Books like Wild Thoughts from Wild Places

Passage From Book: Personal ethics involves the drawing of lines: I will go as far as this boundary, here, but I will not go beyond. I will defend myself against physical menace but only pacifically. I will fight if attacked but I won't kill. I will kill if my family is threatened but I won't aggress. I will squash an earwig in the kitchen but not a beetle in the yard. I will eat plants but not animals. I will eat tuna but not dolphin. I will eat goat but not pig. Fruit but not vegetables. I'm a Jainist, I will harm no living thing - except when I breathe or walk down the street, and then only unintentionally. There's a fuddling welter of such crisscrossing strictures, each observed by its own faction of conscientious people. We all draw our lines in diferent places, at different angles, and for different reasons, each line's position reflecting a mix of individual factors that include sensibility, emotions, experience, and taste (in both the broad and the narrow senses of that word), as well as sheer righteous logic. Moral philosophy, unfortunately, is not one of the mathmatical sciences. I will let the butcher do all of my killing, I will destroy habitat but not animals. I will eat stir-fried shrimp, sitr-fried beef, even stir-fried elk, but not stir-fried lion. Huh? Not every crisp line represents a triumph of ethical clarity.