Local Night-Chirpy Brings Report to Mound Council
Local Night-Chirpy Dishes Dirt on People
My friends i have distressing news to report. Here is the dirt from my last reconnaissance at a human gathering.
While i would like to amuse you all with more stories of absurd behavior—like the way they continued to drink liquid from a metal barrel even after it caused erratic behavior and vomiting—i really want to remind you of their pitiable ignorance of anything nonhuman. They seem incapable of accepting information that challenges human centrality on earth. For example, from a nearby tree, i heard this exchange between two of them. I have abbreviated it..
Human Who Stands Mostly On One Foot: I have learned about killer whales. Did you know that they… [describes some behavior that suggests intelligence]Human Who Looks Down: Really! That is so weird. Yeah did you know that British birds…[describes some behavior that suggests learning]
Human Who Leans When Speaking: Really? That’s interesting. I’ve been also learning about dolphins. They’re the only animals that…[describes behavior that suggests culture]
Human Who Keeps Arms Folded: Yeah. I heard that. I read somewhere that cranes [show compassion.]
We can thank the humans that conduct scientific study for evidence of “humanity” in the natural world.
What should disturb all of you is how deeply ingrained is this prejudice, this attitude of natural human centrality, by which i mean that we can be judged by people like the two i overheard, according to how much we act like people.
We are judged as to our worth, in sometimes strange locally agreed-upon human hierarchies, where for example a roach is less than a bird is less than a cow is less than a known dog. This judgment seems to be based on whether we are useful to them, whether we make humans uncomfortable in any way, and how closely we resemble a human: humans have more trouble with the killing of a cow (with her large brown eyes) than with the killing of many rats.
These standards vary among different human cultures, but there is universal agreement on one thing. They all agree that the human way of consciousness is Consciousness. To humans, life on earth has intelligence, or the understanding of its own existence, only insofar as it can be understood by humans. This stubborn arrogance is pathetic and dangerous.
The way that plants in an area communicate is outside human ability to recognize, therefore it doesn’t count as intelligence or communication. The cultural history of whales is not recorded nor celebrated in any way that humans have yet described, so whales have no history, knowledge or culture. The subtle dance among subterranean microorganisms and the weather is complex beyond human acceptance, and as a result it is either ignored completely, referenced spiritually, as somehow part of “god,” or dissected into components as a method of making it part of human reality.
To humans, if it cannot be described, it is imaginary, and imaginary things are suspect. Honoring the unknown, like honoring death, is not a strong point with people. They prefer fear, with which they have experience. They cultivate fear like fields of corn, and manufacture it like a familiar line of tools.
Humans debate whether learning or culture or compassion exists among other species, but fail to recognize how biased the original question is. In the last few decades, these debates have become more emotionally charged within the human communities as some humans decry widespread destruction of the natural world and the indiscriminate use of animal populations for human consumption.
But human conceptions of language, learning and culture obviously don’t apply to all of us, or to our place in world history. Humans can’t fathom that world history is neither just human nor just some inevitable machine-like “natural” evolution, but encompasses those things and includes the contributions of all life, like the lives of this scrub jay and that mouse family.
Such a conception of how change happens is very logical. But people really only love and apply logic and reason when it allows them to remain comfortable in their humanity and the beastliness of everyone else!
Their present level of obsession with rational thinking– to the exclusion of awareness–has been amply discussed in these councils. I think we all agree that many of the human cultures are at a stage today of split consciousness, in which impressive energy and imagination is directed at continued development of technical tools and “security” while rudimentary needs for balance in their social relations are shunted from the main focus of human activity.
They war, but can barely feed themselves!
Obviously many of them are in a state of confusion, only occasionally at ease with how their needs for food and shelter are met. They all individually work for some future stability, and ignore their current precarious teetering on the brink of cataclysm. They act as if long-term, constant, insecurity were a natural state.
Any other species on the rock devotes a healthy portion of waking activity to food, shelter and play; it is testament to the pitiful state of human cultural evolution that this insanity, a myopic pretense and frenzy at progress and stability, is offered as proof of their superiority!
Even when this pathology is identified, the humans rely on anthropocentrism. I’ve heard debates between humans who are afraid of their own odor, about how there is human responsibility for all manner of painful situations. It seems also they are afraid of themselves.
As you well know, friends, some of the cataclysmic activity lately is a result of earth disruption by human activity and that weird human fetish for burning everything. But what is so pathetically human is that they want to assign blame or achieve dominance in assigning culpability and the accuracy of their predictions, rather than directly address the problems. They complain about pollution but do nothing to stop the industry. They show more allegiance to their cultural norms of good behavior than to the survival of their herd. They accuse one another of inaction.
Perhaps they need to assign responsibility in order to eliminate the individuals who are not helping the herd evolve.
Ah, but then maybe this struggle for dominance is not so uniquely human; it’s just that they make it look so complicated and pointless. And don’t they just take all the fun out of a good fight, with the moral recriminations and the damaging nearly everyone and everything that had nothing to do with it? I’d rather watch two hogs establish hierarchy any afternoon, than witness these long spiritual and detached campaigns of hatred by proxy among humans.
If their definition of culture means allegiance to pain, then i am glad to fail the test.
What i want most to encourage today is our ongoing efforts to instruct humans. This work must be done in a way to challenge their preconceptions. It isn’t enough for them to think that cows are cute and should be spared factory slaughter. They must come to feel uncomfortable with their own idea that a cow is cute. They must be emboldened to ask each other if they are confident about the implications in the construction of a new dam. They must be surprised by our behavior, and sometimes frightened. The humans who fear nature will be open up or die eventually.
They must learn to feel at home with ignorance and express their curiosity in compassionate ways. The testing laboratories, those bastions of pseudo-science and prejudice, will be closed just as their prisons are demolished, not only because they are cruel, but because they don’t work, and there are better ways.
They must allow awareness to spur action, not because they know the truth, but because they want to participate in the making of natural history. They must learn to admire their own strange bodies, their wrinkly genitals, their flesh, their sag and paunch, their sleepiness and anger, their grief and silliness. To accept life. They’ll learn not to take themselves so seriously; they’ll learn to play, and to have fun fighting. And to die like many of us die, not so much afraid as wondering what’s next.
Eventually, i hope, they will learn to live in the natural world, not in a state of suspended insecurity, hoping to survive the next epidemic or war.
Thanks for listening,
RitRitRee,
Local Night-Chirpy
Chua Region
Mound Council
