Argumentative essay on nonmoral nature

7 July 2011

Is It Appropriate for Humans to Intervene in Nature with Animals?

Nature was created and functions according to its unique laws and regularities. Although scientists claim that they have already revealed many of them, they admit that there is much more to understand and discover. Many of us wonder why there is cruelty in nature and how could God let it happen. But in fact, we should just change our attitude to this, as if we don’t understand something or disapprove of it, it doesn’t mean that it is wrong, or shouldn’t be this way. Only those for whom nature was created and by whom it is governed can intervene in nature with animals, but it is neither created for, nor governed by humans.
Although people are the most developed creatures on the Earth, they aren’t rulers of it, which becomes most evident when we consider different natural disasters that occur more and more often in different parts of the world. I think that one of the reasons for such terrible instances is that we overestimate our role in nature. At some point in the history we started to consider ourselves the rulers of the planet and forgot that in fact it wasn’t created for us and that we use it and live here on the same rights as any other living creatures. If we consider this issue from the stated point of view, we will better understand that we have no direct right to intervene in nature with animals and dictate terms to the natural world. Inanity of such actions is already visible in the uncontrollable instances of natural catastrophes, and if we don’t stop acting this way, we can simply destroy ourselves and bring our civilization to an end.
With the view of the above described disasters and the overall state of affairs, it is not surprising that often people start to wonder: why is there so much cruelty in the world, and not only among people, but in the natural world as well. Shouldn’t God control this situation and make everything peaceful? When asking ourselves such questions, we again forget that the world wasn’t created for us and that we have very limited abilities to comprehend the situation around us, as we have only our human mind to analyze it and draw conclusions. And it is our main problem – we are so caught up in our terms that we just cannot avoid the familiar categories of epic and narrative, pain and destruction, victim and vanquisher (Gould 3). We perceive description of parasites, for instance, with horror, as in human terms what they do and how they live, destroying their host day by day, is inadmissible and cruel. Of course, some people try to find positive and even noble explanation to this instance, saying that in the action of laying eggs into the victim’s body parasites demonstrate immense love and care to their kids and show themselves as noble parents. Others praise parasites’ selective way of eating their host, as till the last moment they leave vital organs untouched (Gould 6). But at the same time, it is really too hard for us to comprehend this situation completely, as no matter how hard we try, it will still be cruel and horrible in our mind.
Some people think that if nature is so rough, it is then imperfect, and so needs to be changed. They claim that without people’s intrusion our world is doomed to failure and they try to change something in the nature. But if we take all the above described in account, we will see that these statements just don’t make sense, as we cannot draw such conclusions due to our mind organization. It is proven on practice by the large number of endangered species of animals, which is a result of people’s actions. And now it may be reasonable to intervene in nature with animals only to correct our own mistakes, which led to the problems we experience today.

Works Cited

Gould, Stephen Jay. “ Nonmoral Nature.” The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive. SJG Archive, n. d. Web. 6 Jul. 2011.