Contrary to how it might feel, fondling dangerous animals only accentuates the divide between us and them. Haven’t we done enough to force that divide already? Read more at The Guardian.
Category: essay
Human Error (Survivor Guilt in the Anthropocene)
Article for the Culture & Conscience series at the Center for Humans and Nature.
If we assume our evolutionary predispositions represent hardware, we can consider both culture and the conscience as software.
Read more here
The shaming of Walter Palmer for killing Cecil the Lion
Rather than simply ruining the life of one dentist, some arguably good things have come from this case.
Read more at The Conversation.
Public shaming can make the world a better place
The discussion about 21st-century shaming usually turns to cases in which an otherwise well-behaved person posts a tweet or photograph that results in excessive punishment by an anonymous and bloodthirsty online crowd which ruins that person’s life for a while. Many people, myself included, object to this form of vigilantism. But other examples of shaming — singling out big banks for environmental destruction, exposing countries for refusing to end forced labour or calling out denialists who undermine action on climate change — challenge the mistreated tweeter as shaming’s stereotype. What shaming largely is, after all, is not necessarily what shaming might be. Read more at WIRED.CO.UK.
