I am fairly certain that the run-of-the mill modern human being hasn’t got even the slightest understanding of what ‘an animal’ is, or any other organism. We, as a species, are clueless about life. It is almost as if we believe that organisms are numbers and descriptions. Commodities. Something to trade or eradicate at pleasure.

This particular myopia underlies many of our preferred perspectives and relations with living beings and places. But I wonder if they realize that these organisms, these anciently conserved ecosystems and the impossibly sophisticated webs of relationship they ordinarily support are effectively Nature’s Alexandria. They are the living library. Our descriptions and myopia have us selling them for trinkets.

We are burning the library because we no longer understand how to read or interpret the living books.