341
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_39
Chapter 39
Shelley’s Ecological Exile and His Utopia
of Animal Rights
39.1 Various Problems with Human Nature
Human history does not of itself engender change or even slow transformation. It is
a subjective fact-finding mission without end, always trailing behind our biases,
which build up into messages that, often like unopened telegrams, haunt the truths
both of ourselves and of strangers centuries ago signaling to us in the future. The
cumulative trial and error that is curiosity’s addicting forensic may enrich cartography or the epistolary annals, but little legislative enlightenment or seismically
altered attitude can ever be confidently projected. Otherwise, we should all have
listened carefully to the poet(s) of Ecclesiastes, to Mahavira, or Aristotle, Lao-Tzu,
or Christ. We did not, or certainly a critical mass of humanity did not, despite chance
after chance, generation after generation (Fig. 39.1).
Who could have predicted the links between Napoleon’s personality, immunity
to Yellow Fever among the African slaves sent to Haiti (unlike the European soldiers), Haiti’s rebellion resulting in Independence, and Jefferson’s subsequent
Louisiana Purchase by which he hoped and succeeded in expanding the Continental
United States in order to absorb the onrush of immigrants to America. That enormous population growth would then set into motion a demographic monster of its
own, liable to every ecological fiasco that was to afflict North America.
1
We thought,
with the advent of modern synthesis in biology, that we knew something about the
workings of food chains, systems collapse, including genetic squeezes and extinctions, interdependencies in water, soil, and air; the fate of molecules throughout
photosynthetic reactions, and of materials, like the more than 400 million tons of
plastics produced each year by people. But with all of these relationships, the one
pronounced gap, which we know nothing about, is human nature.
1 See The New Yorker between Frank M. Snowden and Isaac Chotiner, “How Pandemics Change
History,” by Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker Magazine, March 3, 2020. https://www.newyorker.
com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history, Accessed April 5, 2020.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_39
Chapter 39
Shelley’s Ecological Exile and His Utopia
of Animal Rights
39.1 Various Problems with Human Nature
Human history does not of itself engender change or even slow transformation. It is
a subjective fact-finding mission without end, always trailing behind our biases,
which build up into messages that, often like unopened telegrams, haunt the truths
both of ourselves and of strangers centuries ago signaling to us in the future. The
cumulative trial and error that is curiosity’s addicting forensic may enrich cartography or the epistolary annals, but little legislative enlightenment or seismically
altered attitude can ever be confidently projected. Otherwise, we should all have
listened carefully to the poet(s) of Ecclesiastes, to Mahavira, or Aristotle, Lao-Tzu,
or Christ. We did not, or certainly a critical mass of humanity did not, despite chance
after chance, generation after generation (Fig. 39.1).
Who could have predicted the links between Napoleon’s personality, immunity
to Yellow Fever among the African slaves sent to Haiti (unlike the European soldiers), Haiti’s rebellion resulting in Independence, and Jefferson’s subsequent
Louisiana Purchase by which he hoped and succeeded in expanding the Continental
United States in order to absorb the onrush of immigrants to America. That enormous population growth would then set into motion a demographic monster of its
own, liable to every ecological fiasco that was to afflict North America.
1
We thought,
with the advent of modern synthesis in biology, that we knew something about the
workings of food chains, systems collapse, including genetic squeezes and extinctions, interdependencies in water, soil, and air; the fate of molecules throughout
photosynthetic reactions, and of materials, like the more than 400 million tons of
plastics produced each year by people. But with all of these relationships, the one
pronounced gap, which we know nothing about, is human nature.
1 See The New Yorker between Frank M. Snowden and Isaac Chotiner, “How Pandemics Change
History,” by Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker Magazine, March 3, 2020. https://www.newyorker.
com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history, Accessed April 5, 2020.