[font:Times New Roman][/font]Don't get me wrong, because I'm not a militant animal-rights activist (although I do think that we should minimize unnecessary suffering), but this impulse to dominate living things - expressed across cultures and history - explains much of what happens in the world of human affairs. To my mind, anyway.

Yi-Fu Tuan's book - I linked to in my first post - is the only one I've come across which specifically addresses this issue, especially as it relates to the impulse to turn living objects into the inanimate . So we force trees to become arches, or bicycle wheels (see the photos attached to "pleach"); it seems like every time I turn around I bump into this in the human world, too: p.16

Needless to say, I think that the world might be a better place if we understood what we were doing in this regard, and so I never let the thinnest of opportunities pass without (as Mencken might say) a whoop-up for Tuan.