I spend a
part of every day at my computer with several animal activist groups who
organize petition and letter writing campaigns for politicians, corporations,
university medical schools and government officials. These groups question,
protest and give information about the never ending killing, especially of wild
animals in the west, information that is never in the “news,” which by the way is never news but a
distortion, a formulaic and lop-sided glancing glimpse at reality. These sign-up (sigh-up) campaigns
usually have a line asking us to personalize the messages. Someone
emailed me that it was a waste of time to write anything personal. A good
point really. Here’s what I said.
Much of
the time I do only add my name to petitions because I know that adding another
number is the most help I can give. I know that in general nobody reads
these words. You say the Joe Shmoes delete them without reading them. Of course
they do – they are part of the sleepwalkers who make up most of humanity.
I know they are there. Nothing in life is so difficult as
communication. I just keep on and I think it’s better to use the best mind I have at any given
moment in this great planetary crisis that most people think is not occurring.
Killing our animal co-inhabitants is a significant and deeply meaningful part of the assault on the
web of life itself.
Once
I’ve written personal comments I post them on my blog and sometimes on
Facebook, and to some on my email list. Sometimes when I write to
University presidents and people like that I get an answer. I got an
answer from a sheriff a couple of times, a few times from editors. Quite often
I get an answer from politicians too, although I know the actual letters don’t
have much of a chance to get to them.
I will
continue to write my thoughts and hope that they may edge someone here and
there a little closer. A stranger responded negatively to one of my Facebook comments about wolf and coyote killers – she said it was the first time
she had ever seen or heard anyone use the term “wealthy ranchers.” She
thinks there is no such thing. !!!! I won’t respond because it’s
impossible to communicate with anyone who makes such a strange statement, a
statement that illuminates so clearly her world which she thinks is the only
world. The obstacles we face are complex and quite terrible,
really. And THEY think the same thing about us. !!!! We
all think we’re on the right side.
As
humans we can be wrong about anything at any time. In the so-called “wild” a
creature who chooses a certain place to walk may be killed and eaten for the
mistaken choice while another on another track goes free to live another day.
As humans we have thought of ourselves as being superior to nature – a word
that can now be interpreted by some of us as the “web of life.” For a long time
and still today for some of us, nature is something we conquer…exploit…turn
into commerce…transform…fear…think of as a danger.
Some random
thinkers referred to the idea throughout time, as far as we know -- the thought
that the essential being of our lives is within, not separate from the web of
life. Being human, for all our triumphalism, does not mean we can actually
transcend nature – the ultimate proof of that lies in the process of our lives
and our deaths.
It has
been a complicated dimension of many variations and kinds of persuasion – the idea that we can be separate from
nature, that we are superior to the web of life. We walk on that path whistling distortions we
think will make us safe. We think our
descendants can walk on the same path.
In my
small view I feel compelled to think that a different approach to our
co-inhabitants on the planet could lead us to different ways of being. Why do we remain “kill first … take first …
win first?” What has it brought us that
we really wanted if we can be truly quiet to think about it for a time? Evolution awaits us.
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