Lofton on Moral Insanity

John Lofton (“Craziness Among the Highest Order,” Commentary, Sept. 14) wants to know why so many people concern themselves with the quality of life other than human, and states: “If anybody out there in the asylum thinks he or she has a lucid rationale for all of this moral madness, I’d love to hear it.” OK.

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Life is life. What relates all (living) things is the fact that they live, not what they do with that life. The real “craziness” is the belief that any life form is greater or lesser than any other life form.

By overtaxing our big brains we have stepped away from the arena of life and stand looking in. Mankind is more pitiful than precious in its attempts to reduce “life” to a set of rules no “sane” organism given a brain would adhere to. Trying to figure life out is not the point. Just being there in it should be enough.

ROBERT L. RUCKER

Los Angeles