I woke up today thinking about sea turtles. Specifically, I thought about how, for my entire life, I’ve always made sure to cut plastic six pack rings for fear of one of them getting around a sea turtle’s neck and killing it. Plastic rings have been developed to be less harmful to these creatures, although apparently, according to Google, 100,000 marine mammals are killed by them every year (how this number is arrived at, I have no idea).
What is your direct connection to the murder of sea turtles? Is there a correlation between you tossing that plastic in the trash, and the death of an animal?
The reason I’m thinking about this is because I’ve been pondering the idea that thoughts, beliefs, and speech can be categorized as violence. It seems, in many ways to me at least, to be similar to the plastic ring / sea turtle argument. No, your particular plastic ring might not directly kill a sea turtle, but your participation in the act leads to a collective rise in probability that one will be killed somewhere.
Okay, let’s go with that. How many things do we do, every single day, that have the Sea Turtle effect? Driving a car? Eating McDonald’s? How about listening to a podcast? Thinking impure thoughts? Watching problematic movies? Posting incorrectly on Twitter?
More thoughts on this later.
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