One of the greatest puzzles of human evolution is why we sacrifice valuable resources to help others. We know that many other species will cooperate when it’s in the interests of individuals to do so. For example, many animals defend their offspring because they carry their genes. Some birds flock together to better protect themselves from predators.
But humans go one step further. Under the right circumstances, they will endure great personal costs to advance the interests of complete strangers. And here, following the death of Cecil, was evidence that love of others could be extended across the species barrier, with thousands of members of the public all around the world clamoring to give time and money to help protect big cats living thousands of miles away. But why?
Many Parisians acknowledge the efforts; at least there are bike lanes now, sure, it’s better than nothing. But the fantasy of Paris becoming a bike-first city is still far from an ideal reality. The execution of this planned evolution could and should be better. As Esnard-Lacombe puts it, “If they treated cars and drivers this way, there would be a French revolution.”
If there is a better-smelling vegetable than a tomato grown in dirt and ripened in the sun, I don’t know it. But I know I could almost conjure up that smell just from looking at my father’s old Super 8 video home movies. I think a tomato is my first sensory memory, though I’m sure having the movie available to me as a kid helped amplify this remembrance.
In Zürich, I saw no drunken Bolsheviks at the Cafe Odeon. Down the block at the Terrasse Restaurant, there were no anarchists partying with war deserters. This wasn’t 1916.
Yet in the river, the swans were a feature still left over from more than a century earlier. They lilted on the surface of the water, seemingly unfazed by the spring rain. Present since the 1800s, the swans were glorious symbols of today’s Zürich, a global epicenter of high finance.
If we read fiction to expand our vision, to bring us into places where we would never venture, and to teach us compassion, then Anything Is Good more than accomplishes those goals.