LETTER: Don't forget that nature has its own wisdom

A disturbing syntax appears in the recent Inter Lake comments on wolves. From the “Flathead Outdoors” column’s “...having hundreds of wolves running around eating deer 24/7 has impacted our deer herds,” (Dec. 31, 2015) to the “What about wolves?” Guest Opinion’s “It’s only a matter of time until they’ve [wolves] cleaned out all of our game...,” (Jan. 8, 2016), there seems to be a recurring linguistic clue to the way the authors of these pieces see the world.

The repeated use of the possessive adjective “our” when writing about the natural world is one of the signs that helps to distinguish between what theologian Sallie McFague calls the arrogant eye vs. the loving eye.

I respectfully suggest that thousands upon thousands of years of evolution didn’t make a mistake with the wolf. Maybe we should tap into that ancient wisdom before we decide, from “our” perspective, what is good and what is bad. The wolf and prey relationship encodes immense history. We ignore it to our peril. —Bob Muth Sr., Kalispell