ordinary chickens — but I'd have guessed them to be ordinary chickens who somehow fled from any of several neighbors who raise chicken. Occasionally a neighbor's cat comes to our property and is forced up a tree to escape from our dogs. Rescuing that cat becomes high priority.

When she sees a poisonous scorpion, she doesn't kill it — she sweeps it into a bottle and escorts it back to the orchard. Mosquitoes and poisonous centipedes are about the only creatures we deliberately kill ourselves. (We also get poisonous snakes, but one of the primary duties of our dogs is to banish or kill snakes!) The last time we had a snake (Russell's viper! ) inside the house, I asked a neighbor for help. He caught the snake's head in a noose and escorted him alive to the old orchard. Buddhism forbids killing creatures. Monks don't even swat mosquitoes.

 

[Jarhyn]

I would like to think that the desire and willingness to help other creatures unbidden is a learnable one, and one that things understand the benefits to.

If you save a bird today, maybe you have a friend for a long time. Or sometimes you get an annoying asshole who bothers you too much and takes up space under your eves or whatever. It's worth the risk to try making a friend.

And as more people learn that, maybe we end up in a better world where we aren't at odds with our non-human neighbors. And with our human neighbors too, maybe?

I kill when some creature makes it them or me. I don't often even step on ants. I don't let them in my house though. If the ants can guard their house, I can guard mine.

Being kind to a bird is about being a friend to someone in need, plain and simple. If anyone wants to believe the bird should be left to die broken and alone, that's their business, but they best not tell me when I am deciding who to help, or to be there with, when the end is threatening.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, I might as well contribute my own chapter of helping something helpless. But it's not as pure, sadly, as OP.

For the last several weeks we have been dealing with cats on our porch. It's not a very clean porch, and there's a lot of junk there so it provides good shelter; it makes sense the occasional stray would find it and consider it the shelter of their dreams. Also the occasional bag of kitty litter that gets parked out there may also attract them?

And thus is the tableau: one of these cats that occasionally appeared on my doorstep happened to be in the process of starving to death. She was also actively nursing.

The thing is, neither I nor my husband like "feral" cats, not the cats themselves (who are generally quite kind and friendly), but rather the effect they have on the environment. So we were presented with a choice by cruel nature: save the mother by taking her in, at the expense of her kittens (who probably were starving as it is) and at the boon of the local wildlife; or leave her to starve, and those kittens to maybe survive but probably not.

We chose to take her in.

The first thing that we observed was that her whole situation seemed to be orbiting around her litter of kittens: it is fall, and it was probably her first litter, on her first heat. People tend to release cats because they don't think to spay them and because cats in heat like to escape and because cats in heat once they are pregnant are more expensive to spay and are carrying a package that will complicate the lives of the carers.

But by whatever callousness and failure of responsibility, she is in my home, and she seems to be content to never leave it.

I don't know if I would have, if not for this thread, made that decision. Probably? But possibly not

 

[Coleman Smith]

The only lessen here is humans have empathy.

And we should create societies that express that fact.

Nature is cruel and uncaring and unforgiving.

That is knowledge a person should have very early in life.

There was a video I saw where a family was out in the yard with a pet mouse on top a cage with their children when a hawk swooped in and flew off with the mouse.

Lesson learned'