Yesterday my Concepts of Nature class discussed a very funny article in which Jon Tevlin decribes a visit to a mythopoetic men's retreat where he attempts to commune with his inner beast through mask-making, drumming, farting, and swooping around like a hawk. Why is it, I wondered aloud, that when the men in this article get together to commune with their inner beasts, they all end up acting like hawks and rams and wolves and not, for instance, hedgehogs? Why not slugs, sheep, or fuzzy little bunnies? Why not insects? Tevlin tells us that "the male wilderness is full of ticks," so why don't they accept nature's open invitation to commune with the tick? Be immersed in nature while nature is immersing itself in you!
Well it was an interesting discussion but it must have infected my subconscious because last night I had a very vivid but strange dream involving communing with nature. I was at a garden supply store scooting around on a wheeled office chair that kept getting caught on bits of mulch, when suddenly I saw in the distance a group of large animals lumbering past, including a few fierce-looking dinosaurs and two really big kangaroos. "Look!" I said, "those kangaroos must be 20 feet tall!" Not a word about the dinosaurs. Who notices dinosaurs when faced with really big kangaroos?
I wasn't tempted to commune with any of the animals and in fact I was more concerned about the mulch that kept getting caught in the wheels of my rolling chair. Perhaps my inner beast is not natural at all but something available from Office Depot. Deep in my heart there lurks . . . a stapler. You'd better look out: I know how to use it.
1 comment:
[I am going to be odd and give a serious answer.]
I assume it is because we are still wired for survival, and the soft, small and cuddly get eaten. The development of the technology that allows us to dominate nature has taken place in an evolutionary eyeblink, and our bodies and reactions are still built to compete for hunting territory and females. In other words, our bodies don't know firearms exist. This evolutionary lag time is the same reason that men still hunt, enjoy violent sports and get into physical fights over women and parking spaces. The drive to do these things is not cerebral, but is a brain-stem reaction.
We don't need a lot of physical traits we currently have: hair, nails, separate toes, etc. but we still have them. At this point, we really are not even all that well-adapted for walking upright (see: back problems). In our society there is no real need for men to be larger/stronger than women, but in general we are. It is simply a reflection of the role we have played though the development of our species.
I am not saying we get a free pass to be violent, but questioning a male's "powerful animal" instincts seems akin to wondering why a female feels protective about their child. We don't have much choice. We don't have to act on the impulses, but they will still be there.
Evolution won't catch up with society for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years, by which time we may need the animal instincts again. It may not even take that long for it to be useful. Look at New Orleans: in just a few days in the city center human interactions regressed to subsistence and violence. Most areas have an average of two days worth of food in the stores. Turn off the lights and stop the traffic and presto: barbarism! It may be distressing that strength still equals power in our supposedly enlightened age, but distress makes it no less true.
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