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    September 18, 2007

    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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    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

    "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

    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

    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.

    Beautiful, dan.

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