Prof. Lockwood’s Schweitzer Sermon, Killing Them Softly, strives to justify the work of a proud and ethical entomologist. Many powerful and compelling arguments are put forth; the resulting essay is inspiring, lyrical, and almost biblical. Anyone who was present on the day it was preached could not help but come away from it believing that truth resided there.
I did not have the privilege of attending that worship service; I only read the printed version. Perhaps it loses something in the translation to paper. In any case, after reading it, I was revulsed and sickened. The sermon is essentially a collection of rationalizations for genocide. While there may be moral justification for killing individual creatures on a case-by-case basis, as Prof. Lockwood claims, there can never be such for mass killing.
There are many highly personal anecdotes in the sermon. In one, Prof. Lockwood describes his relationship with his brother. "I recall in fourth grade that my older brother, who occasionally gave me a thrashing in our younger days, leapt to my defense when a seventh grade bully came after me." He extends this logic to contend that he is entitled to kill insects because he understands them.
Forgive me, but just because his older brother beat him up as a child, that does not give him license to unleash vast quantities of neurotoxins on the world. For not only do these toxins kill their intended victims, they also indiscriminately kill or harm every other species they contact. They irrevocably alter the natural course of Gaia, our living and evolving planet. They force her to rise up and defend herself in the only way she knows how: by retrenching, simplifying, and beginning the process of evolution along another path. We humans view this healing process as "unnatural"; the vast swarms of unsightly predators and hideous diseases that result are inconvenient to sustaining a growing GNP. Prof. Lockwood’s grasshoppers may, indeed, be Gaia’s reaction to an earlier assault on her integrity.
Why does he not consider the benefits of organic farming, which views insects not as pests but as benefactors? The wise organic farmer knows that plants only fall prey to insects when they are malnourished and unhealthy to begin with. So he concentrates on building up the health of the soil (in many cases having to start with a substrate badly depleted by decades of intensive chemical agriculture). As a result, the plants thrive, the herbivorous insects are kept in check by the carnivorous ones, and the natural order is re-established. Similarly, well-meaning world health organizations attempt to mitigate the suffering and disease of people in the third world. They do so with inoculations, medications, and chemical sanitations. Far better to feed their starving bodies! The technological approach, as it always does, only postpones the day of reckoning.
Prof. Lockwood claims to be a practical man who takes the "middle way": a necessary evil in the task of restoring balance. But there is not, and can never be, a "middle way". While morality is not an exact science and there are shades of gray about which reasonable men differ, these are the exceptions. (I like the last word of President Clinton’s pronouncement: abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.) But that does not mean there are no moral absolutes. Some things are either right or they are wrong. Genocide is WRONG in capital letters. Earth First!’s slogan says it well: no compromise in defense of Mother Earth. For when we hold the defense of the earth and all its creatures as our first principle, we align the forces of the spiritual and material world. Everything naturally falls into place, including our own pitiful, arrogant, wonderful, and all-too-human selves. By caring for the earth, we care for ourselves.
In addition to my personal objections, I question whether this sermon is in accordance with the mission of UFETA. If it is, then I have seriously misunderstood what UFETA stands for. The UFETA Principles read in part: "...we dedicate ourselves to: informing ourselves about animal suffering, educating others to understand the kinship of all living beings, seeking ecological justice and the peaceful coexistence of all creatures, inspiring respect and reverence for the earth and all its creatures, [and] living in harmony with the natural world." How could these principles possibly be reconciled with "the killing of no fewer than 800 million grasshoppers and something close to 5 billion other creatures" whose "accumulated bodies will weigh over 5,000 tons" each year?
I agreed to be the webmaster for UFETA because I believe that it is vitally important for people of faith to understand our place in the natural world. If all Unitarians (and people of other faiths as well) could see how deeply all of life is connected, it would be an important first step in healing our badly damaged planet. I choose the causes I work for with considerable deliberation; I look for organizations that I feel are headed in the right direction, with good prospects for positive change.
It concerns me greatly that UFETA has apparently presented Prof. Lockwood with its Schweitzer Sermon Award and accompanying $200 honorarium. This fact causes me to seriously question whether UFETA is really the kind of organization I thought it was, and whether I should continue to work for it. I do not make moral judgements about the organizations I work for professionally. However, I feel more entitled to do so when working for an ethically oriented non-profit.
Prof. Lockwood’s reasoning has caused me to reconsider my own ethical positions. I shudder to think how I have often used logic similar to his to justify eating food from a factory farm. Even though I am a vegan and consume no animal products, I know how the giant agribusinesses operate. They rely on large quantities of petroleum-based fertilizers and insecticides to grow massive acres of monocultures, which are then mechanically harvested and shipped long distances. The end product is neither nutritious nor healthy for the final consumer, and a significant fraction never even gets used at all.
So I try to buy organic produce when I can. However, supermarket fare is so much cheaper and more convenient that I often resort to it. I tell myself that the mass destruction routinely employed by factory farms is acceptable. After all, they are only plants, and their deaths serve a higher purpose. But then I remind myself that plants are sentient beings. In the eyes of God, we humans are no more or less worthy or justified than they.
In this context, I do draw some consolation from Prof. Lockwood’s examples of individual killing. He cites, among others, the euthanasia of a family pet and the hunting of wild animals for food. In these cases, the motive is more pure and directly focused. Perhaps here, killing can truly be a sacred act. If so, I am nudged farther in the direction of growing my own crops.
The Sixth Commandment says, "Thou shalt not kill." I believe this commandment applies to all of life, not just us arrogant humans. Dr. Schweitzer says that even the injuries to life that we must commit should be done "under the pressure of necessity". Organic farming offers a sane and ecological alternative to the "necessity" of pesticides. To quote Dr. Schweitzer (this is from the web page of the International Albert Schweitzer Foundation at http://www.schweitzer.org/english/aseind.htm):
"Ethics consist in my experiencing the compulsion to show to all will-to-live the same reverence as I do my own. A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. If I save an insect from a puddle, life has devoted itself to life, and the division of life against itself has ended. Whenever my life devotes itself in any way to life, my finite will-to-live experiences union with the infinite will in which all life is one." (From the web page Reverence For Life)
I agree with Dr. Schweitzer. I draw a distinction between killing "under the pressure of necessity" when that necessity is absolutely unequivocal—that is, for food or survival—and wanton killing on a mass scale for profit. Prof. Lockwood’s "ethical killing" can only take place on a personal level. Here the scale can be small, and the meaning sacred. But when extremely large numbers are involved, this is what I label genocide. Lockwood estimates that his neurotoxins kill "something close to 5 billion other creatures" every year. The fact that they are mostly insects is irrelevant. Insects are animals, just as much as humans are. And even if he were killing plants, it would still be genocide.
In the current issue of Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club (September/October 1999), there is a letter to the editor titled Animal Science (page 11). Mike Pedde, the writer, says "Life is a web, not a ladder, and each species is vital for its contributions." That a species is a ‘mere insect’ does not in any way diminish from its importance to Gaia, and therefore to us.
But what about household pests, you ask. Can’t I even put a flea collar on my dog? The same issue of Sierra has an article called Reining Cats and Dogs that tells how to control pet fleas naturally. I would include natural flea control under the category of ethical killing on a personal scale, as described above (although just barely). As for people who use insecticides on themselves, I hope and pray that the article Cancer, Inc. on page 36 never applies to them.
Somehow we humans have got to get over our hierarchical view of the world, and learn to respect all of life equally. If we don’t, the earth has a very limited future. Many informed scientists concur that the current unprecedented rate of extinction will result in the complete loss of all ‘higher’ life forms over the coming century. In other words, to quote the song title by R.E.M. (which was about something else altogether), "it’s the end of life as we know it". One of the best cases for this argument is made in the book Beyond The Limits by Donella Meadows et. al.
I have recently begun studying Zen. I noted with interest that Prof. Lockwood described how a fellow congregation member used Buddhism to "stop making sense" of the world. Zen, to me, is radically different from the Buddhism out of which it evolved. However, they are similar in this aspect. I have found that Zen is helping me to be a better Presbyterian. Indeed, I now think an understanding of Zen is almost required in order to truly ‘grok’ Christianity. I spent many years trying to do it the hard way, and never getting much out of it.
Zen teaches that life is in the doing. As the old saying goes, "experience its the best teacher". If the average person witnessed the "stagnant black streams, comprised of thousands of writhing bodies piled atop of one another" resulting from Prof. Lockwood’s neurotoxins, I cannot help but think she would instinctively know it was wrong. Likewise, people who have visited a working slaughterhouse are magically transformed into nascent vegetarians.
Does the Schweitzer Sermon need to be "politically correct"? That is, does it have to conform to the UFETA Principles in every respect? How about an original, thoughtful entry that challenges conventional wisdom or introduces new ideas? Lockwood’s sermon certainly fills the bill here.
Yes, fresh thinking is good. Entries need not agree with anyone’s point of view "in every particular". If that were a qualification, it would be almost impossible to find candidates, let alone a winner! No two people agree on everything. However, the winning entry should at least portray the spirit of UFETA. And this, Lockwood’s sermon does not do.
In conclusion, I disagree in fundamental and irreconcilable ways with Prof. Lockwood. I could never do his work, or condone anyone who does. Even so, I do not mean to malign the man personally. I recognize his goodness, and wish him all the best. It is clear from his writing that he has given careful thought to his business, and considers himself to be an honorable man. I respect his integrity and his willingness to introspect his chosen vocation—a duty few of us are willing or able to perform.