Book Review: Springer Mountain: Meditations on Killing and Eating by Wyatt Williams

I think I want to say that I think this book is what praxis without ethics looks like. He didn’t know what or why he was doing what he did at first. Maybe he did come to an answer, but did that make it right? Pretty sure many disturbed (is that the word I’m looking for? Troubled?) people have come to similar awakenings, after realizing why they did something after years of not being able to rationalize their behavior. Parts were so beautiful it brought me to tears, but ultimately the ending felt like he, a white man, was using indigenous meat-eating practices as just one more way to justify his own killing and eating, which, in my view, will never justify his eating and killing of animals for meat when he has other options and traditions available to him. That isn’t kinship. It’s him romanticizing the relations of one people with a species. His conclusions did not satisfy me. So, no, I don’t think he’s trying to understand why humans are still drawn to meat-eating. It’s not a question that needs to be asked any more than why do humans cause war or suffering or do evil. The answers are too varied and of course his conclusion fed into what he was already doing. What is the point on meditating on what is, if you also fail to imagine something better?