Brian Griffith's Blog, page 4

identity as all drag

It's all drag, really: the identities, genders, gender roles, gender expressions.
Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment

animals refugees in the city

Human society pushes forward in two directions at once—for greater protection of the environment and greater freedom for business interests. No wonder animal refugees increasingly gather in our cities, learning how to navigate an urbanized world.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Our changing animal sympathies

In terms of managing animals in the countryside, public sympathy has largely switched from protecting farm livestock to protecting wild animals, including wolves. Historian Jon Coleman points out that North America’s rising urban majority has increasingly ceased to have any emotional connection to the farm animals they eat. Instead, these city dwellers relate to picturesque creatures of the wilderness. It’s more a switch in animal loyalties than any overall rise in mercy.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

The end of animal wars

At this point, there are at least three kinds of common sense leading towards the end of animal wars. One is scientific, and involves our growing knowledge of the roles that each creature plays in keeping the world balanced—especially the top predators that we used to treat as our worst enemies. The second kind of common sense is economic, in that a commercial interest in animals involves sustaining the resource. The third sort of common sense is political. And this involves Aldo Leopold’s notion that we are citizens rather than conquerors of the natural world.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

animals and great power rivalry

In general, modern scientists found it silly to attribute social virtues to animals. But during our age of great power rivalries, many scientists felt it was quite objective to interpret animal behavior in terms of “status seeking,” “will to power,” “pecking order,” “inferiority complex,” or “linear hierarchy.”
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

The dharma of dogs

The great Hindu epic the Mahabharata mentions a clash of ancient cultures over the issue of respect for dogs. In the epic’s final scenes, the hero Yudhisthira journeys high into the Himalayas with his loyal dog. The Aryan god Indra appears unto him, offering a chariot ride to heaven. But when Yudhisthira tries to bring his dog, Indra forbids it, explaining that no dogs can enter heaven. Yudhisthira replies that he would rather stay with his dog than enter such a heaven. And with that, the dog is suddenly revealed as the very soul of the Dharma, devotion to which is the true path to paradise. Indra was a chief god of the Aryan invaders from Inner Asia, who despised the dark-skinned “nose-less” Dravidian villagers, and treated the villagers’ dogs as even more untouchable. The Mahabharata signals popular rejection of the conqueror’s sentiments, with an assertion that a ruler’s heaven for supposedly superior beings is nothing but an egoic illusion.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Animals of God

According to India’s myth makers, the world soul, Vishnu, has come in ten great incarnations over the course of evolution, and the first four were incarnations as animals: Matsya the fish, Kürma the tortoise, Varāha the boar, and Narasimha the lion-man. For his eighth incarnation, Vishnu came into the world as the cow-herding boy Krishna, who loved to teach universal truths through mischievous pranks. While rambling through the world with his cows, he wandered into the heavenly palace of the non-incarnated Vishnu, sitting on his lordly throne. The enthroned Lord, asked what a mere cow boy was doing in his court, and Krishna said, “I just wanted to see which Lord Vishnu you are.” After considering this preposterous question for a moment, the great Lord thundered, “What do you mean WHICH Lord Vishnu? I am THE Lord Vishnu.” At this, the boy gave a whistle, and into the hall poured a wave of ants. They swarmed forward over the vast marble floor, approaching Vishnu’s throne. “What is this?” Lord Vishnu demanded to know. “You see?” Krishna explained, “All of them—former Lord Vishnus.”
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

evolutions in animal awareness

According to classical evolutionary biology, animals do not evolve by learning from experience or by communicating, but only by random genetic mutation. Instead of seeking solutions and adapting to conditions as they go, they simply follow whatever their genetic programming tells them, and blindly undergo the results of death or survival. In this view of life, the question of consciousness in animals does not arise. Evolution does not involve development in awareness, but only in bodily function.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

The sound of desertification

Opening paragraph from my book "The Gardens of Their Dreams," about the threat of desertification in a warming world:

"Over the past 7,000 years, a desert slowly spread through the center of the Old World. The affected regions had been wastelands before in previous arid ages. But this time human civilizations were on hand to witness the desiccation. Our ancestors watched as patches of desolation slowly appeared in the landscape, like holes in worn-out cloth. The drought-stricken trees shed their leaves in summertime, leaving a look of winter. The wind, rather than gusting through fields of rustling foliage, whistled in the naked branches. Next the bubbling creeks fell silent. At night, the chirruping of crickets and frogs slowly faded to a hush. At dawn, choruses of songbirds no longer greeted the sun. Herds of grazing animals migrated from the region, following the grass and rain. High in the sky, birds of prey circled without a sound. "
The Gardens of Their Dreams: Desertification and Culture in World History

our days of cruelty

I think my generation of kids growing up in Texas in the 1960s was crueler that the kids I know now. When armed with BB guns in our neighborhood or .22 rifles in the country, we shot at most anything that moved. We stomped on ants and burned their colonies for fun. We got a boost of adrenaline from killing things.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals