I was recently part of a lunchtime conversation where in the space of a few minutes those assembled had decided that seagulls, deer and badgers 'needed' to be culled because there were too many. I made a comment something along the lines of 'much like humans, then'.
There was nervous laughter.
According to the lunchers' logic, there are too many of these species (seagulls, badgers and deer) which means their population is too large to be sustained (although I'm not aware of being over-run by any of those species. In fact on a day to day basis, I may see/ hear a couple of sea gulls, one dead badger, no deer [unless I'm out walking in the forest or driving and they happen to cross my path - but that's a rare occurrence] whereas, I come across literally dozens of humans every day - thousands if I'm in a city!).
I refrained from further comment since I had already been labelled a do-gooder - although why doing good should be construed as a bad thing, is beyond me. (As an aside it's an interesting observation that the word 'do-gooder' has become a snide insult. On some level the actions of a do-gooder are recognised as being 'good' i.e. beneficial, but when their actions do not ally with the requirements of a convenient way of living, then they are derided and scorned and ridiculed - such dissonance!)
Anyway, the case put forward for these species needing to be culled went like this:
Seagulls - there are too many of them and they take food out of the hands of humans. Seriously. That was the reasoning. Personally, I find it funny when a seagull does that - someone's sitting by the sea troughing down their greasy fish and chips and a seagull swoops down and nicks a chip. I love their audacity and daring and the comic look on the face of she/he who has a chip nicked.
(A little side story here: very recently we were having lunch outside at a pub by the sea and had put a piece of ham on the wall next to where we were sitting because of the wasps that kept settling on it anyway, so we thought to entice them away. Also on that wall were two Jack Russells. Suddenly a seagull flew in and landed in order to take the ham. One of the dogs was immediately alerted and and stood staring at the seagull and then started advancing (this Jack Russell was barely bigger than the seagull, but that's Jack Russell's for you). The seagull looked a bit nervous, thought better of it and then flew off. We added some bread to the ham on the wall and watched the seagull as it circled the patio and food. The skill and precision in its flying was fabulous to watch. It never got up the courage to land again and take the bounty and eventually it got bored and left.
Perhaps this particular seagull wasn't as bold as the seagulls that my lunchtime friends had encountered or perhaps it was the dogs that it was really scared of - whilst a few shrieking humans wouldn't put it off.
So, seagulls need to be culled because they sometimes take food from humans. That's a bit like the recent view that we should bomb Syrians to stop Syrians killing Syrians. Same line of thinking, really.
O.K. - so the next species that we need to cull are badgers. From what I understand, this is because badgers have and spread TB to cows and then farmers lose money. So, essentially, it's a financial thing - badgers may interfere with the income of farmers.
The third species is deer. Apparently, they're way too successful as a breed and eat too much ... forest, woods, grass - whatever deer eat. So we need to control their numbers. I really can't see the logic in this one (I can't with the other two either, but at least I can see that people make the connection between 'they take our stuff, so we need to get rid of them' in the case of seagulls and badgers). But in the case of deer, they don't even get in the way of humans, don't take food from us and don't spread disease to cows owned by farmers. But in our megalomaniacal way of needing to control everything and see it as a resource owned by us, we seem to think that we know the best way that a forest or wood or meadow should be. And that in order to do that we should 'manage' these areas and control the population of each species. Where on earth will this kind of thinking lead? Are we going to end up having to manage everything? The ants and the worms and the fungi and the flies and the dragon-flies and the spiders and the foxes and the flowers and grasses and rivers and streams and clouds and heathers and wasps and bees - to name but an infitessimally tiny, tiny portion of the 'natural' world. How could we possibly do this? What kind of status quo would we be aiming for? Who would decide? How would they know? Are they able to see the entire picture? Of course not - no-one can see the entire picture.
But we think we do. Because we think we have a right to. We actually believe that we know best. We really do. And so this belief in our unassailable position of knowing 'how things should be' means that we're entitled to do ..... well, whatever we want, really. Merely because we can.
That belief in entitlement is such a big thing. It's huge.
It gives us the reason to believe that we can kill anything we want for the most spurious reasons. The underlying reasoning being that we are the most important, superior, entitled species on earth. We own it all. We have a right to control, and cull, and use. However we want, whenever we want.
And if you express an opinion counter to that belief, then you're a do-gooder. A woolly-liberal-leftie who thinks that it's ok to let things take their natural order.
I don't see what's wrong with that. And I'm not actually saying that it's wrong per se for humans to kill and control. We're just as much a part of the natural world as badgers and deer and seagulls and forests and woods and farmers and cows and profits and wars. I get that. Life makes us in the same way it makes everything else. It just does.
So, no, wanting to kill badgers and seagulls and deer because they cause us inconvenience and because this inconvenience gives us a belief in our entitlement to do so isn't wrong. It's just stupid. Because if you continue in that line of thinking then you'd certainly have to cull humans for their over-population, because they spread disease and take from other humans and other species.
Oh, wait. Yup. Of course, we already do cull humans. Every day, in so many awful ways. In deed and in thought. And at the very base of this culling isn't greed, isn't hate - it's a basic belief in ENTITLEMENT. Writ large and surrounded by lights - the basis of everything we do. If you don't believe me, next time someone gets upset about something have a look to see why they're upset. I bet your sweet bippy it's because their entitlement was thwarted - usually by someone's else's entitlement!
Somewhere along the line we took on the idea that humans as a species have a right to do exactly as they want, as they see fit. That somehow we ought to fix things so that they fit our limited viewpoint - because we don't see that viewpoint as limited - we see it as the one true viewpoint, the correct way of looking at the world.
Maybe this way of looking at the world arose with religion or maybe religion arose from the viewpoint that we have a right, an entitlement to do as we wish. And again, it's not wrong - it's the way we are. But it is stupid. It is insane - literally meaning unhealthy (in = not, sane = healthy). Because if we follow this belief in entitlement we'll end up destroying everything that we believe causes us inconvenience, everything that we believe doesn't fit in with our way of 'how things should be'. So, we'll continue to cull badgers, deer and seagulls. And we'll continue to kill other races of people to stop them from killing themselves. We'll go on taking what we want in order to make things we don't need, can't afford and which never make us happy.
Why? I don't know. Not for sure. None of us do. Not really. We're all experts in 'making it up as we go along'.
And we do that cos that's how we're made. It doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it wrong. But it does make it stupid if we want to continue to survive. Because, we'll end up self-culling, which isn't good or bad - it will just be the natural order of things. Ironic, really, that the natural order may end up in our own extinction - the one thing we won't be able to control because of our excessive and addictive need for our belief in our entitlement to control!
But, I think I'll keep that view to myself at any future lunchtime discussions.....
Sitting on a sunny evening in June. Looking out of the open window; the sky is blue, the sun shines, birds sing, trees grow verdantly along with grass and vibrant flowers, the air is clear and fresh and all around life is burgeoning and thriving.
But down in the basement, an electrical fault - a design-glitch in an old and ill-maintained boiler - sends a small flame along a length of wiring, and a tiny spark shoots down and smoulders slowly and falteringly in a pile of stacked, dry and aged newspapers. The fire fails to take hold and the red edges fade to black. But a puff of breeze breathes across the pile of paper, blown in through a broken pane of glass in a small window at ground level. And it's enough, just enough, to fan and nurture, to persuade that still just-lingering speck of heat to leap into life and eat a hole into the top page of a 1969 edition of the Times which headlines the amazing feat of man's first walk on the moon. Slowly and haltingly the flames immolate the stack of kindling paper, until a small fire burns confidently and increasingly.
Up on the other two floors of the house the percolating coffee smells good and birdsong is still heard - lucid and sweetly clear. The dog lying by the back door sniffs the air and whimpers a little, and a bee buzzes bumblingly across the open door. All is very well. Is sublimely perfect.
Down by the foundations of the house the dust has began to spark and catch alight, and here and there hotspots ignite and blaze, pushing their flaming tendrils across and upwards into every part of the space, until the entire basement is a ferocious burning pyre.
Upstairs, the smell of a baking apple pie wafts through the kitchen and into the hall, blown along by soft puffs of warm, sun-soaked early evening air. A chilled bottle of wine runs globules of clear condensation down its jewel green sides and dust-motes sink, glittering in the evening sunlight. The air calms and slowly cools in peaceful serenity.
At first the only sign that the house is in dire and catastrophic danger is a sneaking fog of grey smoke that pries its way under the basement door. Gently and silently it rises and dissolves, spreading out into the still, warm air. The dog lifts its head, alert - nose twitching. He stands with ears cocked and eyes wide - aware that something is amiss.
Still the sun goes on shining and the pie is crustily brown, with oozing apple leaking from between its crimped edges. Someone smiles as they walk in from the garden with a basket full of early Summer strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes and courgettes. They place the new-picked produce on the table and sip from a glass of wine, savouring the apple-pie smell that fills the kitchen air as they turn down the heat underneath the bubbling coffee on the Aga.
Now, not only smoke, but a blazing flash of flame lights the gap under the basement door and heats the floorboard there.
The wine-drinker walks out into the summer night garden to enjoy the abundant bounty of the country garden; the peaceful and soothing sounds of a day winding down. A woodpecker urgently drums on an old oak tree, and a frog splashes into the pond from a mossy rock placed at its edge.
Despite the raging inferno that is destroying everything in the basement and is now advancing into the house through the basement door - a door that is turning brown as its paint crackles, curls and blisters off - nothing in the garden or the house changes. Only the restless dog is aware that there is danger and destruction building.
As the flames dart out from under the door they draw intensity from the polished, aged floorboards and, as these start to burn, the flames advance across the floor and spread to the skirting boards and bottom of the walls, singeing and catching the paper. Up above, mounted in the ceiling, is a smoke alarm. But its cover is open - the battery removed because it kept screeching when toast or bacon was cooked, and this irritated the householders. So the simple early warning system is disabled, and the fire advances, unchecked.
In the sitting room, a man dozes. Laid out on a velvet sofa, ivory damask curtains half-pulled against the early evening sunset. A drained cut-glass tumbler has been emptied of its third large malted scotch. A smoke tendril grazes into the room and is pushed further by a billow of air. Slowly, but inexorably, the smoke grows as the man sleeps on, until the room is half-filled by the black, billowing clouds of acrid fume.
In the distant night-sky lead-bullet clouds gather and build, and rumbles of thunder prowl around the sky, growling out a warning like a dog who knows that a dangerous stranger has come to the doorstep.
The family dog starts barking and running from the back door to the edge of the deck. Back and forwards, barking and then whining -agitated and growing more frantic as he is ignored. He is hushed and told to calm down - there's nothing to worry about. The woman of the house frowns at the dog's grating yelps that are ruining the peace of the sublime summer evening - ruining the atmosphere of perfect, graceful, opulent and easy living that the householders have worked so hard to build and maintain. The beautiful house and garden, furnished with the best furniture and paintings, the finest cloths, quality fittings and finishes. When they had been advised to replace the boiler and heating system they balked at the cost and the inconvenience that would have meant floorboards being ripped up, pipes re-laid and radiators re-sited and re-fitted. And instead opted to wait another year or two and paved over the front garden to use as extra parking for the motor-home they'd purchased to use on weekends as a getaway to the great outdoors. For adventures away from the responsibility of their luxury lifestyle with its ever-gnawing need for upkeep and maintenance, cost, work and worry.
But this evening, even with the growls of a broiling, churning storm in the distance, everything was perfect - was the gorgeous example and justification for all the sacrifices made; friendships and family ignored, endless stress-filled hours working, holidays forsaken and children put into expensive child-care facilities. But this evening vindicated all the regret and worry. For this sublime and perfect picture was the reality of the dream they had worked for.
And the flames catch on the rug on the polished oak floorboards in the hallway. A rug brought back from a trip to India - made by the hands of a dozen weavers, over endless hours, from the finest silks. Gone in 15 seconds - its succulent silken colours fuel for the glorious fire that devours and uses it to gorge its flames. A prescient blast of wind from the gathering thunderstorm on the horizon blows through the back door, the kitchen and into the hall sending the flames out and up, engorging the fire, blowing it up to three times its size in a moment, and sending it raging down the hall and into the door of the kitchen; its ferocious and startling flames roaring its way through the house now. Up the stairs and into the dining room, catching curtains and carpets, burning books and magazines, devouring picture and photographs. The TV explodes and the laptop melts - its black cover like oil spreading over the coffee table and onto the carpet, billowing out noxious, toxic fumes.
The door to the sitting room where the man was sleeping is now blocked by flames and the room is thick with smoke. And it's impossible to tell whether he is still because he sleeps on, or is unconscious or dead.
The woman wanders to the edge of the garden as it slopes down and looks across to the other side of the valley. She watches the advancing storm and feels a seed of unease and irritation. As she lingers she smells an evening bonfire that she supposes has been lit by a neighbour. It has the scent of wood and she guesses that someone has cut some trees back and is disposing of the branches. She can hear no crackles though and, as yet, she can see no smoke. From a few streets away she can hear the cawls and mewls of cats circling for a fight and the doleful and fearful cries end the peace and perfection. All at once everything feels wrong; the storm and darkening sky, the smell of the bonfire, the caterwauling coming closer as the warring felines advance down the road.
The dog cowers under the gap beneath the shed, his haunches quivering in terror. A murder of crows flap a cacophony as they whorl out of the ancient oak tree which shades the top of the garden.
She swallows a mouthful of the wine in the glass - wine that has warmed in the night air and no longer tastes of chilled oaked tropical fruit and vanilla, but now has a slight acid tang to it. She turns and walks back up the mowed, neat lawn and, as she reaches the deck, a bright flash catches her attention from inside the kitchen and an uberous billow of smoke belches out, mimicking the growing thunder clouds which are towering closer now.
Does she rush in, see the advancing fire and grab the phone by the back-door and call the fire brigade? Does she run to a neighbour's and ask them to alert the services? Does she frantically panic when she realises that her husband is inside and the only way through the house is now a storming rage of fire and smoke? Does she grab the fire extinguisher by the back door and douse the encroaching flames with futile sprays of foam? Does she turn the outside tap on and run the hose into the kitchen dousing the flames?
Does she shut the kitchen door and turn and walk away, telling herself that since it’s all lost and ruined there is no point in trying to quell the fire. Does she stand and watch the night-show as the thunder explodes with ear-cracking claps, and the brilliant, searing lightning reveals the landscape with the clarity of a blinding summer sun.
Does she turn her back as the basement and the house and the neighbourhood burn.
Does she sip on the ruined wine as the world burns?
What does she do?
What would you do?
Are our backs already turned as the basement burns?
Read this book, if you please: http://www.ishmael.com/origins/story_of_b/
In my, not so humble but perfectly credible, opinion - it is brilliant.
And I'm aware that my last two posts have been to recommend the writings of others. That's because they say what I can't and, even if I were able to, they do it so much more eloquently and clearly than I ever could. So if I am unable to conceive and communicate the kind of vision they have, I can at least add my voice to it and pass it on. Because every voice that gets added grows the message.
So, if you've a mind to, read it, understand what it's saying and pass it on to as many as you can.
I think it's important - o.k? And, yes, I fully realise that it's not important in an ultimate sense, because whether or not our species, in its present form, drives itself into extinction matters not a gnat's willy. It matters not in a very real sense, in a species sense, in a world's sense, certainly not in a universal sense, and not even in a personal sense; not really. Because there is nothing driving THIS. It happens as it happens, it is what it is. And that's not a new-age, airy-fairy pronouncement; it's a bare fact. It is what it is, it does what it does and it happens how it happens.
If you understand the messages of the writers that I've flagged, and feel inspired to add your voice then that too is just what's happening. But, given the choice, and you are given a choice (even though you don't get to choose the choices you're given, natch), why not choose the vision and the message that frees you from the idea that you need to be saved, from the belief that what is happening is the only way it can happen.
The only way change happens is by one person adding their voice and their intention and their action. One at a time....
Do you care to add yours? Of course, it's entirely up to you.
