Reply #51: Here is a knotty one, a really abstruse question, indeed, an out-and-out

[Joe Chi Minh]

imponderable, to which, if you assembled all the wisest men and women in the history of the world, they could surely never find the answer?

What do predators do? How do they operate? We’ve all seen enough wild-life programmes on the television to know that they target the weak, the sickly, the young, the vulnerable. Apex predators, the same. The big cats are no more noble in that regard than jackals, reptiles, even insects. Sharks, pike and so on, the same.

Now here is the question: is it appropriate for the leaders of a modern, progressive society to take wild animals as their models? And should they, perchance, match the apex predators' concept of triage, or even excel it by making really, really, REALLY hard decisions, does that raise them above the animals in dignity, or degrade them out of all recognition, whether to the level of animal, vegetable or mineral?

I confess I have been exercised by this most intractable of riddles for many years, and I am still struggling to BEGIN to find the answer.