Kerasote's Ethical Views From Bloodties: Nature, Culture And The Box?

When looking at things from an ethical perspective, one has to consider how to protect and preserve the basic needs of others as well as their own. There is no difference here when dealing with the well being of animals. Alice Walter and Ted Kerasote are two individuals who deal with ethical issues regarding the well being of animals, and while their stories are vastly different, their main points have overlapping similarities. In Anthony Weston’s A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox, both Walter and Kerasote’s experiences are explicitly detailed through Walter’s essay, “Am I Blue?,” and Kerasote’s excerpt from Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt. Throughout both of their experiences, Weston’s three-part concept of ethics is put into full-effect.
This holds true during the hunt he talks about in the excerpt, where he shoots and kills an elk, but throughout the whole ordeal he tries to keep himself from doing it, showing himself to be conscientious of the elk’s well being: “Still I hesitate, for though I can lose myself in the hunting, I have never been able to stop thinking about its results-that I forget it’s this creature whom I’m about to take from the world rather than some number in an equation proving the merits of wild-food harvesting over being a supermarket vegetarian; that this being before me-who sees, who smells, who knows- will no longer be among us, so that I may go on living.” (Weston 39). Ultimately, Kerasote’s remorse for his actions and his sympathy towards animals who suffer from harsh conditions in and out of factories and slaughterhouses have prompted him to take action by means of becoming a vegetarian. However, through paying attention to other factors, he realized that it meant nothing, and in some ways only made it worse: “But when I inquired about the lives lost on a mechanized farm, I realized what costs we pay at the supermarket.” (Weston 41). In the end, Ted makes the decision to continue hunting, for though it does not do much to rest his conscience, it does help him realize that most of his actions are, so to speak, for a greater good: “When I looked into that web, so full of pain, I came to see that my killing an elk each year did less harm, expressed in animal lives who I believe count equally, than importing the same amount of vegetable food to my bioregion. That didn’t ease my conscience; but it did make my choices clearer...” (Weston