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Murder is Somehow Less Hard to Bear than the Humane Termination of an Injured Animal
The officer rested his arm holding the stock of the assault rifle on the top of a log pile, and aimed directly between the target’s eyes. She was looking directly at him, unblinking, from 30 feet away, and exhibited no fear. “I hate doing this,” he muttered, before finally pulling the trigger.
A sharp “bang!” rang out, her head jerked up and then her whole body sagged to the ground, followed by some muscle jerks, and it was over.
The officer went over and checked the body, decided no second shot was needed to finish the job, and then walked back to his squad car, took out his phone, and called in the serial number of his rifle, reporting his firing of one round, as required by regulations.
Our doe was dead.
She was a beautiful animal, and had adopted our forested 2.3-acre lot in suburban Montgomery County, PA for the past five years. We could always recognize her by a game front leg that she usually held up, bent slightly, above the ground. She would sometimes lower her hoof while grazing, but when she ran or walked, it was always on three legs. The fourth, almost certainly broken by a long-ago run-in with a car, must have hurt to put weight on.
During those five years, she bore six fawns (last year she had twins). This year I saw her new baby only hours after it was born. It was scarcely bigger than a small dog at the time, its fur brightly spotted. Over the summer she had “adopted” an older young animal clearly born the same year, but perhaps a month earlier than her own. The three of them spent most of their time on our lot, which includes a small vernal pond good for watering. In dry years, she would leave during August, no doubt in search of water, but she would always return, sometimes with a grown fawn and a few other deer in tow, sometimes alone.
She knew us, and even if she was only 20 feet from the back door, would often not flee if we left the house to go to the car or the mailbox. If I spoke to her gently, sometimes I could get even closer, though she always remained wild enough that she would not take food from us. The best I did at approaching her was once when it was bone dry and I ran the hose into a bucket. That time she watched with interest from a distance, listening to the sound of the water, and then let me walk with the full, sloshing bucket to within 10 feet before running away off. She returned quickly to the bucket though, after I had set it down and walked a decent distance away from it.
There was a clear level of trust that had developed.
So it was with a great deal of sadness that my wife and I pulled our car into the driveway one morning last week and saw her lying in the grass in the back yard. She was down on her belly, head up and legs tucked under, as if resting, but the left hind leg didn’t look in the right position, so we knew something was wrong. Somehow, with two bad legs, she had managed to flop and drag herself from the road, where she’d suffered another hit by a car, to the seeming safety of the back yard, but she could go no further.
When I tried to approach her, she tried futilely to stand and then painfully flopped herself into the edge of the woods, where she lay sprawled on her side.
I knew what had to be done.
We called all the area animal rescue outfits, and found only one licensed for caring for injured deer, but even they said they could only take fawns. Injured adults, they explained, usually killed themselves banging against their cages trying to escape, and in any case, with two bad legs, she was an even worse bet for successful treatment. Besides, it was going to be a very cold night that night, and she’d probably end up freezing to death, and she was obviously in pain, so something had to be done right away.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission, which will dispatch injured deer that are in or beside the road, would not come for days for an animal that, like our doe, was posing no road hazard, so we called the local police.
The officer who responded to our call to put her down was a friendly and sympathetic guy. I urged him not to use his pistol, explaining that to get close enough for an accurate shot, he would inevitably frighten her and cause her to suffer more. That’s when he went back into his SUV and pulled out the black, deadly looking M-4, which is the civilian version of the military’s standard-issue M-16 automatic assault rifle.
“That’s a pretty heavy looking weapon for a police car,” I said. “Did you bring that especially for this job, or do you carry that in your car all the time?”
“Police have been carrying these since that shoot-out in Los Angeles,” he said, referring, I believe, to the famous bank robbery and car-chase shootout in that city in 1997 between two heavily armed and body-armor-clad robbers and a number of outgunned LAPD officers. The two robbers were eventually killed, but not before 11 cops and seven bystanders were injured. That shootout, in which over 2000 rounds were fired by the cops and the robbers, became the justification for the arming of police all across the country with automatic weapons, which have later become popular with law-enforcement personnel in an increasingly militarized police culture.
After the officer had dispatched our deer with that clean shot to the head, I complimented him on his marksmanship. “Well,” he explained, “I was a Marine.”
I asked him where he had served, and he said “Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Iraqi Freedom,” referring to the first US war against Iraq back in 1990, and to the nine-year-old Bush/Cheney war that the White House now claims just “ended” in “victory.”
I mentioned that I had grown up with a rifle and was a pretty good shot myself, but added that I had been a war resister back in the Vietnam War. “Well, I was no war resister,” the ex-Marine cop said, with a wry smile. He added, “I think we had to go in after Saddam Hussein.”
“Yeah, well, there never were any of those weapons of mass destruction,” I said, “and it doesn’t look like the US invasion accomplished much. Iraq is a mess now, headed towards ‘failed state’ status, and Iran has much more influence there now than the US does.”
He replied, as he was climbing into his vehicle to leave, “Well, it doesn’t matter. I think Israel will be taking care of Iran before long.”
As he drove off, even as I was mourning our doe, I was left thinking, too, about that last remark. What was he thinking?
If Israel were to “take care of” Iran, it would be by massively bombing Iran’s military installations, and no doubt much of its industrial infrastructure too, much of which is, of course, located in heavily populated areas. Thousands of innocent Iranian civilians, including children, would inevitably be killed or maimed or orphaned.
And this is apparently all okay with this same officer and former military man who was so quite visibly upset at having to stare down his M-4 gunsight into the eyes of a deer he was going to kill even for a perfectly humane reason!
How strange that we as human beings can be so sensitive and warm-hearted about an animal, and yet can be so detached from reality and so compartmentalized in our emotions and our moral sense that we can simply dismiss as “collateral damage” the lives of tens, hundreds or even thousands of innocent men, women and children who, for cold, calculating geopolitical reasons of dubious merit, will be killed by our or our allies’ actions -- or in the case of an attack on Iran by Israel, by weapons and delivery systems which we, as Americans, actually paid for and provided.
47 Comments so far
Show AllDave: Please do not confuse marine training bent on de-sensitizing soldiers to live human beings with all of us bearing the same dearth of empathy.
You said:
"How strange that we as human beings can be so sensitive and warm-hearted about an animal, and yet can be so detached from reality and so compartmentalized in our emotions and our moral sense that we can simply dismiss as “collateral damage."
Every time a teacher, writer, or leader uses the term We to universally excuse (or endorse) barbaric behavior, they act to normalize it.
I have never seen evidence that you understand, or respect, some of the insights drawn from feminist doctrines. I've recently read Riane Eisler's research on civilizations that pre-dated the make-war models taken for modern norms. War, aggression, and competition are not inevitable outcomes.
It might broaden your thinking to check out, "The Chalice and the Blade." It takes a lot of training, programming, and conditioning to wipe empathy out of a population pool. And the process starts with a basic disrespect for life, an undermining of the value (and wombs) of women, and its carry-over into the ways the Earth Mother and all her living systems are perceived as things that mostly exist for MAN'S use (and abuse). Those beliefs allow armed men to think they are gods, answerable to no one.
Read The World Peace Diet.
http://www.worldpeacediet.com/
Yes, we are all naturally compassionate, connected and amazingly aware of the feelings of those around us. But, we are conditioned to 'see' certain others as a label; 'enemy', 'food animal', etc. rather than another fully sentient being.
The dichotomy is not between other animals and humans. And certainly not in the way suggested by this article for what is being done to hundreds of billions of 'food', 'research', 'fur' animals is beyond unspeakable. But, what is done to other humans who are labeled enemies, or lessor creatures is also unspeakable; slavery, forced poverty, torture, rape, murder.
What should grab everyone is how easily we disconnect from our natural compassion whenever certain labels are applied. And it is just as horrifying now as it was when the Nazis suspended their natural feelings when dealing with 'Jews' and 'Jew sympathizers'.
Sioux Rose,
I don't get where you would see in anything I wrote here -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- that I don't understand or respect "the insights drawn from feminist doctrines." In fact I do. When I say we I am saying that as a people, Americans, men and a fair percentage of women, too, are reflexively pro-war. I can see this in my own extended family.
Check out the pro-death-penalty crowds during executions, and you'll see plenty of women. And check out the hecklers at the next anti-war march you go on, and you'll see and hear plenty of women yelling at you from the sidelines.
It's not as clear as you are suggesting that the empowerment of women means a turn from bloodlust and killing.
Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net
PS speaking as someone who is part Algonquin, and whose brother is a shamanistic healer, I am well aware of how our modern Western concept of the earth as simply something to be exploited has carried over into a loss of reverence for life. But pretending that there is no "we" in America that has adopted this sick value system is no way to challenge it.
Thank you for the polite response, Dave. It is the shaping of culture, by patriarchy's mostly male (down the ages) boards of elites, that has led to the "war is holy" mantra that is felt in both overt and covert ways by both genders.
Sports condition the masses towards viewing the world through the prism of teams, winners and losers, and the joy found in "slaughtering" the enemy.
Fundamentalist religions view the world as an ideological battleground where anything goes, as long as it's tied to "The Father in Heaven's Will."
Centuries of patriarchal conditioning needless to say shape BOTH genders to a view that sees war as inevitable.
Centuries of patriarchal religious conditioning teach women, as well as men, to obey the rules of the all-mighty church, on threat of damnation to hell for eternity.
These premises were not drawn up by men and women, is my point, They were the product of warrior tribes who wrote their own "holy" books to reinforce a decidely MASCULINE view of reality. What it left missing was the equal input from women... and that's the item that has led to the gross imbalances we now face, as seen in those priorities which have been cultivated and/or funded, century after century.
When any intelligent writer reinforces the idea that these behaviors are inherent to human nature itself, they miss the facts of history that led to these self-limiting, self-destructive outcomes and behaviors. For instance, when my father was a young student, his left hand was tied behind his back to force him to learn to write with his right hand, the norm.
NORMS are forced onto persons today, and their legacy hails back to the church-state that has always turned violence, in pursuit of its aims, into a holy mission. When we hear the likes of George Bush or Tony Blair reinforce these disastrous memes, we realize NO progress (of the spiritual sort) has been made. These ideologies (bent on war) are precisely what's holding humanity hostage! They reflect a warrior-conqueror's view of "reality."
It's time to decouple the lies from the truth of what human beings are capable of being and expressing.
I appreciate most of your perspectives. A great many intelligent men fall into this trap... as do the vast majority who study psychology. HIS-story does not speak for all human beings, both genders, or the diversity that is possible...
(The quote I borrowed from you, in my view, reinforces the points I've articulated above.)
May 2012 be kind to you.
What do you call a woman who defends her children with force if needs be? Is she acting under patriarchal influence or is she being a woman?
Sioux Rose, I understand and agree with your point for the most part. I initially wrote "we Americans" but then changed it to "we humans," because the same dichotomy exists in most societies. Of course, you could equally argue that most societies are male dominated, and that too would be correct. I'm not convinced, however, that female led societies are going to be all that less warlike.
Women can be pretty violent too.
And the experience we've had with women as national leaders (Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, et al) has not been particularly encouraging in that regard.
Still and all, I think we'd all fare better if women had an equal say in the nation's affairs.
Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net
One reason that feminist philosophy and spirituality is useful is that it gets us out of the box of soundbites that we are often caught up in. The idea that "some women can be violent" is nowhere near the deep history, the examples, and the questions that are raised when it can be shown that not all cultures are equally violent. It then becomes worthwhile to ask, which cultures are these and how does a more rational culture come about?
And why, if we can discuss so many different viewpoints, including Western, Eastern, and Indigenous on this list, can't there be respect for feminist scholarship and discovery?
The "Chalice and the Blade" is a really great place to begin. You may be surprised by the broader perspective.
DAVE: I applaud you for trying, I really do, but when men bring up the list of violent female heads of nations or Secretaries of State they are mistaking where all the asymmetric programming has taken humanity at large. One of my best male friends is more connected to Earth Mother than just about any woman I know. He is Mother Earth's champion and lives the ideals Riane Eisler associates with "The partnership Society."
Women like Ann Coulter do a better job of identifying with rigid, patriarchal fundamentalism than many men. What makes a woman do this? Personal status, wanting to belong to the clubs of the powerful, or maybe she seeks the approbation of one conservative male figure.
EVERYONE has been socialized for centuries by mores that lean heavily towards masculine expressions. Do you think it's a coincidence that many men regard nothing as a greater insult than being compared to a woman, i.e. being called a fag, sissy, effeminate, etc? This is due to the overall devaluation of all things related to The Divine Feminine, and women by extension.
In any case, the entire human race (with rare and notable exceptions) requires consciousness-raising, or better yet, something along the lines of a massive de-programming campaign.
In a recent book I just completed, children are instructed to sit on the earth, palms down, and say, "Earth Mother: I am so sorry for what has been done to you. How can I help you? Show me." Instead of End Times, the challenge before us all is that of MEND TIMES. To mend is to heal; and it means to draw together into wholeness what has been torn asunder. It means love, not violence. Any one, male or female, holds the potential TO love, for that is our gift from Spirit. I believe we all have lived many lives and are not all at the same level of soul development, it's also clear that none of us has experienced lifetimes in only one gender. Everyone is a hybrid...
Until society honors the traits resonant with both genders, it will be IMPOSSIBLE for humanity to turn away from the violent approach that has been exalted above all other things (see U.S. military budget as "Exhibit A") for centuries. This is the thing I argue for, often in this forum. When we gloss over war as if it were inevitable, we hold that ethos in place. Ultimately, another world AND approach ARE possible.
Dave: WE really appreciate you taking the time to interact with readers in this forum. And you are absolutely right about us supporting sites like this one. Without alternatives to the MSM, few of us would be as up-to-date on the key issues of our times as we are, thanks to writers like you, and all the other wonderful souls featured by C.D. who try to make a difference.
Any man who struggles to understand the feminist perspective is WAY ahead of the pack! Thank you for caring about this issue, and fairness in general.
So it's not so much that we need women in public offices, we need women and men who understand the ideals that make for a PARTNERSHIP (as opposed to a dominator) society.
May 2012 be gratifying for you.
"MEND TIMES"
I like that.
Well put!
Dave
The fact that you keep arguing for your point of view shows the dynamics of aggression.
Aggression is not a negative trait, it is a postive trait.
Aggression is about being active for change for the better , or stopping change for the worse.
If we stop what drives humanity to war then we stop what drives us to betterment.
Sure, it's about choices but sometimes we don't have the choice, choices are imposed on us.
Mortuary: The fact that few people but your own tag team bother to engage you says it all.
If you are sincere, in your posts, then you have major problems with your gender identity, and the PREMISE of equality, itself. And if you're not, then why would I engage a poster who's here to set up straw men arguments that lack substance?
You are among a handful on this site that I find TOXIC. If the reaction your many objectionable posts has catalyzed in me is something you find aggressive, please consider the source: YOU and your insidious statements. Honesty is not your forte. And you seem to 100% lack empathy for all the sins past, present and likely future projected at the female half of the Living Equation. I wonder if there is a particular authoritarian male (who you obviously didn't celebrate New Years with... as I took note of the times of your recent posts... given an ugly comment you made to me some months ago that alleged false items about my private life) who you think your anti-women's rights posts please? That's an odd trade-off, if it's the motivating factor behind your inverted opinions (regarding gender parity, etc.) I'd encourage you to rethink those twisted loyalties. Then, too, it may be that you ARE in uniform, and thus post opinions that align 100% with the bankrupt ethos I term "Mars Rules."
gender is socially defined
Are you saying I have to conform to a definition ?
My sex is female.
Oh, and thanks for keeping a check on me, my posts, who I spend time with and my movements. Are you the CIA? ~lol
"EVERYONE has been socialized for centuries by mores that lean heavily towards masculine expressions."
I think we should substitute 'militaristic expressions' in place of 'masculine expressions'. For what we tend to consider a 'masculine expression' is as much a conditioned response as any other unnatural expression.
The fact that being disconnected from natural feelings is schooled most aggressively into the majority of young boys does not in any way make it a natural 'masculine expression'.
Our culture is based upon empire mores not natural requisites. And this empire has defined both the roles of the 'feminine' and the 'masculine'.
My experiences with other animals does not support the assumed definition of 'masculine' used above as I have witnessed enormous selflessness, understanding/connection and consideration/compassion by males. Often to a much greater degree than exemplified by the females in the same group.
Just because men are the primary perpetrators of rape and murder in empire (militaristic) societies (all major societies proceed from former empires), it does not mean that this is anymore natural for men than it is for women... men are simply expressing an unnatural archetype with which they have been conditioned to identify.
You mention Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher(was she really a woman?), and Golda Meir as examples of women as leaders. All of the above supported their respective male dominated societies. Much different than a matriarchal society or one where all women have equal opportunities and respect.
The word "feminism", like "liberalism," has been parsed by the right and trivialized by the MSM. But it is a whole expansive world of thought by sensible and intelligent people. We are at a point in our history when such a promising body of thought ought not to be discarded with frames like "some women scream for the death penalty, too."
One of the threads I often read here is: What do we do now? Not repeat the past couple of millenia, certainly. Feminist thought, theory, and spirituality contains both old and new ideas that rarely reach MSM or even places like CD. Feminist spirituality is the fastest growing quest in this country: There are thinkers, scientists, mediums, grandmothers and shaman gathering thoughts of the ancestors and technologies of the present and raising up an enthusiasm for change.
Not much will happen without enthusiasm.
Eisler is worth a read. Seriously.
what a load of bollocks
we're all human
stop hating yourself and placing all your anger on men
learn to love people for all that they are, good and bad
You see? It is possible for people of different cultures to speak their world views, and for indigenous peoples to expect respect. But the history and story and philosphy of women gets these sound bites: Feminists hate men, hate themselves, don't love people. That is both silly and wrong.
I hereby triple-dog dare you to read "The Chalice and the Blade."
I quadruple dog dare you to read
Delusions of Gender
http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393068382
How about Mary Wollstonecraft.."Vindication of the Rights of Woman"..(1792)
Thomas Gilbert-
I actually see very little conflict between your and Morticia's reading suggestions. This looks like a great read, too.
Interesting! Looks like a good read....
Thank you Dmadrone. You echo my thoughts and reinforce ideas that I've planted in this forum for several years. Why a person like MORTICIA has such difficulty with the obvious TRUTH reflects her own psychological problem(s). This is a poster who made light of an article that featured a battered woman as a "fashion statement." And whenever the topic of an article is specifically about gender violence, she tries to make the subject that of violence in general. However, the roots of violence are NOT the norm for women. The fact that some women have adapted to the violent model of patriarchal society by emulating that violence does not make the matter equally expressed by both genders. IF Morticia is a female poster, she has a very peculiar need to downplay something that is of significance to any woman with a heart or soul. And IF she bothered to read "The Chalice and the Blade," she might get off the redundant knee-jerk course that has her repeatedly arguing against what is true.
Interesting numbers I saw elsewhere. The Homicide rate in Medeival England was 100 times higher then it is today. 90 percent of all homicides were committed by men.
While the rate has plunged dramatically 90 percent of all Homicides are still committed by men. The overall percentage of women killed by their husbands as a percentage has not changed one whit in all that time.
One would think that if the rate went down a hundredfold amongst the entire population the rate would have went down between husband and wife. This shows people can learn to be less violent. It shows that when it comes to spousal violence against women people have NOT learned.
It also suggests that this violence had nothing to do with the size of the population , racial mix or the types of systems in place to punish criminals. Nor does it suggest that more `religous`societies are less prone to violence. (England had a much smaller population and more folk lived in Rural areas, was virtually all white, had very strict punishments for crimes and was much more `religous`` 500 years ago)
Over the past 500 years at least with their neighbours they became much less violent so something was obviously ``untaught``
Dave,
how in your opinion, is Iran "headed towards ‘failed state’ status"? You, and I, might not like the gov of Iran, but how is it "headed towards ‘failed state’ status"?
Um. I wrote Iraq, not Iran, and if you think Iraq looks successful these days, you and I are looking at two different realities entirely.
My point is that the US invasion and occupation has left Iraq a bunch of feuding tribes and ethnic groupings, not a nation, which I suppose is as good an example of a "failed state" as any. Iran is anything but a failed state. Whatever one thinks of its theocracy, it is a proud nation with a history as long as China's. But that's another story. Read more carefully next time before you hit your send button.
Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net
Dave, please check out my 12:18pm comment @ "Urging Obama to Stop Rush to Iran War" by Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray*, published here yesterday; it's the last in a sub-thread prompted when tammons wrote, "We will go to war because it is such an easy sell to the American people who love war."
It's a bit of a tangent, but I think it speaks to the tragic "strangeness" you reference in your closing paragraph.
I'm sorry about the doe; the story is sad and heart-bending. I've only encountered mortally injured birds in my tiny back yard in Havertown, and I find it painful to witness their final agony and death.
____________________
* http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/31
lose the beard, Dave.
far too patriarchal...
Sorry, the beard is me. I grew it initially as a Ho Chi-Minh thing, when that was all I could manage at 18. It kept expanding to a full beard over the next two years, and I've had it ever since. It's come off only two or three times, and I just cannot stand shaving. The last time it came off, in 2001, when I had to do a mold remediation in our basement and needed to wear a well-fitting mask to keep out the chlorine bleach spray from my lungs, my two little kids both cried, and I couldn't even recognize myself.
Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net
~lol
My remark was very tongue-in-hairy-cheek, Dave. I have a bearded face myself and treasure all the time I've not wasted shaving.
(Why is it always the most heavily made-up woman in the room who accuses me of "hiding" behind my beard?)
For some unfathomable reason, I always liked beards and have been bearded since it became biologically feasible during adolescence. Fortunately, my high school's dress code didn't prohibit them.
During the early years it would exasperate me no end when usually disapproving or skeptical older relatives, teachers, or my friends' parents would ask, "Why did you decide to grow a beard?",
I eventually began to explain, with a straight if hairy face, that I actually didn't "decide" to grow a beard; you see, it grows all by itself! The more logical question is why people take the trouble to laboriously keep scraping it off.
The same with the less-popular idiomatic phrase, "Why do you 'wear' that beard?" "Why do people 'wear' eyebrows and eyelashes?" I would counter.
These witty rejoinders were rarely well-received, because nobody likes a bearded wise guy. But it beats just shrugging, or hanging one's bearded head.
"nobody likes a bearded wise guy
unless they bear frankincense, gold, or mirth.
Dave Liindorff, I'm with you on both ending a suffering life of an animal and the Viet Nam resister comment to the cop. What lends people as him with his wry smile and americans that dote on war is certainly related to the attack on 9/11/01 not being thoroughly investigated, much less investigations of wars since S. Korea. Even at that time had there been such an investigation I doubt it would have stopped the illegal invasion of that mishmash of a country. It had already been planned and readied for operation such the urgency to invade asap, since afghanistan was 'taken care of'. Which is just such a tactic to keep the war fervor at high pitch. And since there still has not been such an investigation the people are still of a mind set based on the falsities that make them 'believe' such an invasion was necessary. Most all of this was/is courtesy of the 'project of the new american century', as treasonous document as could ever be realized coming from so many of the neoconservative elected personages. So it is no wonder so many have not a jot of a reason to be such warmongers and to love war.
dave
the premise that more caring goes into our society's humane treatment of an animal relative to the callous disregard for human beings is questionable.
the context you reference, that of an injured deer, one with which you have developed a personal relationship (i can relate to this - many such critters have made our yard their occasional home) needing to be relieved from obvious suffering cannot be compared to what "many" have come to represent as an existential threat. that these many are ignorant, insulated from the natural world and willing to look the other way if their government, or any other for that matter, chooses to make their lives miserable - or end them - shouldn't be conflated with a corresponding empathy for animals. the uncaring manner with which people tolerate the brutal treatment of animals they choose to eat is a more apt comparison.
I'm not sure if it is correct to say that people "tolerate" the cruel treatment of animals-raised-for-food.
It seems more like they find it so INtolerable that they completely close their eyes to it.
Ends up the same for the poor critters, in either case.
And, if we were all cannibals, we'd be treating even more humans like we treat animals.
U.S. Consumer Pet Industry expenditures 2011 -~$45B ($12B on health care and insurance)
Total world-wide pledges to Haiti -~$11B
If people started adopting cows and chickens do you think things would really be any better?
Interesting controversies on this thread. Dave hit a nerve that seems to invite exploring. What strikes me is the situating and walking of a path by narrative of personal experience with the creation - that is also at the interface with the public experience in a number of ways. Over time, space and history; different lives. Yet, here we are, veterans, profoundly dedicated peace activists, political in as many different ways as there are people - and we are tasked in this life to live creatively together. Our capacity to engage mind, heart, memory and reason with compassion is the journey.
Thanks for the path Dave - I find it worth walking frontward and backward - maybe a number of times. I was reminded of a number of similar instances in my youth. I had not for a long time thought about how much they are a part of who I am today.
There is indifference towards animals that are eaten, a sentimental attachment to cute mega fauna, and active bloodlust for human beings people are told to hate. The levels of abstraction, brainwashing, and emotional manipulation necessary for these seeming contradictions is part in parcel of why the US is the most dangerous of Empires.
Dave,
The cop simply has the same attitudes a majority of USans have.
Somehow, a great majority of USAns, in their racist insularity, which they seem to retain even after traveling to other lands, have come to view other nations as abstractions, and the people in such nations as abstractions, not places with human beings who suffer and grieve. So, they can flippantly say that our great ally Israel will "take care of Iran" and the thousands, even millions, of dead are, somehow not human beings worthy of any concern at all - those millions are all just stick-figure caricatures, or TV pixels, or something.
It is this attitude among my neighbors, co-workers, family members - everyone USAn that increasingly lead me to despise this place. In the name of god, I never asked to be born in this land of cruel people!
I just spent the holiday weekend with family members who were happily chowing down on the body parts of pigs and chickens, none of which were "humanely" put down, and all of which lost their lives for the pleasure, not survival or defense, of people.
It doesn't matter whether the victims of abuse, torture and murder are human or not, the same process of desensitization goes on. Out of sight, out of mind. It has to go on, so the story goes, for the welfare of our country and families. Best not to think about it. Pass the gravy, please.
I liked this one, Dave.
I agree that humans find it way too easy to kill other humans, but I also agree the analogy of putting down the wounded deer doesn't really make the point. I tend to agree with licketyglick's posting. I think human beings have a complex impact on all living beings, both negative and positive. I think humans would do well by respecting ALL forms of life. As a side note, respecting wildlife includes NOT trying to "befriend" a wild animal, as appealing as that may seem. Taming animals so that they are less wary of dangerous carnivores (such as humans) is not helpful to them.
Since Israel attacking Iran was brought into the discussion I would like to point everyone to an article I ran across. It describes the defeat of Israel in their invasion of South Lebanon at the hands of Hezbollah.
"How Hezbollah Defeated Israel"
Part 1: Winning The Intelligence War 2006
Part 2: Winning The Ground War 2006
Part 3: The Political War 2006
by: Alastair Cooke and Mark Perry
Asia Times
www.atimes.com
I found this in 2010 and printed a copy
This is a must read.
Bet you didn't read about this in the corporate press.
www.atimes.com
Back to the point.
People are more likely to feel sorry for animals because they feel that animals are innocent and undeserving .
People, well, we think that people are in some way to blame for their plight , whether that is true or not.If it is children then we blame the parents.
Casualties of war, people rationalise it on grounds of greater good.
"How strange that we as human beings can be so sensitive and warm-hearted about an animal, and yet can be so detached from reality and so compartmentalized in our emotions and our moral sense that we can simply dismiss as “collateral damage” the lives of tens, ..."
When you called the police to put down the deer for you, morally you justified it as "his job". I am not sure how you can fault him for an attitude that qualifies him for the work we ask him to do.