Session 6 Blog Post for March 10

With Aldo Leopold’s, A Sand County Almanac in mind, what moral significance should we assign animals if any and how could this assigning of significance lead to a more permanent existence for humanity within ecosystems as a whole?

In Aldo Leopold’s, A Sand County Almanac, we find an intimate series of stories relating the exploits of different animals and plants as observed throughout the year by the owner of a small loamy farm.  These stories are a product of the author’s careful observation of the world around him and its layered complexity.  As readers, we instantly relate to the different creatures and their immediate predicaments whether it be a woodcock and his methodical performances of gallivanting or the steadfastness of the Silphium in the face of human intervention in the land.  The author paints a picture that is both captivating and relatable.  As a reader of this careful and loving observation of nature I am not struck by any undertone of defiance towards or hatred against man and his own exploits at the expense of other creatures of the land.  We instead feel the full force of our impact on the lives of such animals as the bison as the author treats humans as simply another creature fighting for survival who so happens to have more initiative that the other creatures around him/her.  I also find myself engaging with the notion, while reading, that the creatures that maintain a place in the ecosystem of any of the natural settings described earn that place because of a lack of agency to overstep the bounds of its ecological allowance.  The author observes the main difference between humans and other creatures as that of power and self-awareness and the ability to overstep these ecological boundaries.  The somber overtones of man’s influence over other creatures within each narrative reinforces this understanding.  From this reading, I obtain an answer to the question – what moral significance should we assign animals if any and how could this assigning of significance lead to a more permanent existence for humanity as a whole? Humans have been cursed or blessed in one way or another with the ability to affect the world around them in astounding ways.  Like other creatures, we tend to prefer the existential continuation of our species over others and tend to assign more moral value to humans than other creatures.  However, it is our superior agency that requires of us a more sensitive outlook on other creatures.  While Aldo Leopold is simply painting clearly the lives of other seemingly irrelevant creatures and plants for us, he is indirectly showing us the moral importance of these creatures and the choking strength of the human race as it interacts with its environment ignorant of the complexity and beauty of this environment that Leopold seems to so lovingly depict.  I am not proposing that we need assign equal moral weight to other creatures as we do to humans.  However, we will surely lose our ecological place in the environment if we do not more carefully observe the natural world around us and assign more value to these infinitely complex organisms.  The system will simply push us out if we do not acquire a reason and purpose among the creatures and plants of this world.