the road to hell

Sometimes, good intentions aren't enough.


Rose-lensed environmentalists who think nature is all about balance and harmony don't have the first damn clue about nature. Life evolved, over millions of years, as a crucible of eternal competition for space and resources. Sure, admittedly, cooperative survival strategies evolved, too, but at its base, life on this earth is all about being red in tooth and claw. Even the most placid-seeming grassy lea is a hotbed of struggle among the blades of grass for the most sunlight, the most water, and the most nutrition from the soil. The world isn't in balance; it never has been. People who look at the yin-yang symbol (a.k.a. the t'ai-chi/taiqi, or taegeuk in Korean) see the wrong thing if all they perceive is balance. Such people fail to note that the black and white colors in the symbol, representing yin (black) and yang (white), are drawn wavily, in such a way as to represent dynamism, not equipoise: the universe is constantly off-kilter, and the eons-old struggle of life on this planet is a reification of that most basic of principles. Note, too, that a black dot erupts out of the white field, and vice versa: death is interwoven with vital energy, and always has been.

So don't mourn the little bunny. Sure, his demise is sad, but he's performing a service for which he was preordained by the very law of life. We're all food in the end.