Large Fierce Mammal

If the Foo shits … (Source: Here)

hu·man

noun
A self-identified lesser god designed by a committee consisting of the feuding members of a large and dysfunctional extended family obsessed with entitlement to positions of inheritance from the estates of elders who not only aren’t dead yet, but certain to outlive them all.

~ Excerpt from Large Fierce Mammal’s Bigge Booke of Mythical Beasts ~

There is a very simple, and that is not to say simplistic, frame of reference defining what ails the world. It isn’t tribalism, political leanings, religious beliefs, rich versus poor, strong versus weak, or any other intellectual construct popularly (or unpopularly depending on your perspective) held up as justification for absolute division among people, although those are manifestations of it.

It isn’t human caused climate change or mass human migration although those are justifications for it.

Cutting to the chase, what I am talking about is people behaving badly, and in keeping with the kind of clarity of which I have previously spoken, I will pause to define what that means.

Common use would define bad behaviour as any act that is at odds with the accepted rules of the society in which the act is committed. These may be written or unwritten and are mechanisms by which the suitability of any person or group may be assessed for its propriety and acceptability to the good of the community that surrounds them. Among other things, it sets out the framework defining who can be trusted and who cannot, delineating the law abiding from the outlaw. The safe from the dangerous. The good from the bad.

Even the most trusting among us will have little difficulty picking up on just how this can lead to abuse of power at all levels. Few of those same trusting souls would ever identify themselves as having any part in such abuses.

Even fewer will realize that weighing the gravity of a bad behaviour purely against its effects on other people and their communities or societies is as big a waste of time as defining the value of Nature purely in the context of needing to be preserved for the benefit of humans.

I previously wrote:

“Systems of human belief that formed absent any Abrahamic religious influence tend to share the common trait of including people as being one among Nature’s creatures instead of above all by divine edict. They seek to understand the forces and phases of Nature within the context of motives and behaviours shared by Humans and other living things alike, and in so doing, grasp how simultaneously simple and profound everything is in its connectedness.

“Whatever its basis, all systems of belief seem to share some sort of concept of an immortal life force that dwells in living things. While the Abrahamic group assigns this “soul” exclusively to human kind, others find spirits dwelling in places and things; some grand and powerful, and others that are tiny, even seemingly insignificant.

“Spirits seem, for the most part, to concern themselves with their own affairs, in concert with Nature and their own expression of the Way of the Wild. Only things that have become unsound so they can no longer be that way themselves will attract their enmity. A tangible comparison can be found if you watch a Deer walk through a field of wild flowers on a Summer’s day. You will see it going about its business heedless of the scores of Bees that are momentarily disturbed by its passing. Likewise, the Bees will buzz away fussily, to either find another flower or re-alight on the one just vacated as soon as the interloper is gone. By comparison, something that due to age, infirmity, illness, or wrongheadedness, like an irrationally fearful human, can easily attract the defensive side of a Bee’s nature with painful results.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 7 – Day 17: The Spirit of Things

And …

“No individual person, family, company, or even nation, can fix all the bad that’s done by the way human societies treat the Earth. What we all can do is clean up our act in our own little corner of it. Do a little research on what happens to any species in Nature that consumes more than its environment can sustain, and while you’re at it, marinate your mind in the fact that, in the scheme of things, we are nothing more than another species of wild animals absolutely co-dependent for survival on the integrity of our connection with every other living thing. We don’t own this place. We are not ‘Stewards of the Earth’, and governments giving lip service to ‘conserving’ wild places and protecting ‘endangered’ species of animals and plants so they can be ‘enjoyed by future generations’ ignore the singular fact that, while Nature is the source of all joy in the most profound and fundamental sense, defining any part of Her as having meaning only within the context of a human entertainment experience is trivializing in the extreme.” ~ Earth Hour 2010: More Enviro-Bullshit

And lastly, don’t forget …

“The ‘Environment’, as the word must be understood, encompasses the Earth in its entirety, and there is only one. Every space, regardless of size, that exists beneath, on, and above the surface of the planet – however near to or far from anything – is part of it, and everything that lives coexists inside it. Each living thing exists to fill a niche in Nature, and wherever it lives will share the portion of the Environment it occupies with others of its kind, along with still others of other kinds that either compete with it for a share of the same niche, or serve a supporting role. Regardless of role, this portion of the Environment in which a creature lives is its range, and within that range it will coexist with others to which it will be predisposed to be accepting, fearful, indifferent, or predatory.

“… (F)or now you must think on what I’ve said about the Environment, and most deeply on your place as a member of the living multitude within it – not above all, but among all. As a member of that group of creatures in Nature that are called Man, you are at the top of the food chain wherever you live, but that is not the same as being above all things, and this matter is the next vital lesson to understanding the Way of the Wild. The Way of the Wild as it expresses itself purely in Man is not at odds with any other thing. Were it so, evolutionary development of our kind would have long since spiralled downward into nothingness, and we would have been heaved into the realm of extinction, self-inflicted or otherwise, millennia ago. This is not to say that conflict, up to and including *GASP* fighting is not a part of the Way of the Wild – FAR from it! …

“Everyone is familiar with modern usage of the terms ‘environmentalist’, ‘environmentally friendly’, ‘organic’, ‘all natural’, and ‘green’. In my own life …, green is a colour and nothing more. Water Hemlock is not only green, organic, and all natural, it’s one of the most poisonous plants in North America. Every one of these terms, the meaning of each of which has been completely subverted, intrinsically accepts and promotes a separation between the place where humans live, and that where everything else lives, for the singular purpose of influencing human behaviour, individually and culturally. This fosters entire fields of human endeavour in which arguments play out, research budgets are expended, well meaning people are burnt out by misdirected expressions of their passions, political and business agendas are realized, and the reality of Nature gets lost as the juggernaut of exclusive human growth hurtles on.

“So the last thing I will leave you with today is growth. The Natural kind that enlivens and strengthens everything, and the kind that, even though organically grown, is out of balance with Nature and therefore not at one with the Way of the Wild. Once again we are confronted with two competing brands.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Among and Not Above

So now you know the Truth of people behaving badly. Reject it at your peril, or as is said, fuck around and find out.

Until next time.