Murder of Virginia Tech Students Compared to Poaching Elephants
Talk about human reductionism and diminishing the reality of a profound evil: The following quote is from poet Nikki Giovanni, at the memorial service for the murdered at Virginia Tech:We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant in the killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.
I have absolutely no problem with the allusion to victims of AIDS or children hiding from militias. But the seeming comparison to these murders with elephant poaching is to diminish the evil of the mass murders and engage in outrageous moral relativism. To equate the reaction of a baby elephant with the grief experienced by the victims' families and school community, was unncessary and gratuitous.
This is not to say, of course, that poaching elephants for their ivory isn't very wrong. But killing elephants is not morally equivalent to the murder of human beings. If we lose sight of that, we discard human exceptionalism and diminish the perceived value of all human life. This statement was an unintended insult to the students and professors killed at Virginia Tech.
Labels: Human Reductionism. Human Exceptionalism. Moral Relativism.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:57 PM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
Oh come on, you've really missed the point if you're singling out the elephant line for your agenda.
The whole thing was to inspire a deeply saddened community, including my sister. Yes, suffering is everywhere, even in nature.
My goodness. Just when I thought you were above politicizing the VT tragedy.
I agree with Wesley on this one. The analogy to the baby elephant is silly and degrading to the human victims.
I'd go even farther: It's pernicious and blameworthy to make a moral equivalence between the deliberate and horrific killing of innocents and the accidental death of the hypothetical "Appalachian infant." At least there we have a human being, so that's one better than the baby elephant (good grief!), but the attempt is to equate murder with "destabilizing the land." _This piece_ is politicizing--It's trying to say that hunting elephants and doing things environmentalists don't like that they say destabilize the land are morally equivalent to rampaging around with a gun murdering dozens of people. And frankly, that's all sick.
I am not politicizing the VT tragedy. I am pointing out the utter inappropriateness of equating animal life with human life.
And she wasn't talking about "suffering in nature." She was talking about the reaction of a baby elephant when members of his herd are shot for their ivory, which was to strongly imply that poaching is the moral equivalent of mass murder. Disgusting and utterly inappropriate. I said that her moral equivalency was an "unintended" insult to give her the benefit of the doubt on this. She might not think there is a difference.
Lydia is right. She also inappropriately juxtaposed an accidental death caused by mining with murder, too. (Raping the earth?) I noticed that but decided to leave it out of the post since, in and of itself, it was not germane to our discussions here.
OK, fine.
I'll ask my sister and the thousands of other grieving souls at the VT campus if they found it insulting.
Considering she called it "inspiring" and "brought the house down", I think that's a tall order.
I can see why it would. Which is another subject worth discussing some time. But not here nor now.
An enthusiastic reaction by emotionally vulnerable college students at an emotional gathering to a "poem" (I only realized it was supposedly a poem after I saw it printed in lines on another site) written and delivered by a person they've been taught to revere as inspiring and profound--"award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni," etc.--one of their own teachers, who taught the deranged killer himself, is hardly a reliable indicator of the moral compass or of the worth along any axis of the piece of writing in question. Let's not forget, too, that college students are reegularly, insistently, and incessantly being taught exactly the sorts of moral equivalences, the use of the term "tragedy" to refer to evil, and the near-religious devotion to environmental and animal-rights causes implied in this left-spun piece of writing. Indeed, that sort of perspective is not uncommon at every level of public schooling. That tells us nothing about whether it's right. Bandwagon fallacy, anyone?
Oops, sorry, Wesley. I was posting at the same time as you or I wouldn't.
I don't know to say. I find this whole post - and Lydia's last comments especially - so patronizing. Neither deserves any more of my attention.
Alright: I think the issue I raised needs to be discussed but not in the context of a terrible tragedy. I probably should not have mentioned it. So, let's cool it on this post and discuss these matters another day. Thanks, all.
Thanks.
The massacre is very close to me. My sister, my ex-fiance, my best friend, and half my high school all go/went to VT.
I could tell. I value your participation here. My sympathies to all.
A girl in my sister's sorority was killed in the French class. Another of my sister's friends jumped out of a 2nd floor window to avoid madness and broke his leg.
I never thought I could feel like I did on September 11. Well, I did.
X. THC: Thanks for coming to SHS but I have erased your message. This post is closed and we are not going to discuss the VA Tech matter in general. Please come by again.
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