by David Brin
Only lately have we begun embarking upon a fourth way of looking at the world and our place in it. A new view of life.
If we evolved, one must ask, are we then not like other mammals in many ways? Ways we can learn from? And where we differ, should that not also teach us?
Murder, rape, the most tragic forms of mental illnesses — all of these we are now finding among the animals as well as ourselves. Brainpower only exaggerates the horror of these dysfunctions in us. It is not the root cause. The cause is the darkness in which we have lived. It is ignorance.
We do not have to see ourselves as monsters in order to teach an ethic of environmentalism. It is now well known that our very survival depends upon maintaining complex ecological networks and genetic diversity. If we wipe out Nature, we ourselves will die.
But there is one more reason to protect other species. One seldom if ever mentioned. Perhaps we are the first to talk and think and build and aspire, but we may not be the last. Others may follow us in this adventure.
Some day we may be judged by just how well we served, when alone we were Earth’s caretakers.
The author gratefully acknowledges his debt to those who looked over this work in manuscript form, helping with everything from aspects of natural simian behavior to correcting bad grammar outside quotation marks.
I want to thank Anita Everson, Nancy Grace, Kristie McCue, Louise Root, Nora Brackenbury, and Mark Grygier* for their valued insights. Professor John Lewis and Ruth Lewis also offered observations, as did Frank Catalano, Richard Spahl, Gregory Benford, and Daniel Brin. Thanks also to Steve Hardesty, Sharon Sosna, Kim Bard, Rick Sturm, Don Coleman, Sarah Bartter, and Bob Goold.
To Lou Aronica, Alex Berman, and Richard Curtis, my gratitude for their patience.
And to our hairy cousins, I offer my apologies. Here, have a banana and a beer.
David Brin
November 1986
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