What was I thinking Facebook asks? Well Book of Faces thank you for asking – I was indeed thinking this morning and you caught me – but don’t say you didn’t ask ..… I was thinking about the nature vs nurture debate – from a slightly different angle. I have 2 visions of humanity – one that is individual and one of an organism – an entire unit of humanity. Individual’s I believe are universally, genetically encoded for not only altruism (higher good) but the flip side of that – even greater good despite self-sacrifice – this is not altruism – this is even greater generosity and kindness on the scale – sometimes to their own detriment. Looks at rescuers for a start. Yet on an organism level we over consume to the detriment of entire populations of our species. We unthinkingly create violence through the creation of poverty. We build gated communities – forgetting Zsar Nicholas & Co with fanciful abandon. The organism view doesn’t care about individuals; it cares only about survival of the species, who so ever shall win. The organism is pure nature. Nature at her best. No, not her “best”, for it is her only. She doesn’t judge. How is this relevant to me? Well boredom for a start (at one point this little online soliloquy had a flying saucer analogy ..... hey you lie on your back for days on end and *then* judge me). Secondly because so many people with the cancer thing talk about it in such combative terms. Fighting, killing, looking inward and searching and destroy, conquering. They hate it. They want to kill it. I feel I can’t do that. For 3 reasons. 1) If you have cancer the probability is you grew up in a western economy and have always had enough to eat and drink – in fact more than enough, it’s one of the main causes. You are by birth one of the luckiest people in history and on earth. 2) Cancer is not a virus, parasite, bacteria or foreign body, it is you. It is part of you. Cancer is the most successful natural cell of your entire body. Cancer kills you precisely because it is a supercell – better at multiplying than any other. Yes even better at multiplying than the hair on women’s legs. 3) Cancer is nature’s way of removing over consumption of an organism and restoring some balance. In so many ways that is so beautiful a natural solution, it’s hard to ‘hate’ a creation designed to ensure the survival of life itself. But if we are laying claim to civilisation then we can’t accept ‘pure nature’ anymore can we? If we did we would still be brachiating through the trees as monkeys hunting wee little Bonobos. Women would be clubbed on the head and dragged into the caves – not voting. Now I don’t know about you but I certainly prefer being able to vote for my monkeys If however we are to replace nature with civilisation – with our higher cognitive capacities – then we must *be* civilised. I accept with sadness and equal joy, we have some control over many things now that would otherwise have had a natural solution – like cancer. If you wish to usurp the purely altruistic natural order – then we are compelled to bring something better to the table by our own innate self-sacrificing goodness. Nature kills indiscriminately for altruistic purposes – humans as individuals cannot lay claim to civilisation if we do. We are not coded to as individuals. In fact killing is the very antithesis of our coding. That is why I have always said anyone (including rescuers, trainers, breeders and decision makers) who states ‘you can’t save them all’ – is not only wrong – but simply does not understand the fundamental importance of the issue. Wanton, indiscriminate killing of pets as a commodity is not civilised. It is not acceptable to simply judge and find wanting a single dog. For it is not about one dog, that dog, my dog, that person, the 1% who mutate from their innately good genetic coding. We are a community. Civilisation is about being a community - by definition in evolutionary terms! Warts and all. Backward, unevolved people too, altruistic genes and all – the 1% who haven’t joined us in the 21st century and still carry on like a Dawkins Selfish Gene without having ever a read one his books. We must accept we carry those people too – dragging them if necessary forward towards … umm (I don’t know the only thing that seems a suitable ending to this sentence is ‘the light’ – but is sounds sooo awkwardly spiritual). The issue of No Kill is fundamental to civilisation – do we only kill creatures with low cognitive capacities purely for convenience? Do we accept that as the marker? A few politicians I know wouldn’t make the grade then. Civilisation is incompatible with killing those beings closest to us for nothing. It is for this reason I fight daily, not for the one dog we save. It is for this reason I fight even entrenched views in supposed animal ‘welfare’ – because it’s not about us. It never has been. It never will be. It’s about more than us. It’s about the world that came to love animals not for what they could give them but because we are coded for kindness and a predisposition for that love. I fight for that love.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 22:54:01 +0000
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