I liked this passage very much, as also listening to all the comments. One thought that came up for me was that nature is not that benign as it seems. When the lion is hunting deer, there is no sign of mercy - the deer is just food. If the lion were to show mercy, it would not be a lion. We see the brutality and cruelty in nature whenever its time to eat. In that, the human condition is unique from the animal one - that we construct stories of morality to guide our decisions, instead of responding instinctively. In that we have a choice - to answer the call of nature, or wait a bit, and ask, "What is our nature?" There are layers, and we can choose to be true to our base nature, or dig deeper.
On Jan 25, 2011 Somik Raha wrote :
I liked this passage very much, as also listening to all the comments. One thought that came up for me was that nature is not that benign as it seems. When the lion is hunting deer, there is no sign of mercy - the deer is just food. If the lion were to show mercy, it would not be a lion. We see the brutality and cruelty in nature whenever its time to eat. In that, the human condition is unique from the animal one - that we construct stories of morality to guide our decisions, instead of responding instinctively. In that we have a choice - to answer the call of nature, or wait a bit, and ask, "What is our nature?" There are layers, and we can choose to be true to our base nature, or dig deeper.