We Are All Killers
A stark truth to a modern mind, unfettered by the need to stun, choke, hook, net, skewer, drown or trap other denizens of the planet. True, nevertheless. Some still say that others can do the killing. What, exactly do they mean? How is it preferable to depend upon others to take the lives that sustain you? Does this slaughtering place those who conduct it on a moral platform above or beneath our own? How dare we seek to assign such a judgment!
Still others will say that a complete diet can be obtained from plants. Possibly true in some environments, but clearly we did not evolve with the expectation that industrialization and fossil fuels would handily and economically transport vegetable matter across half the globe to sustain humans during severe and ice-bound seasons. Our dentition mutely agrees; we are undeniably omnivores.
Why is it that we struggle so mightily to obscure the reality of our nature? One may have reasons not to consume animal flesh, but avoiding the reality of being human cannot be one of them. The concept of respect begins with oneself. And so we are faced with an imperative to inflict and accept the death of individuals of other species as a condition of our own lives.
Those of us who hunt and fish are responding to an intrinsic motivation in the human genome that sustains us yet, after millions of years. Although it is a part of every human being, and almost certainly drives activities such as foraging (including shopping), it is manifest in two kinds of hunters and fishers in the modern world: those who hunt and fish for food, and those who hunt to sanctify their very existence. The former need no further explanation and no one can doubt the respect these people bestow upon their quarry. Anthropologists, carefully examining cultures other than their own, cite dozens of examples of rituals and customs across cultures past and present to thank, fête and glorify the animals that sustain us.
There remain those who hunt or fish to acknowledge their humanity. Some of this activity, we call sport, a misnomer considering its breadth of meaning, but uncritically accepted to describe the pursuit of game and fish with full intent to kill and possess the quarry, but no conspicuous need to do so. Such pursuits are almost purely ritual, with strong rules for the participant’s behavior, the qualities of the quarry, the conduct of the pursuit, notions of fair chase, and membership in the party.
Enter José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher influential in early Twentieth Century thought. Well known among devotees of the blood sports, his essay entitled “Meditations on Hunting” was first published as an introduction to a friend’s memoirs of big game hunting. Gasset succinctly describes how practitioners of the hunt become one with themselves and their environment, reaffirm atavistic roots, and, achieve a state that is unapologetically human. This re-creation of the spirit sets hunting and fishing apart from entertainment, a distinction frequently mis-understood by non-hunters. It also defines hunting as a sport unlike the athletic contests presented under the same label. And, it distinguishes fishing from what have latterly become known as "fishing tournaments".
And so it came to pass that, on one fine November day, I mentioned to my Department Head that I would be away from Thursday until the following Tuesday. My appointments had been re-scheduled and appropriate cover had been arranged for my classes while I would be pursuing pheasants and quail in Kansas. So, said he, you’re one of the killers. Yes, I said, squandering a precious “teaching moment”. I regret not saying, “we’re all killers, more’s the pity that we’re not all hunters.
No comments:
Post a Comment