Predatory Survival

Written October 1998

As I will delineate elsewhere, Humans are a part of nature, because we evolve from it and depend on it, but we are also separate from it because of our intellects. One way that humans are a part of nature, in my belief, is that we are essentially predatory in nature. A common rhetorical question that ignorant people often ask vegetarians is, "Haven't you ever heard of the food chain, haw haw nyuck?" (On a side note, it's now being taught as the Food Web.) Most vegetarians I know are too dumbstruck to present an immediate answer, but the next time someone asks me this, I would like to ask them ask if they have ever heard of it, or know wat it means. The food chain/web is a concept of necessity. If the rabbit doesn't eat the grass, and the wolf the rabbit, the wolf won't survive. If the owl doesn't eat the cute mouse, the owl will die. This is the way of Nature, and therefore the way it should be. However, there is medical evidence* that humans not only can survive without feeding on sentient beings, but cannot even digest meat properly. Of course, the decision whether to eat meat is a moral one and is up to the individual, and the idea of this passage is not to push vegetarianism.

From the ineffable way of Nature, we can see that the extra-human world (the world of nature, excluding humans and what we have created) is based on survival of the fittest. I take this to mean that in the eso-human world (Nature including human beings), in some situations, the "right" thing to do- that is to say, in accordance with nature- is to take another's life, if to not take it would mean the loss of your own. This is a part of nature, and a part of being human. However, another part of being human is to make the moral decision of whether to take another's life to preserve yours, fulfilling the atavistic and scientific purpose of human life, like the apparent purpose of non-human sentient life, or to sacrifice your own life for the life of another, which is in some ways more natural- since humans are, after all, not completely a part of nature- in other ways, less natural, and also, in many ways, one of the most uniquely human acts possible.

To be human is to fulfill the aforementioned atavism, and, it is to sacrifice one's self, like before. It is to realize and accept the natural atavism, to make the choice between it and the human self-sacrifice, and to make the choice of self-sacrifice, and ultimately, to coexist within these two Natures of Humanity.