Brian Griffith's Blog, page 8

Our divided minds

Within our own heads we’re divided over which sentiments represent our “better angels,” and our minds are so compartmentalized that hypocrisy is quite natural. As psychologist Bob Altenmeyer pointed out, one side of our brain can affirm “My nation upholds freedom for all,” while the other side demands “My country—love it or leave it.”

The distinctions between good and evil creatures

Clearly, the distinctions we make between good and evil creatures change over time. We might move the boundaries that separate allies from enemies, but we still draw the lines somewhere. If we achieved even-handedness, we would view all species as having some role in the biosphere and try to keep the food chain balanced. Our biases, however, are commonly extreme. As our folklore changes over time, popular culture can grow sympathetic and admiring, or else disdainful, as when the Spanish colonist of the Caribbean Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo explained, the sloth is “the stupidest animal that can be found in the world,” and the later English explorer William Dampier sought to correct the sloths’ defects: “ I have tried by whipping them; but they seem insensible, and can neither be frightened or provoked to move faster” (Cooke, 52). War and Peace with the Beasts

Symbiosis is the game

The biologist Lewis Thomas explained, "The driving force in nature, on this kind of planet with this sort of biosphere, is cooperation ... The most inventive and novel of all schemes in nature, and perhaps the most significant in determining the great landmark events of evolution, is symbiosis, which is simply cooperative behavior carried to its extreme." -- cited by Jack Kornfield in "Bringing Home the Dharma."

The National Geographic on the decline of insects

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ma...

Terraforming new continents

Obviously, Europe’s colonists wanted far more than freedom to hunt and grow food on the Natives’ land. They were also bent on transforming the country into a likeness of the world they left behind. In “New Spain,” “New England,” etc., the foods, plants, animals, and landscapes of the Americas had to be systematically replaced with those of the old country. People wanted familiar things, and hoped to make the surrounding environment match their preferences. All this was a matter of taste, but thinkers like William Goldsmith made it a matter of religion as well. In his eight-volume "History of the Earth and Animated Nature" (published 1774), Goldsmith presumed that his tastes were those of the Lord: “God beholds with pleasure that being which he has made, converting the wretchedness of his natural situation into a theatre of triumph; bringing all the headlong tribes of nature into subjugation to his will; and producing … order and uniformity upon earth” -- War and Peace with the Beasts

The achievement of permaculture

Vandana Shiva notes how traditional village farmers of India achieved a kind of sustainability that we call "permaculture." She quotes the British observer Sir Alfred Howard, who reported that "The agricultural practices of the orient have passed the supreme test -- they are almost as permanent as those of the primeval forest, of the prairie, or of the ocean." -- Staying Alive

Killing animals for cultural reasons

"Naturally, hunters and prey have always been rivals in a deadly game, and farming animals for food is a variant of the parasite-host relations that are common in nature. Like all creatures, we need to defend ourselves from organisms that feed on our bodies or supplies. But killing for cultural reasons tends to become an end in itself. It’s not just a matter of killing for food, fighting off attacks, or giving animals the death sentence for crimes against humanity. Culture-based hostility tends to become a kind of race war. In that case, great warriors go beyond proving their heroism by slaying monsters, and start seeking a final solution to monsters. We start thinking in terms of genocide for a growing list of unwanted creatures, be they wolves, rodents, or budworms. It becomes a sort of “biopolitics.” As Friedrich Zahn (the chairman of the German Statistical Society) argued in the 1930s, humanity’s progress has required “the targeted selection and promotion of superior life and an eradication of those portions of the population which were undesirable” (Patterson, 90-91). It sounds logical. Except that usually when we decide some species is a curse to be erased from creation, we blow a big hole in the food chain." War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals Brian Griffith

wars against elephants

"I suppose that hostilities between species tend to arise in a mutual way. For example, where people hunt elephants for ivory, the elephants know it well. The Kenyan animal rights advocate Daphne Sheldrick reported cases where elephants pull the tusks from their dead comrades’ bodies and trample the ivory to splinters so that poachers will never get it (Ridgeway, 143). The elephants have killed many hunters, and no doubt hope to kill more. But sometimes the hostility goes beyond predator-prey antagonism, and becomes a kind of general war. In China, relations between elephants and humans were already bad by around 1000 BCE. As the fabled Duke of Zhou extended his kingdom southward, he heard that the southern villages were pestered by elephants. He therefore (reportedly) sent his army to exterminate the big beasts all the way south to the Yangzi River. These animals were no longer just fighting hunters, herdsmen, or farmers. They were fighting military empires. Meanwhile, there were other empires where elephants were deemed helpful, majestic, or holy. " -- War and Peace with the Beasts

My dad and the wolves

When Europe’s colonists brought their hatred of wolves to the New World, they were dismayed to find that most Native people there respected these beasts. My father witnessed the culture clash during World War II, when he was stationed with the Canadian Navy on the coast of British Columbia. Wolves were still common there, mainly because the local Natives had never tried to exterminate them. But then, rumbling through the mountain fastness, came a small army of construction crews from the USA, building the Alaska Highway. And according to my dad, these men were mostly horrified of wolves. At night when the wolf packs howled, one memorable worker from Texas would grab his rifle and blast away into the darkness. -- War and Peace with the Beasts

How women changed religion

Down to only a century or two ago, it was widely accepted that Christianity stood for male supremacy, absolute monarchy, a holy mission of world conquest, and even the institution of slavery. Down to WWII, probably most Christians still accepted an autocrat’s world view, in which the universe was an empire with an emperor, and all lesser beings were judged by how well they obeyed the emperor’s men. In that worldview, it seemed that the primary question in life, between men, women, children, or neighbors, was “Who has the higher rank? Who will command, and who will obey?” It was mainly Christian women who offered a different worldview, in which the created universe is a community, and the most important question among its members is “How good can our relations get?”