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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thomasdonegan" data-source="post: 3289251" data-attributes="member: 5190">I apologise if offence was caused by the comment at the start of this page and should be more careful in future.Here we have serious and apparently well-meaning people advocating doing whatever they think fits their determined and particular aims in a total moral vacuum.  A "soul" is supposedly what sets human apart and the other "reductio" of collecting humans is probably based on its existence.  By denying the existence or relevance of ethics we deny our humane nature.  Neither the above nor this may be the best way of making that point and there may not even be an acceptable way of making that point.  Killing birds is clearly a topic with zero ethical implications for many people who engage in it (hunters, meat eaters, some museum ornithologists), but the pereceived lack of moral compass to guide appropriate activities is basically the reason this discussion is happening again and again.  As I have said before, some guidelines which really take the ethical points into account and really get to the bottom of why collection is so important and so useful sometimes (note: not always) is very lacking.  The reason for this is that any position beyond "I should be entitled to collect everything always, perhaps unless illegal (unless I disagree with the law)" is not one that the US museum community has been willing to take.  Several posts above are just perpetuation of that same position.  Positions in several of the other posts against collecting would restrict and make difficult some research which most people on this forum seems to think of as important.  There is a happy medium somewhere.</blockquote>

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