Openness to out-species interests declines when resources are scarce.
Too bad the story didn’t attract any logical people, those who might give two cents about the suffering of the people, not the animals of Africa…
Outside Zimbabwe’s environmental and activist circles, however, the reaction been muted.
“It’s so cruel, but I don’t understand the whole fuss, there are so many pressing issues in Zimbabwe — we have water shortages, no electricity, and no jobs — yet people are making noise about a lion?” said Eunice Vhunise, a Harare resident…
r and K are a spectrum. On one side, lions can be eating people, yet the rabbits will cry when one is killed, because being made aware of that will puncture their little bubble of limitless feel-good and denial of reality.
On the other side of the spectrum, the wolves will hunt animals who hurt nobody to extinction, so they will have something to eat, and they won’t feel the least bit bad about it.
I have seen the purest form of this model of human myself, though I don’t see it around today among anyone under sixty. Back when I did see it among 40-50 year olds, they were great guys. They were funny, loyal to a fault, and they insisted on excellence. But you never had any doubt they were survival machines, and capable of very dark things if the lights went out, without a second’s thought or remorse.
I always felt that to make the jump to what they were, I would have to give up something potentially kind about myself which I didn’t want to lose. I still wonder whether the reluctance I felt to give it up was psychological weakness facilitated by resources and altered by my mind to appear as a virtue, or if it was really something good.
Of course they were made by circumstances beyond their control, just as we will be molded by what is to come. Whether the “we” that we are now would like what it is we will adapt to become, won’t really have any bearing on the matter.
Apocalypse cometh™
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