The Wild and the Wicked by Benjamin Hale
A brief foray into a moral thicket, exploring why should protect nature despite tsunamis, malaria, bird flu, cancer, killer asteroids, and tofu.Most of us think that in order to be environmentalists, we have to love nature. Essentially, we should be tree huggers--embracing majestic redwoods, mighty oaks, graceful birches, etc. We ought to eat granola, drive hybrids, cook tofu, and write our appointments in Sierra Club calendars. Nature's splendor, in other words, justifies our protection of it. But, asks Benjamin Hale in this provocative book, what about tsunamis, earthquakes, cancer, bird flu, killer asteroids? They are nature, too.For years, environmentalists have insisted that nature is fundamentally good. In The Wild and the Wicked, Benjamin Hale adopts the opposite position--that much of the time nature can be bad--in order to show that even if nature is cruel, we still need to be environmentally conscientious. Hale argues that environmentalists needn't feel compelled to defend the value of nature, or even to adopt the attitudes of tree-hugging nature lovers. We can acknowledge nature's indifference and periodic hostility. Deftly weaving anecdote and philosophy, he shows that we don't need to love nature to be green. What really ought to be driving our environmentalism is our humanity, not nature's value.Hale argues that our unique burden as human beings is that we can act for reasons, good or bad. He claims that we should be environmentalists because environmentalism is right, because we humans have the capacity to be better than nature. As humans, we fail to live up to our moral potential if we act as brutally as nature. Hale argues that despite nature's indifference to the plight of humanity, humanity cannot be indifferent to the plight of nature.The novel The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore was written by Benjamin Hale. Conjunctions, Harper's, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Dissent have all published his fiction and nonfiction. He was born in Colorado and now resides in a small village in New York's Hudson Valley.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780262035408 |
| ISBN 10 | 0262035405 |
| Title | The Wild and the Wicked |
| Author | Benjamin Hale |
| Series | The Wild And The Wicked |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | MIT Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2016-12-10 |
| Number of pages | 328 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |