So touching and relatable. I think about little creatures smashed on the road and how it pains me. I’m glad we can care about all of them. The wild, the injured, the dead.
A wonderful read. I would surmise this essay for your son is just the potion one day for him to allow a fleeting thought to become a durable memory and shape how he views the world.
I so enjoyed this story , I had an injured fox at my feeding table recently and couldn’t sleep for worrying about its prospects for life , I lay awake trying to think how I could help it , but I found it dead a few days later. Animals are so wonderful. I love them all. ❤️
I was happy to see this essay again and reread it. It's been on my mind as my first reading corresponded with a personal experience with a mysterious black rabbit that appeared in my life. Congratulations on your well deserved recognition!
I thoroughly enjoyed this re-read. You really have a way with words, thank you for sharing this delight with us, even if the context is sad. The text touches upon many important complexities in our relationships with animals. Why do we swat some thoughtlessly, others we eat, still others we pet and hold dear and cry for their suffering and passing?
A busted rabbit plays a linchpin role in this series, which I have been using with students for over a decade now as a way in to talking about mental illness. https://vimeo.com/40704262
While relocating from California to North Carolina I found myself escorting my young daughter's best friend at the time - Fluffy the rabbit. I remember two things. One was sneaking a rabbit into our nightly lodging and, most importantly, the expression on her face when I arrived at our new home. It was worth the journey.
Very, very nicely done. Portrait of a sentimental father. As an aside, many people evidently have difficulty reading a text on its own terms. Ah, the internet. At any rate, good work. Kudos and thanks.
There is dubious ethical legerdemain in dismissing veganism as enslavement by logic, while cheerfully asserting that human freedom justifies the brutal and needless exploitation of other intelligent beings. The intellectual attention lavished on a single, visible animal (charismatic microfauna?) would be better deployed in considering how we can end the unconscionable abuse of billions of carefully concealed nonhuman victims.
While endorsing the lab-leak origin of Covid, which I find plausible, we might also reflect on the origins of the avian flu H5N1 in intensive farmed animal production. That virus has already decimated dozens of wild species from whales to eagles, and is running rampant in our country’s farms. If (when?) it recombines with common influenzas, it may make Covid look trivial. And there is no clumsy grad student to blame here. This virus arose, and continues to mutate, because otherwise decent people make the deliberate daily choice to eat the flesh and milk of animals confined in a hell that would make Dante shudder. But, as the old Polish saying has it, no snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible.
I experienced various forms of agony and everything i know tells me that pain & suffering go well beyond what i’ve been through. Animals are moved and steered by sensory & affective states, and sadly sticks are vastly more efficient than carrots. Also, biological evolution was completely ignorant to the moral relevance of these subjective states. Like a neuroscientist said in a podcast, generating intense negative valence _doesn’t_ necessitate any knowledge, thinking or intelligence, nor a large brain. The dumbest human could be tortured just as well as the most knowledgeable & intelligent. Also, it’s likely that you could generate immense negative valence from a tiny brain volume. We have reason to believe that horrors abound. And if the self aware & reasoning creatures, the only ones open to the ethical domain of reality, don’t act against the horrors in their reach then there’s no other hope. Any sane human being that’s part of a healthy society should get that rabbit and drive it to salvation, _and feel fantastic for doing it._ And if that’s not possible then they should put an end to its suffering. "Leaving it to nature" is barbarism.
Beautiful. One of my childhood pets was a white rabbit. I loved him so.
So touching and relatable. I think about little creatures smashed on the road and how it pains me. I’m glad we can care about all of them. The wild, the injured, the dead.
A wonderful read. I would surmise this essay for your son is just the potion one day for him to allow a fleeting thought to become a durable memory and shape how he views the world.
This is beautiful! I missed it the first time around, but I’m glad I got to read it now. Congrats on the mention in BAE, man!
How this ain’t too fan-boy-ish but I remember reading this a year ago and to this day still hold the opinion it’s the best Substack I’ve read.
Ty, that's very meaningful. It reminds me of why I write and also what's possible.
I have had to do exactly this, except the culprit was a cat. And I didn't write a long and poignant essay about it.
I so enjoyed this story , I had an injured fox at my feeding table recently and couldn’t sleep for worrying about its prospects for life , I lay awake trying to think how I could help it , but I found it dead a few days later. Animals are so wonderful. I love them all. ❤️
I was happy to see this essay again and reread it. It's been on my mind as my first reading corresponded with a personal experience with a mysterious black rabbit that appeared in my life. Congratulations on your well deserved recognition!
I thoroughly enjoyed this re-read. You really have a way with words, thank you for sharing this delight with us, even if the context is sad. The text touches upon many important complexities in our relationships with animals. Why do we swat some thoughtlessly, others we eat, still others we pet and hold dear and cry for their suffering and passing?
A busted rabbit plays a linchpin role in this series, which I have been using with students for over a decade now as a way in to talking about mental illness. https://vimeo.com/40704262
While relocating from California to North Carolina I found myself escorting my young daughter's best friend at the time - Fluffy the rabbit. I remember two things. One was sneaking a rabbit into our nightly lodging and, most importantly, the expression on her face when I arrived at our new home. It was worth the journey.
Very, very nicely done. Portrait of a sentimental father. As an aside, many people evidently have difficulty reading a text on its own terms. Ah, the internet. At any rate, good work. Kudos and thanks.
There is dubious ethical legerdemain in dismissing veganism as enslavement by logic, while cheerfully asserting that human freedom justifies the brutal and needless exploitation of other intelligent beings. The intellectual attention lavished on a single, visible animal (charismatic microfauna?) would be better deployed in considering how we can end the unconscionable abuse of billions of carefully concealed nonhuman victims.
While endorsing the lab-leak origin of Covid, which I find plausible, we might also reflect on the origins of the avian flu H5N1 in intensive farmed animal production. That virus has already decimated dozens of wild species from whales to eagles, and is running rampant in our country’s farms. If (when?) it recombines with common influenzas, it may make Covid look trivial. And there is no clumsy grad student to blame here. This virus arose, and continues to mutate, because otherwise decent people make the deliberate daily choice to eat the flesh and milk of animals confined in a hell that would make Dante shudder. But, as the old Polish saying has it, no snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible.
Nice pick from War and Peace, that was also probably the most memorable part of it for me.
I experienced various forms of agony and everything i know tells me that pain & suffering go well beyond what i’ve been through. Animals are moved and steered by sensory & affective states, and sadly sticks are vastly more efficient than carrots. Also, biological evolution was completely ignorant to the moral relevance of these subjective states. Like a neuroscientist said in a podcast, generating intense negative valence _doesn’t_ necessitate any knowledge, thinking or intelligence, nor a large brain. The dumbest human could be tortured just as well as the most knowledgeable & intelligent. Also, it’s likely that you could generate immense negative valence from a tiny brain volume. We have reason to believe that horrors abound. And if the self aware & reasoning creatures, the only ones open to the ethical domain of reality, don’t act against the horrors in their reach then there’s no other hope. Any sane human being that’s part of a healthy society should get that rabbit and drive it to salvation, _and feel fantastic for doing it._ And if that’s not possible then they should put an end to its suffering. "Leaving it to nature" is barbarism.
So beautiful.