Ebola, Chimpanzees and Fear of the ‘Other’
What does this August 29th Newsweek cover say to you, with its rather menacing-looking chimpanzee and a caption suggesting that these animals and the people from…
ASPCA Head Joins Pet Breeding Industry
Ed Sayres, the former President of the ASPCA, has accepted an invitation from the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC), the lobbying arm of the pet…
Hoofin’ It Up with the Humane Society
As some 90 diners trekked around four restaurants in Denver this week, Angela Huffman of the Humane Society of the United States, which is sponsoring the…
Yazidis, Ethnic Cleansing & the Denial of Death
Two weeks ago, I’d never even heard of the Yazidi people. This week, they’re top of the news, driven from their homes in Iraq by the…
SeaWorld Stock Officially in the Tank
When SeaWorld’s stock took a dive earlier this year, the company claimed that the weather and the timing of Easter were to blame for the drop…
King Lear, Nature and the End of the World
“The possibility of genuine chaos, real cannibalizing barbarism, is closer to the surface than we can possibly imagine.” Oscar Eustis, artistic director, New York’s Public Theater.
In Israel-Gaza War, Animals Pay Price
A donkey suicide bomb and a farmyard massacre – two examples of how nonhuman animals have become targets in the current war between Israelis and Palestinians.…
Previous Extinction Was Largely Bad Timing
Their reign lasted roughly 170 million years, and the latest news is that what finally did them in wasn’t simply the notorious asteroid that slammed into…
Exploring Consciousness with Jeff Warren
Jeff Warren calls ecology “the contemplative tradition of our time.” His Consciousness Explorers Club meets in Toronto each week for guided meditation and “collective wonderment.” In…
Nonhuman Rights Project on ‘Colbert Report’
Legal rights for animals?? Expect Stephen Colbert to be suitably shocked, horrified and appalled when, in character as the classic right-wing bloviator, he welcomes Steven…
An Emerging Consciousness – Part Two
Does the empathy that certain people have with nonhuman life constitute the seed of a new kind or level of consciousness?
Could it be possible for a body of people, who are of like mind and heart in relation to our fellow animals, to give rise to a new kind of collective consciousness?
At a time of mass extinction, it’s a notion that, however fanciful, may be the only future available to us.
An Emerging Consciousness
(This is one of a series of posts exploring how, as chaos grows around the world and a Sixth Extinction takes hold, a new kind of collective consciousness…
Authentic Spirituality in the Coming Storm
Once you’ve accepted that Planet Earth has entered a Sixth Great Extinction – one that’s irreversible and that will consume most, if not all, species, including…
Happy Birthday, Daphne Sheldrick
The original photo bomb? A baby elephant joins Daphne Sheldrick for tea in the early days of the Elephant Orphanage. At the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage…
SeaWorld Becomes a Laughing Stock
You know your company is in trouble when everyone starts laughing at you. That’s what’s happening to SeaWorld now that the activists have been joined by…
Chimpanzee Personalities Almost Identical to Humans
A new study of captive chimpanzees concludes that the personality traits of chimpanzees are almost identical to those of humans. I asked psychologist Sam Gosling of…
How the Weather Is Like Fido
The new Cosmos series continues to take down those who prefer to believe that the Earth is flat, that we were all created in six days,…
Pope Francis: ‘We Are Custodians of Creation’
In my post Ask the Beasts yesterday, I mentioned that however well-meaning the idea of humans as “stewards” of creation, it’s a fundamentally problematic notion. Stewardship…
Ask the Beasts
It’s hard to look at what’s happening to the Earth and all the animals as being part of a divine plan. As mass extinction wipes out…