516
culture), is termed the “butterfly effect.” That there are no stand-outs, stand-ins, or
stand-alones in nature present a perplexity of half-truths and loaded guns to the
observer. Meaning, all is in flux. This is fundamental ecosystem logic.
One particularly noteworthy sign of our vulnerability to ecodynamics is the
sense that other species commit suicide, for reasons not dissimilar to those estimated 10.6 per 100,000 human individuals who take their own lives annually.
2
Professor Antonio Preti, a clinical psychotherapist at Italy’s University of Cagliari,
has suggested that suicide in other species is merely our “anthropomorphic use of
the term,” a fable, but that “Suicidal behavior might be an evolutionary jump relatively recent in our [our italics] species: a byproduct of living in groups of people
who are not as closely related genetically as in social groups of nonhuman
mammals”.
3
If there is wisdom to Preti’s interpretations, one could easily surmise a
2 “World Health Statistics data visualizations dashboard,” “Suicide,” World Health Organization,
https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.sdg.3-4-viz-2?lang=en
3 From Antonio Preti’s “Abstract,” “Animal suicide: Evolutionary continuity or anthropomorphism?” Animal Sentience 20(10) 2017, https://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol2/
iss20/10/, Accessed May 23, 2020. See also, “A New Look at Animal Suicide,” by Jessica Pierce,
Psychology Today, January 6, 2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-dogs-goheaven/201801/new-look-animal-suicide; see also, “The Suicidal Animal: Science and the Nature
of Self-Destruction,” by Edmund Ramsden and Duncan Wilson, Past & Present, Volume 224, Issue
1, August 2014, pp. 201–242, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu015, July 24, 2014, https://academic.oup.com/past/article/224/1/201/1411207, Accessed May 24, 2020. The authors of this latter
essay, commence with an analysis of the animal suicide exclusion, by Émile Durkheim in his 1897
study of Suicide: A Study in Sociology, Félix Alcan, Paris.
Fig. 55.1 Dr. Birutė Marija Filomena Galdikas With Rescued Orangutan at Tanjung Putting
National Park, West Kotawaringin Regency in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan,
Indonesia. (Photo © M.C.Tobias)
55 No Equation for It: Numbers with No Attachment
culture), is termed the “butterfly effect.” That there are no stand-outs, stand-ins, or
stand-alones in nature present a perplexity of half-truths and loaded guns to the
observer. Meaning, all is in flux. This is fundamental ecosystem logic.
One particularly noteworthy sign of our vulnerability to ecodynamics is the
sense that other species commit suicide, for reasons not dissimilar to those estimated 10.6 per 100,000 human individuals who take their own lives annually.
2
Professor Antonio Preti, a clinical psychotherapist at Italy’s University of Cagliari,
has suggested that suicide in other species is merely our “anthropomorphic use of
the term,” a fable, but that “Suicidal behavior might be an evolutionary jump relatively recent in our [our italics] species: a byproduct of living in groups of people
who are not as closely related genetically as in social groups of nonhuman
mammals”.
3
If there is wisdom to Preti’s interpretations, one could easily surmise a
2 “World Health Statistics data visualizations dashboard,” “Suicide,” World Health Organization,
https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.sdg.3-4-viz-2?lang=en
3 From Antonio Preti’s “Abstract,” “Animal suicide: Evolutionary continuity or anthropomorphism?” Animal Sentience 20(10) 2017, https://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol2/
iss20/10/, Accessed May 23, 2020. See also, “A New Look at Animal Suicide,” by Jessica Pierce,
Psychology Today, January 6, 2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-dogs-goheaven/201801/new-look-animal-suicide; see also, “The Suicidal Animal: Science and the Nature
of Self-Destruction,” by Edmund Ramsden and Duncan Wilson, Past & Present, Volume 224, Issue
1, August 2014, pp. 201–242, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu015, July 24, 2014, https://academic.oup.com/past/article/224/1/201/1411207, Accessed May 24, 2020. The authors of this latter
essay, commence with an analysis of the animal suicide exclusion, by Émile Durkheim in his 1897
study of Suicide: A Study in Sociology, Félix Alcan, Paris.
Fig. 55.1 Dr. Birutė Marija Filomena Galdikas With Rescued Orangutan at Tanjung Putting
National Park, West Kotawaringin Regency in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan,
Indonesia. (Photo © M.C.Tobias)
55 No Equation for It: Numbers with No Attachment