671
For those who uphold that basic quality of the world—microbial merit at the
individual level—everything is possible; anything short of that devolves to human
subterfuge, grasping unto and for itself the totality of the life force, handing out its
pleasures, affirmations, trifles, and negations as is convenient, to garden plots and
companion animals. But when three billion birds are deemed to have gone vanishing in North America since 1970,
4
the biodiversity quantum, morose, dulling, and
lacking in any chain of events that can be traced back to our own agency are lost in
the numbers. Additionally, this calculus is denominated only among “wild” birds,
with no mention of the other hundreds of billions of avians (e.g., chickens, turkeys,
emus, and starlings) killed annually from desultory and ravenous human gluttonies.
The numbers, as enumerated in Chap. 43, are unfathomable. For example,
“21,917,808 chickens per day” in the United States in 2014.
5
This too, in its most
gravid and heinous forms, is variance: Again, the ever-changing framework that
defies the science of laws, norms, orders, theories, and rules, and any other conceptual cohesion of Nature by which we would endeavor to formulate human comparisons and comfort levels.
73.3 Maimonides in Siberia
On September 20, 2019, climate crisis protests erupted around the world, millions
of children engaged, in advance of the September 23rd United Nations Climate
Action Summit 2019.
6
Too late to save the child of the cetaceans, the smallest of
them, 19 or fewer remaining individual vaquitas in the Gulf of Mexico, victims of
“impoverished poachers, greedy cartels, and corrupt officials”.
7
Too late to save a
region of Siberia, Yakutia, the size of Europe, rotting under the heat rise of 3°C, the
fastest rate of warming, along with Alaska and Greenland, in the world. With millions of other species and millions of individuals per species caught up in humanity’s predatory and unreasoning rapacity, there is no metaphysical or practical “guide
for the perplexed” any longer. For the twelfth-century Sephardic, Spanish philosopher, Moses ben Maimon, Maimonides (1138–1204), times were just somewhat
easier. He looked for comfort and constancy to Aristotle’s physical universe and to
the many dozen of mizvot or sacred laws/commandments in the Five Books of
4 See, “Decline of the North American avifauna,” by Kenneth V. Rosenberg, Adriaan M. Dokter,
Peter J. Blancher, John R. Sauer, Adam C. Smith, Paul A. Smith, Jessica C. Stanton, Arvind
Panjabi, Laura Helft, Michael Parr, Peter P. Marra, Science 19 Sep 2019: eaaw1313, https://doi.
org/10.1126/science.aaw1313,
Science,
AAAS,
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/
early/2019/09/18/science.aaw1313, Accessed September 20, 2019.
5 See “How Many Chickens Are Eaten Each Day?” Reference, https://www.reference.com/petsanimals/many-chickens-eaten-day-97fda74fbde5d17c, Accessed September 20, 2019.
6 https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/
7 See “The ‘little cow’ of the sea nears extinction,” by Annie Roth, National Geographic, October
2019.
73.3 Maimonides in Siberia
For those who uphold that basic quality of the world—microbial merit at the
individual level—everything is possible; anything short of that devolves to human
subterfuge, grasping unto and for itself the totality of the life force, handing out its
pleasures, affirmations, trifles, and negations as is convenient, to garden plots and
companion animals. But when three billion birds are deemed to have gone vanishing in North America since 1970,
4
the biodiversity quantum, morose, dulling, and
lacking in any chain of events that can be traced back to our own agency are lost in
the numbers. Additionally, this calculus is denominated only among “wild” birds,
with no mention of the other hundreds of billions of avians (e.g., chickens, turkeys,
emus, and starlings) killed annually from desultory and ravenous human gluttonies.
The numbers, as enumerated in Chap. 43, are unfathomable. For example,
“21,917,808 chickens per day” in the United States in 2014.
5
This too, in its most
gravid and heinous forms, is variance: Again, the ever-changing framework that
defies the science of laws, norms, orders, theories, and rules, and any other conceptual cohesion of Nature by which we would endeavor to formulate human comparisons and comfort levels.
73.3 Maimonides in Siberia
On September 20, 2019, climate crisis protests erupted around the world, millions
of children engaged, in advance of the September 23rd United Nations Climate
Action Summit 2019.
6
Too late to save the child of the cetaceans, the smallest of
them, 19 or fewer remaining individual vaquitas in the Gulf of Mexico, victims of
“impoverished poachers, greedy cartels, and corrupt officials”.
7
Too late to save a
region of Siberia, Yakutia, the size of Europe, rotting under the heat rise of 3°C, the
fastest rate of warming, along with Alaska and Greenland, in the world. With millions of other species and millions of individuals per species caught up in humanity’s predatory and unreasoning rapacity, there is no metaphysical or practical “guide
for the perplexed” any longer. For the twelfth-century Sephardic, Spanish philosopher, Moses ben Maimon, Maimonides (1138–1204), times were just somewhat
easier. He looked for comfort and constancy to Aristotle’s physical universe and to
the many dozen of mizvot or sacred laws/commandments in the Five Books of
4 See, “Decline of the North American avifauna,” by Kenneth V. Rosenberg, Adriaan M. Dokter,
Peter J. Blancher, John R. Sauer, Adam C. Smith, Paul A. Smith, Jessica C. Stanton, Arvind
Panjabi, Laura Helft, Michael Parr, Peter P. Marra, Science 19 Sep 2019: eaaw1313, https://doi.
org/10.1126/science.aaw1313,
Science,
AAAS,
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/
early/2019/09/18/science.aaw1313, Accessed September 20, 2019.
5 See “How Many Chickens Are Eaten Each Day?” Reference, https://www.reference.com/petsanimals/many-chickens-eaten-day-97fda74fbde5d17c, Accessed September 20, 2019.
6 https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/
7 See “The ‘little cow’ of the sea nears extinction,” by Annie Roth, National Geographic, October
2019.
73.3 Maimonides in Siberia