Since soylentgreen is so perturbed that not enough people "get" his point, allow me to share an epiphany of my own. It, too, revolves around ducks, oddly enough.

My grandparents (currently just my grandmother) have a pond in their back yard. Once upon a time it was a stream, but my grandfather took a backhoe to it, inviting ducks, herrings, beavers, and even a family of swans (for a short period of time) into the neighbourhood. So many fish chose to call this little aquatic rest stop their home that people, to this day, ask me if my family stocks it. We don't.

I often found great pleasure in feeding the ducks -- what self-respecting 10 year old doesn't? -- and the ducks would often find great pleasure in following me around, quacking at me until they had convinced me to dig out a loaf of bread from my grandparents bread box. This group of ducks was so unabashedly unafraid of people that it would even go door to door around the neighbourhood, walking down the quiet sub-suburban street that my grandparent(s) live(d) on. One day after school I came to the small cottage style house that my grandparents called home to find the ducks, curiously, on the front step. One even tried to follow me inside, so I figured they were hungry and got out an older half loaf of bread. As I threw the crowd pieces, they were downright violent toward each other. They'd rip the bread from each others bills, and outright shove smaller ducks out of the way. This was something shockingly new to me. I stopped for a minute. Time seemed to slow a bit, and the sounds of the ducks faded from my ears. I realized in that moment that this flock of birds was not so different from a group of people. Perhaps more importantly, I realized something that I've come to learn that a minority of people seem to understand -- people aren't so different from that flock of birds.

A few years later I had someone tell me of the evils of humanity, and how we're the only species on Earth that fights with its own kind; how we're the only species that knows greed, or that pulls food from another's mouth. I couldn't help but think back to those ducks, and how they taught me how wrong this person was.

What good are rose coloured glasses when they filter out the reality of the situation?

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"The plan does not involve mayonaise."
"... I knew there was a catch."

You can't take the sky from me.

the only animal that fights with it's own kind? what kind of nutcase was that? They've never seen dogs... cats... horses....mountain sheep? Perhaps the person meant "group fights" (i.e. wars), in which case they've definately left out Chimpanzees and ants.

Ditto for Greed (ever tried to train three dogs to eat out of their OWN foodbowl?)

man is a pack beast - we form naturally into small groups. (different from flocks and herds which can be gihugic (pronounced Ji-huge-ik)). In any pack, there's usually a leader that the pack members follow

What's odd about man is that the individual can belong to multiple completely distinct packs at the same time.. the stylish clothes pack, the astronomy pack, the lucky cannukian pack, the hockey lover's pack,on top of the 'people who live in my home with me' pack. And so on. I think THAT is unique to man. (just my thought - any zoologist wandering by may feel free to correct me)

No good at all, which is why I refuse to wear them, even if it makes me a callous person in some respects. The rose colored glasses can often become a mask that hides the worst problems, preventing them from being properly addressed and corrected. You cannot fix what's wrong when you refure to acknowledge there's no problem at hand.

I am no great believer in the "inherent good" of any form of life. Pure altruism is NOT a survival mechanism. The foundation of most principles that define "Good" behavior in humans stem from varying degrees of ability to repress our inherently survival oriented, selfish nature. Would an animal put itself at risk for the benefit of another? Maybe, in the case of mothers and offspring, but it would be absolutely wrong to say that an animal mother would never kill or abandon its young. Is defending the herd a matter of group survival or independent survival? I don't see many herd animals out for justice when one of them does fall to the predators. Nor do I see many coming to the aid of a stricken animal after the takedown is made, nor any kind of mourning behaviour afterwards. Most herd defensive behaviours I've seen don't seem to be more than one animal doing its best to blend in or run in the hopes that its not their number thats being pulled.

If anything, I find a number of altruistic behaviours in humans to be counterproductive to survival. One example that I've noted often is the widespread use of medical technology that has aided birthrates in developing countries, where religious or agrarian tradition still holds that large families are necessary to survival, to skyrocket and for some people to survive incredibly debilitating injury to survive, even though that survival is often attained at the cost of an incredibly expensive, medically supported, existance, often paid for by government disability programs at the expense of the taxpayers at large. Its one of the biggest animal fears we really have left, death, that fuels our pathological drive to ensure survival at all costs (See: Terry Schiavo). In the name of sympathy, we weigh ourselves down with an incredible burden.

I'm not saying we should leave people to die because of critical injury, nor that astronomically low birth survival rates are acceptable. I'm just defining the other edge of the sword that people looking through rose colored glasses don't often let themselves see. In some ways, its great we can do this, in other ways, its a major major drain on resources. Few people ask whether 100% survival rates for children born in the world is necessarily a good thing, given that we're already hideously overpopulated, or if people who are horrendously injured are really better off surviving (don't give me any flak here, triage is a VERY old medical practice). But these questions do need to be asked.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.