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.
I've been bitten by a python. Not a very big one. I was being silly, saying: 'Oh, it's not poisonous...' Then, wallop! But you have fear around animals.
The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space.
The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that I have found what I was searching for without ever having discovered what it was.
Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning.
We have been quick to assume rights to use water but slow to recognize obligations to preserve and protect it... In short, we need a water ethic-a guide to right conduct in the face of complex decisions about natural systems we do not and cannot fully understand.
For me, being green means cleaning up the water. Water is the key. Start with water. You can't ignore the fact that that nearly 80% of US waterways are potentially poisoned - benzene, solvents, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals.
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