This chapter in Midgley involves the lifeboat ethic. Until now, I never really thought about her view which is humans are very rarely in lifeboats. None of us are ever totally in a situation in which we are so isoloated and independant that competition dominates. The use of this model is just an excuse humans make when we dont feel like dealing with the problems.
I really enjoyed Midgleys section called "Nature is not always red in tooth and claw". In this section she says that cut throat competition between species in the law of evolution is false. I would whole heartldy agree with her here. If anything, nature is very interdependant on each other. Each species has its own gap and job to fullfill in the ecosystem. Midgly points out that people used to beleive that they were so culturally flexible that they could live anywhere. The human race however has not found that to be true. In our effort to increase the resources we used, we destroyed the competitors that we saw against us. These would be insects, rodents, deer etc. Humans have also been the cause of crazy unnatural events like the dust bowl because of our greed for resources.
I thought it interesting that Midgley says there are cases in which competition between people and other species is unavoiadable. The one that she brings up is eating meat but there are other examples like deer or bugs eating crops. I again agreed with her on what I feel is an important point; that of competition not giving us the license to kill anything and all that we please. It is horrible, I think, that people would kill sharks, chop off their fins, and throw them back in the water. Not only is it wasteful but it is inhuman and cruel.
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