Hungry Like the Wolf

A few weeks ago I was in a local park with my older daughter; we were talking about dinosaurs and whether it would have been cooler to be a hunter like T-Rex or Allosaurus rather than a big herbivore like apatosaurus. This is the type of conversation you have with a six year old.

The topic was a good springboard to a larger conversation about predators and prey in general, food chains, nature and all that rot. I wanted to demonstrate to her that predators get all the good press but it's actually the herbivores that shape and transform the landscape, so I asked her how many pigeons and squirrels we had in the park (hundreds) versus how many hawks (two, as near as we can tell). Looking at the food chain that way, really thinking about the predator/prey relationship in order to help her understand it better made me realize something: we've got it all wrong.

Of course, I don't mean that some animals aren't stronger and more deadly than others; that's obviously true. But we've all been taught that the food chain is a linear, heirarchal arrangement, with predatory animals at its apex, hunting skills representing the height of evolutionary achievement. However, when you step back and look at the animals in the food chain and their relationship with the world around them, you realize that predators aren't that important. To cite just one example: uneaten acorns buried by squirrels grow into forests of oak. No predator has that kind of impact on its environment. The function predators do serve - and it is a vital one - is to keep the prey animal populations from growing to an unsustainable level. Ecosystems face collapse when you take the big predators out of them. But that doesn't make predators sound like the kings of beasts to me; they sound more like a  a circuit breaker, designed to keep the system from overheating and going haywire. Circuit breakers are important, but which do you care more about: your fuse box or your plasma screen?

I'm reluctant to read too much arbitrary meaning into the natural world; it is a chaotic system that our rules and theories only somewhat explain at best - and a cougar hauling the occasional mountain biker off the trail isn't providing any meaningful check on the human population. (I credit that to the scientific principle known as "shit happens.") Those of us interested in peace, though, might benefit from looking at the food chain, in particular the predator/prey relationship in this way, especially since it's not uncommon to hear war supporters (either of this war or war in general) justify their aggressive positions by claiming that they're only following the natural order, ie, "It's a dog eat dog world."

They're wrong. They've bought into the notion that hunting and killing is the height of the natural order, rather than just one part of it. In fact, they don't even realize that the natural order has no height - it's a web of interconnected systems. Where is the height of the Internet? The summit of mathematics? 

It's important to understand this, since I think many of us often feel like we're the outsiders, the ones who have an unrealistic view of humanity, who wonder if a better way isn't possible. We're not. We're the ones who have it right. In fact, I'll go a step further and state that I don't even think human beings are particularly warlike. Oh, sure, we're brutish, crude, selfish and generally dickheaded but that's a pretty far cry from being bloodthirsty warmongers. History is full of examples of such, though, but it's worthwhile to remember that human populations that have embraced war had to be perverted into that state:

All high honors of the state were reserved for the military service and achievements in war. Even the nobles of royal blood must be graded anew on the basis of military service. Nobles without military distinction were degraded to commoners. The objective is to create "a people that looks to warfare as a hungry wolf looks at a piece of meat."

That's the historian Hu Shih writing about the Ch'in dynasty circa 360 BCE. He could have been writing about Sparta, though, or Rome, or Viking Scandanavia, or America during the run-up to the gory clusterfuck in Iraq. War has to be sold to the people. It always has, it always will. They will parade images of predatory strength before us, of wolves and eagles and lions, but they don't even understand the nature of those beasts much less that of human beings.

Are there violent humans, who fight and kill for no reason? Sure. But nearly all of them have some defect of the brain or some incident in their past that warped them into that state. And nearly all humans can be pushed to violence if the circumstances are dire enough or if they're scared enough; animals, even docile ones, will also fight when cornered.

And that's my ultimate point: we're animals. But we're not monsters.

(Cross-posted at my place)

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[Uncle Smokes]

as a boy trying to sleep
the house would creak and pop
i imagined ghosts in the attic
their laughter would not stop
at night between houses
were shadows dark and vast
monsters lurked ready to pounce
and in panic i leapt past

raised on a tree of gospel
i was taught to fear
wrath of the angry unseen
voracious love severe
dangled over fiery brimstone
bow breaks cradle falls
the world becomes known
down goes baby cradle and all

does your mind waken to dreams of your own
or hide from nightmares of the unknown
do angels sing you to rest
is the heart just a muscle in your chest
is there a monster under the bed
or is that horror in your head

[Uncle Smokes]

"It's clear to me from looking at the works of anthropologists there are some tribes that were fierce and some tribes that were peaceful. It clearly wasn't a universal quality; it depended upon the conditions under which they lived. So, to me, what was clear was that there was a very, very important political consequence of this belief in human nature as the basis for war and violence, because the consequence of believing that wars come as the result of human nature is to place the blame for wars on the citizenry and to take away the blame from the leaders of the nation who are driving the country into war. It has this insidious effect of turning their attention away from the policy-makers towards themselves. It's like telling the poor that you're poor because of your own faults and not because you live in a society in which wealth is distributed very unjustly."

-- Howard Zinn, supplemental DVD track from You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

[Uncle Smokes]

Well...while I'm here, allow me the indulgence of one more tune from my CD Beast:

orders come down to take off the glove
beat and rape humiliate the torture of tough love
but you learn to really like it you know you really like it

father leader screams johnny boy get your gun
shoot that man that girl that baby in the back when they run
and you learn to really like it you know you really like it

commander demands that those others must die
scorched blood and splintered glass your duty is not to ask why
but you learn to really like it you know you really like it

hey you on the bottom
submit to the top
became a tool of rule
be you worker soldier or cop
be a good citizen
move with the herd
silently consume your sick
stampede when you hear the word

ceo memo says increase profit share
who cares if others can't eat and have rags to wear
because you learn to really like it you know you really like it

boss man commands to sour water and sky
extract the best poison the rest you get a small slice of the pie
you learn to really like it you know you really like it

hey you on the bottom
submit to the top
became a tool of rule
be you worker soldier or cop
fit in the machine
replaceable numbered cog
behave and you might get a bone
now there's a good dog

man with a cross tells us that god expects
good folk to shun and to punish single women who have sex
and you learn to really like it you know you really like it

preacher teaches and you prayerfully nod
that gays should be killed as an offense to god
so you learn to really like it you know you really like it

hey you on the bottom
submit to the top
became a tool of rule
be you worker soldier or cop
be a good worshipper
and your conscience is eased
offer praise and obey
you are food for the beast

[joel hanes]

When they brought the wolves back to the Yellowstone ecosystem, certain parts of each drainage produced a cohort of aspen that survived to grow above the browse line. Deer and elk will no longer stand and browse there, exposed, and so the trees return.

Predators have the highest leverage in the energy flow.

[Molly Ivors]

Beautiful, dan.