798
By 2020, utilizing the avalanche of data from hundreds of sources
10
we can now
approximate a likely number of vertebrates killed by humans globally each year: 5
trillion individuals, not including even (and ever) greater mathematical exponents
of invertebrates. As Hegel once wrote, in a very different context, “the infinite itself
creates its own essence, through its own absolute activity, for itself”, to which one
could append a statement by Kant, “all vain wisdom lasts its time, but finally
destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay”
11, 12
.
In this way, by all such machinations, the Anthropocene has caught up the history of philosophy in the worst paradox of all: ecocide purporting to seek ethical
balance between fundamental logic, common sense, classical pillars of reason, and
the search for some ideal that exists only in the languages of art, science, and mathematics, but not in life herself. Our consciousness is not unaware of this inherent
contradiction. If all other tools have failed us in one exercise after another to rectify
the clarity of our crisis, what is left? Clearly the path to activism heralds an unblemished pathway. Moreover, Isbell Dualities are fundamentally a question of aesthetics. Just take any half-dozen birds, photographed and painted, and consider how
their myriad categories are enshrined in simultaneous, multidimensional loci of
consciousness. Every speckle and feather reach pi (Figs. 91.2 and 91.3).
10 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51413420, Accessed February 9, 2020. These include
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, sentientmedia.org, animaclock.
org, road kill and animal control data, the World Economic Forum, the Humane Society of the
United States, thevegancalculator.com, faunalytics.org, animalmatters.org, awellfedworld.org,
adaptt.org, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and IUCN data, fishcount.org.uk, the Department of Agriculture,
Animal and Plant Health ‘CauseSpec: A Database of Global Terrestrial Vertebrate Cause-Specific
Mortality,” Jacob E Hill, Travis L Devault, and Jerrold L Belant, PubMed.gov, US National Library
of Medicine, PMID: 31403701 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2865, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/31403701-causespec-a-database-of-global-terrestrial-vertebrate-cause-specific-mortality/
Accessed February 9, 2020, and a myriad of actuarial senescence data, including, “Life-history
connections to rates of aging in terrestrial vertebrates,” by Robert E. Ricklefs, PNAS, Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, June 1, 2010 107 (22)
10314–10319;
https://doi.org/10.1073pnas.1005862107,
https://www.pnas.org/content/107/22/10314, Accessed February 9, 2020.
11 See The Philosophy Of Art: Being The Second Part Of Hegel’s Aesthetik, by Wm. M. Bryant,
D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1879, p. 100.
12 See Kant’s Critical Philosophy, by John P. Mahaffy and John H. Bernard, Macmillan And Co.,
London, 1889, p. 137.
91 Non-Linear Ethics
By 2020, utilizing the avalanche of data from hundreds of sources
10
we can now
approximate a likely number of vertebrates killed by humans globally each year: 5
trillion individuals, not including even (and ever) greater mathematical exponents
of invertebrates. As Hegel once wrote, in a very different context, “the infinite itself
creates its own essence, through its own absolute activity, for itself”, to which one
could append a statement by Kant, “all vain wisdom lasts its time, but finally
destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay”
11, 12
.
In this way, by all such machinations, the Anthropocene has caught up the history of philosophy in the worst paradox of all: ecocide purporting to seek ethical
balance between fundamental logic, common sense, classical pillars of reason, and
the search for some ideal that exists only in the languages of art, science, and mathematics, but not in life herself. Our consciousness is not unaware of this inherent
contradiction. If all other tools have failed us in one exercise after another to rectify
the clarity of our crisis, what is left? Clearly the path to activism heralds an unblemished pathway. Moreover, Isbell Dualities are fundamentally a question of aesthetics. Just take any half-dozen birds, photographed and painted, and consider how
their myriad categories are enshrined in simultaneous, multidimensional loci of
consciousness. Every speckle and feather reach pi (Figs. 91.2 and 91.3).
10 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51413420, Accessed February 9, 2020. These include
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, sentientmedia.org, animaclock.
org, road kill and animal control data, the World Economic Forum, the Humane Society of the
United States, thevegancalculator.com, faunalytics.org, animalmatters.org, awellfedworld.org,
adaptt.org, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and IUCN data, fishcount.org.uk, the Department of Agriculture,
Animal and Plant Health ‘CauseSpec: A Database of Global Terrestrial Vertebrate Cause-Specific
Mortality,” Jacob E Hill, Travis L Devault, and Jerrold L Belant, PubMed.gov, US National Library
of Medicine, PMID: 31403701 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2865, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/31403701-causespec-a-database-of-global-terrestrial-vertebrate-cause-specific-mortality/
Accessed February 9, 2020, and a myriad of actuarial senescence data, including, “Life-history
connections to rates of aging in terrestrial vertebrates,” by Robert E. Ricklefs, PNAS, Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, June 1, 2010 107 (22)
10314–10319;
https://doi.org/10.1073pnas.1005862107,
https://www.pnas.org/content/107/22/10314, Accessed February 9, 2020.
11 See The Philosophy Of Art: Being The Second Part Of Hegel’s Aesthetik, by Wm. M. Bryant,
D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1879, p. 100.
12 See Kant’s Critical Philosophy, by John P. Mahaffy and John H. Bernard, Macmillan And Co.,
London, 1889, p. 137.
91 Non-Linear Ethics