What does it mean to be a snail darter?

So, if you read my last post, “The Tragic Story of the Snail Darter,” you’ll remember that, after I gave a rather lengthy description about the fate of the little fish, I promised that I would write just one other post about the issue, discussing what exactly the whole saga sort of means to me.

Anyway, I hope you’re not bored with the snail darter thing; I realized, after rereading my last post, that unless you’re really nerdy or really green, it doesn’t exactly read like anything remotely interesting. But it is to me, I suppose. Stories like that one sort of break my heart, in a weird way. I feel sorry for the fish.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I do what I promised I would, and if you’ve RSS’d this blog and don’t ever want to hear about “those damn fish” ever again, let me know. But for now, please, bear with me.

Since I first encountered the story of the snail darter in my environmental law class, I’ve been trying to sort out just why it keeps bugging me. Part of me thinks it’s because of the utter disregard for the Supreme Court and the law itself that was displayed by the congressman who attached the rider that ultimately doomed the snail darter. That would be an easily acceptable answer: isn’t it easier to get angry at a vague procedural rule than at the human race?

But then again, I’m not mad at people. In the case of the snail darter, there were people fighting tooth and nail to keep it protected, just as there were people fighting tooth and nail to build the dam. To be quite fair, the whole case of the snail darter for most people, environmentalists and otherwise, doesn’t so much concern a fish as it does the extent to which the ESA can protect species.

I’ve learned a lot by studying this case, and I’m grateful for it. Yet, I’m dissatisfied. I’m still bothered on a moral level.

What exactly is it inside of us that makes us think we have the right to utterly disregard the value of plants, animals, and even ecosystems themselves? Or if we don’t believe that we have the right, what is it that makes us ignore and brush aside environmental concerns when they run up against making money? It all seems so strange, when you really look at it.

I mean, what is it that we really value? It’s a question we’re asked all the time, by people we know, by politicians, businessmen, etc. And though it’s sort of hackneyed and stupid, it does get at something. What’s our hierarchy? Who or what do we care most about? Why?

The Jesuits have this really interesting meditation. If you have the time, give it a shot; it will really mess with you. Take out a piece of paper (or a bunch of pieces), and sit down somewhere quiet. Then, in a single sitting, write down the name or a description of every single person you can ever remember meeting in your entire life.

All of them.

Even without actually writing the list, you can imagine how strange it is. That list contains the extent to which you have communicated with the human race. And for some people, it’s something that makes them feel really great. For others, it makes them feel really depressed. The Jesuit, after you write your list, then asks you to reflect on each and every single name. Has your contribution to this person’s life been positive or negative? Why positive? Why negative?

The point is that it tries to get down into who you are, what you’re doing, and who you want to be. Eventually, you notice patterns in your behavior. The priest asks you to examine why you act one way towards one person, a different way to another. You start to see characteristics in people that attract you, and different characteristics that repulse you.

After a time, when I did this, I realized that I hadn’t been such a loving person. Not all the time. And I also noticed that I wanted to be loving, and that love was really the goal for me. It was a meditation that helped me cultivate and see what was really inside myself. The Jesuits would say that this meditation is a way to discern God’s will for you; they’d say that the meditation is a tool to find the seed that God’s planted in your heart, so that you can nourish it.

Believe me, it’s powerful. But what does it have to do with the snail darter?

Well, I guess I just wonder what would happen if humanity, as a single individual, sat down and made that list. What if it were possible to have some sort of single entity representing humanity, to have it be the accumulation of the experiences of every individual human being, past and present and future, man and woman, parent and child? And what if we wrote a list, but instead of naming other humans we’ve interacted with, what if we listed the name of every species that we’ve ever been in contact with?

What if, while we were writing this list, God or the Earth or something was sitting next to us, and after we finished, he or she or it asked us to look at each name of each species, and to think about whether we were a positive or negative force in that species existence?

What would we say? What could we do? On that list, we’d have written the names of so many species we’ve killed. On that list, we’d have to face the fact that our hands are bloodied. But what bothers me most of all is the fact that looking at that list, we’d have to acknowledge that nothing’s changed.

I mean, what do we want to be, as a species?

Do we want to be loving?

The snail darter’s a perfect example of what happens when we value simple human vanity over peaceful coexistence. What is more a symbol of our (supposed) domination over nature than a building a dam, simply because we can?

So, in these days, when we undeniably have the power to “delve or hew –/ hack and rack the growing green!” what does it mean to be loving as a species? What does it mean to balance love for individuals with love for the whole? In these times of global communication, what does it mean to prevent ourselves from embracing loneliness, isolating ourselves from the species we live with? The modern world is bulging with human innovation, but it is also emaciated. Where is compassion?

But perhaps the most crucial question of all: will we care enough to integrate again with the planet? Will we look at our list, and promise ourselves that we will do better? I’m scared, because I don’t know the answer.