We Don't Live In Eden

Note: In all my posts, words like "today" refer to the day the post was written, not the day it was posted.  There can be a delay of up to two weeks between writing and posting.

The sermon this morning was about dolphins. It was about other things as well, but for me it was mostly about dolphins. The priest talked about a documentary that showed how dolphins were being slaughtered as their killers searched for dolphins that would work for things like aquarium shows and swim-with-the-dolphins programs. I found this really distressing and instantly decided that I will never go to one of those dolphin swim things even if I have the opportunity, but it also got me thinking about a bigger issue: we don't live in Eden.

In this case, I'm not talking about the idea of the Fall, but more about the fact that we don't have the kind of idyllic relationship with nature that's evoked by images of Adam naming the animals or St. Francis preaching to the birds. I think there's a part of us that longs for that kind of relationship with nature – I know I do: I love animals – I like to see them, but even better is to interact with them and get to touch them. My husband will attest to the fact that I will happily get bitten if that's the type of interaction that's available. But I think it's also possible for that longing to become a temptation – to get in the way of things that are more important.

The dolphin slaughter from the sermon is a great example. It makes perfect sense that people would want to swim with a dolphin – they're magnificent creatures, intelligent, often curious – so like us and yet so different. To want to connect with that other life seems the most natural thing in the world. But it's not real. If making those experiences available means killing other dolphins that don't fit the bill, and also possibly providing a miserable life for the dolphins that survive only to be taken into captivity, then we're not really connecting with nature – we're exploiting it in order to get the illusion of a connection.

Things have gotten better, but this used to be the case with zoos: creatures housed in tiny, artificial cages so that people could marvel while the animals suffered – and of course all the animals captured that didn't survive to get into a zoo. Most major zoos do a lot of conservation and species survival breeding and so forth, and there's more emphasis on enrichment and allowing for natural behaviors, but I think we still need to be very careful about respecting the animals' needs more than the humans' desires.

Certainly this is an issue for most people who try to keep animals like big cats as pets. Most people can't actually provide for the physical and psychological needs of a tiger, and even a tiger that doesn't mean any harm can easily kill a person. But maybe it's also an issue for me. I used to have a parrot: a green-cheeked conure that my husband and I fell in love with and bought from the pet store. We had misgivings about buying from the pet store, but at the time balanced those with the fact that this bird was here now, and we would know that at least that one would get a good home. And he did, until he got outside and – we think – was eaten by a hawk. But the question now is whether we should get another one someday. On one hand, they're great little birds, and it is much easier to care for a conure than a tiger. On the other hand, there's the entire industry of breeding parrots that are all too often relinquished because people don't understand what they're getting into when purchasing one of these intelligent and long-lived birds. There are parrots out there that need homes – but the ones that do are generally species that we definitely aren't looking for because we do have some idea how much work they take and know that we're not up for it. The green-cheeks are easy as far as parrots go. But I still don't know whether my adopting one would be a good thing overall – it would mean supporting the breeding of that particular species at least, and I don't know if that's something that should be supported.

A related issue is the balancing of conservation areas and human recreation. On one hand, ecotourism sounds like a great idea: preserve the wilderness, and make it more economically feasible by allowing people to come see and learn about what's being preserved. And sometimes that works really well. But some ecosystems are fragile; a lot of people trampling through might cause problems of its own. There are stories of rare birds being stressed to death from being chased by overenthusiastic birdwatchers. None of those people probably wanted to harm the bird, but the desire to connect overwhelmed their ability to perceive the actual needs of the animal. Some animals, and some ecosystems, might just need to be left alone.

And that's hard. Not just because humans in general have tended to take the “dominion over the earth” thing a bit too far, but also because the desire itself is not a bad thing. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to connect with all the wonderful creatures on the planet, but sometimes it can't be done without causing harm. The fact is that we don't live in Eden, and trying to pretend that we do carries the risk of helping to destroy the very things we long for.