After strugglign with this issue personally during my training as a biologist I have simply come to accept that people seem to have the unique ability to abstractly shift their perspective from a variety of levels. The person, the family, the school, the employer, the nation state, etc. Each of these collectives have interests that need to be protected just like an individual. From the biologist/ecologists/environmentalists I’ve met who are very against invasive species I’ve come to believe it is because they fall in a love with an eco system and begin to see things from its perspective. They fight against its failing the same way a startup would throw itself against the sure fate of shutting down due to lack of funding. They choose not to take a larger step back and look at the global system of life and evaluate judgments from the perspective.

This is no more strange to me, however, than people who take their children to see deer in the park and then wage a 365 day/year war against them in their yard with everything from poisons to weapons. Humans seem to want things to be a certain way, and they seem willing to put in the energy to try and make things conform to their vision. I’ll end by recommending the book, _The Botony of Desire_ by Michael Pollan. It is an excellent book and in what part discusses Apollonean vs. Dionysian concepts of beauty. The former being man’s desire to groom nature into his own perfect vision of what it should be, and the latter being the love of it for what it is in its “natural” state. (Trust me, it is more interesting than I make it sound!) :-)