Kat's Corner

six months later i re-read the essay prior to the final exam, went 'ohhhh yeah i remember this', got a question on that topic, and aced it.

allow yourself to be a beginner

Sometimes you encounter a proposal that is so daft that you think to yourself, “The author can’t be serious!” In today’s column, I’d like to discuss an example of this sort that comes from one of the world’s most eminent moral philosophers, Martha C. Nussbaum. In her article, “A Peopled Wilderness,” appearing in the New York Review of Books, December 8, 2022, Nussbaum suggests that we need to think seriously about curbing predation in nature. It disturbs her that animals eat other animals: this is not how things ought to be. We must be careful in what we try to do to correct this morally bad state of affairs, since through lack of knowledge, we may worsen things; but this is no excuse to let matters slide.

To be clear, she is not just proposing that we should make sure that lions can’t get into the deer cage at the zoo; she is talking about the possibility of getting animals in the wild to cease to kill and eat each other. Her idea illustrates and extends a besetting sin of contemporary moral and political philosophy, its idle utopianism. The ordinary circumstances of the human condition are rejected, and philosophers devise fantastic schemes to remake the social and political world to their own liking

As bizarre as this is, there is a genuine movement to try and either turn predators into herbivores;

Or simply wipe out predators altogether;

Realistically this is never going to happen but it’s still wild that anyone could think like this. Unsurprising that a lot of people involved in the movement are extremist animal rights activists. I’ve also seen fox feeders say they deliberately overfeed wild foxes to stop them hunting as it’s ‘wrong’ for them to kill other animals. 

Also, while I’m on the subject I have to include this hilarious tweet;

Slightly off topic but here’s a great analysis of said book series for anyone that’s interested

we can’t always be our most productive, but there’s a terrible trend of fandom folks feeling bad if they don’t have something new to post every few weeks

you’re still a creative person even if you aren’t creating something at a given time, for whatever reason