Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.
Interpretation
Animal societies exhibit complex social behaviors such as care and bonding.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens emphasizes that certain animal species, including primates, elephants, and pigs, demonstrate significant social behaviors such as caring for one another and forming strong bonds, especially between parents and their offspring. This challenges the notion that such complex emotions and social structures are unique to humans, suggesting that empathy and social solidarity exist across various species in the animal kingdom.
In practice
During a nature conservation talk about animal behavior.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planetIt is the poor, those least responsible for climate change and least able to afford adaptation, who would suffer the most.
There is a harmony In autumn, and a luster in its sky...
Resource efficiency is the wrong metric. We should use nature as the measure, using nature's wisdom as a template for our economic systems.
The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.
Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme.
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