“Our feelings of benevolence and sympathy are more easily aroused by specific human beings than by a large group in which no individuals stand out. People who would be horrified by the idea of stealing an elderly neighbor’s welfare check have no qualms about cheating on their income tax; men who would never punch a […]
“On the collective level, once we have begun to justify our conduct publicly, reason leads us to develop and expand our moral concerns, drawing us on toward an objective point of view. On the individual level reason is less compelling; while it leads us to see inconsistencies between our beliefs and our actions, or between […]
“Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.” ––The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, by Peter Singer, pg. 88 […]
“Far from justifying principles that are shown to be ‘natural,’ a biological explanation is often a way of debunking the lofty status of what seemed a self-evident moral law. We must think again about the reasons for accepting those principles for which a biological explanation can be given.” ––The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral […]
“Scientists are now laboriously discovering what many dog owners have long accepted; we are not the only animals that reason.” ––The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, by Peter Singer, pg. 28 “The town of Mt. Judge is built on the east side of the mountain Mt. Judge, whose west face overlooks the […]
“Social life requires some degree of restraint. A social grouping cannot stay together if its members make frequent and unrestrained attacks on one another. Just when a pattern of restraint toward other members of the group becomes a social ethic is hard to say; but ethics probably began in these pre-human patterns of behavior rather […]
I’m down to one book this morning, so this will be another day with two quotes from the same book! “An ecological garden is like a net, sieving and holding whatever resources (minerals, organic matter, sunlight, water, and organisms) flow through it. And, just as important, these landscapes are consummate recyclers, shuttling each bit of […]
Today, I picked two quotes from the same book. Just couldn’t resist! “A century ago, John Dewey explained the connection between democracy and education. He wrote: A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of […]
“The order of a conventional row-crop garden is the order of the machine. This regimentation invites us to view plants as mechanical food factories. We fuel them with fertilizer, service them with rakes and hoes, and measure their production in bushels, bins, and tons. We view the plants as part of our dominion. In a […]
“Through this tree, we glimpse the benefits of ecological thinking. Instead of viewing a tree simply as something that looks nice or provides a single offering such as apples or shade, we can begin to see how deeply connected a tree is to its surroundings, both living and inanimate. A tree is a dynamic element […]