A recent thread discussing the legal and moral implications of teachers having sex with 18 year old students evolved into a discussion of moral taboos and our place in nature. I think about this topic a lot. In fact, it might be the thing I think about most. As human beings, there is a necessity that we approach life consciously if we are to thrive, as both individuals and as a collective species.
For ages we thought that as humans we had a range of vision (I mean this literally, here) which allowed us to see everything worth seeing. As science pushes ever further into the unknown, we consistently find that this arrogance on our part is not merited. Just the other day I read an article in Scientific American which disclosed the findings of an avian researcher, Timothy H. Goldsmith, who explored how much more birds can see than we do. For example, birds can see light in the ultraviolet range. Pictures taken with a camera which only registered ultraviolet light revealed a very different world than the one we see. A black-eyed susan has several bands of color, rather than being merely yellow, with a black center. Stop and try to imagine everything we cannot see. We are so blind that we cannot even conceive of what it is that we do not see. And yet it is there, and no less important for the fact that our eyes cannot perceive it.