On Going Hunting

In the news today is a photo of two congressmen going out hunting with their orange uniforms and very large guns. I thought: is this fun? What fun could there possibly be to deliberately go out and kill an animal. Either killing a baby that will put his parents into a deep depression; yes they do get depressed; or kill a mama so that the baby will die soon from the same depressive malady that becomes deadly as it affects the heart and liver. Are they aware that they are killing members of a family, beings that have feelings, whose feeling brains are massive? What joy is there in the killing? Oh I forgot, those very big guns. I leave you to figure out the meaning.

There must be something atavistic about this ritual; perhaps it harkens back to the days when the best hunter was the hero who made sure of our survival. And maybe now they consider themselves heroes, macho, like Hemmingway, who measured his shark kills on a scale, in keeping with his loving bull fights, something so ineffably cruel that defies imagination. So again, what is it about killing, mostly a male occupation, that makes a leader of one country visit another, and the first thing they do is go hunting? It is all so Freudian and obvious. Is there any thought to whom they are killing and why? Nope. Just a habit. The quarterback Brett Favre loves to hunt deer with a bow and arrow. Putting an arrow through the head of a helpless deer that is fun for him. But wait, he also placed a photo of his penis on the internet. "I am a man, a tough man, at that." Is there some relationship? Of course. I kill therefore I am a man. Ayayay. A play on the, I think therefore I exist. His motto is, I don't think therefore I exist.

Anyone in touch with their feelings could not hunt. They would feel and understand about animals and their feelings and needs. It is a real feeling being; therefore, I would first teach all school children the veneration of all life. They would be in touch with their feelings so that before the impulse to hunt, they would say to themselves why I am I doing this? And the answer would come quickly. I feel insecure. I feel unimportant. I have hate inside me from own parental neglect. And on and on. Mostly hunting is a proof, of sorts, that I am a real person, a real man. And then what? They have to do it most of the time because it is an addiction that comes out of feelings and needs.

Of course there are strong cultural forces at work where hunting is part of the zeitgeist. And from the time the child can speak his head is filled with the glorification of killing. But there comes a time in life when we need to ask ourselves questions about ourselves; what am I doing and why am I doing it? Unhappily, that day never comes to a lot of us. We go through life dragging this body around and never demand who we are and why we act like we do.

I have watched baby chimps go into a deep depression and die after their parents were killed by hunters, and I think, how could anyone do that? I am sure there is always a good rationale but even paranoids have a seemingly good rationale for their murder—so and so didn't pay up on his drug debts, or she left me for this other guy. But just for fun and for no other reason to call up a friend and dress up in those orange jump suits and go kill, that is way beyond me.