But I’m like most Americans in my sentimentality towards animals. I talk to my dog, and feel like she understands in her dog way some of what I’m saying. I hate hearing about cruelty to animals. Hunting and fishing hold no appeal for me.
At the same time, we need to remember that personally slaughtering their own meat was a way of life for a great many Americans perhaps as recently as 50 years ago. I remember my grandmother kept chickens, and would periodically go out back, catch one, swing it by the neck a few times, then pluck it and cook it. They kept a pig, and would slaughter it when it got fat enough. They were familiar with blood, and the innards of animals, and didn’t think twice about it.
Theodore Roosevelt was a famous big game hunter. He loved shooting lions and elephants and whatever else presented itself. Hunting was within perhaps the past 75 years a very patrician sport, and the owner of my company still goes away several times a year to shoot geese, or ducks, or to fish salmon.
We read, perhaps a weeks ago, that some famous lion none of us had heard of until that point had been killed by an American, who has since been identified, and forced into hiding. His head was cut off, and the meat apparently given to the villagers, as required by law in Zimbabwe.
For their part, the Zimbabwe’ans are apparently completely confused:
“Are you saying that all this noise is about a dead lion? Lions are killed all the time in this country,” said Tryphina Kaseke, a used-clothes hawker on the streets of Harare. “What is so special about this one?”
The truth is, most locals in Zimbabwe actually look forward to the big game hunts that Westerners engage in, as the high price tag for the hunts means money pumped into the local economy, not to mention the meat from such hunts is required by law to be given to local tribes and villages.
“Why are the Americans more concerned than us?” said Joseph Mabuwa, a 33-year-old father of two. “We never hear them speak out when villagers are killed by lions and elephants in Hwange.”
Lions and other large animals are typically viewed as dangerous by the local population, and if these animals are not hunted, their populations will explode and bring about all sorts of other issues, like rampant disease and increased attacks on people.
No American I know of has ever feared being attacked by a lion. In our world, they are by definition confined, since they only happen in zoos and circuses.
And I think animals are the recipients of all sorts of psychological projections. They are presumed innocent, where we are all fallen. They are presumed worthy of life, where I think many people think many of us deserve death.
Cecil was an animal who every day of his life sought to hunt down and kill another animal. Lions are clearly noble, beautiful, admirable animals. But they are, like all predators, serial killers in the animal kingdom. We live in such a crazy world that some people feed their dogs and cats vegetarian food, and don’t realize that cannot possibly be good for them.
Now, I want to be clear that it seems to me this dentist has a sadistic, violent streak in him, but this is not unusual. Zimbabwe is ruled by a man likely much worse in every respect than this dentist, and nobody gives a shit about him, or the hell he has created trying to engineer yet another Socialist Paradise.
Nobody gives a shit about the 1.2 million Africans who died of AIDS last year, or the 13,000 killed in Nigeria, Central African Republic and South Sudan last year. 1 million people were displaced by war in Nigeria alone, and I doubt one person in 100 on the street could find Nigeria on the map, or tell you ONE fact about it.
It is not the case that every story has two sides, but some do. I do not fault the people who are enraged with this dentist, but I also do not fault people I KNOW who hunt elk and bison and deer. It’s not my thing, but it is a violent world, and we all die.
It has long seemed to me that animal rights activists particularly seem to be highly misanthropic. Their love of animals is balanced by their hatred of humanity. When I was at Cal the most violent, craziest demonstrations by far were from PETA.
Every day the world over, countless millions or billions of fish are eaten by other fish. Billions of insects are eaten by birds, who are often eaten by other birds. Rodents are scooped up by hawks, and bird eggs eaten by snakes. Millions of cattle and pigs and chickens are slaughtered every day, and run through efficient factories to wind up in plastic trays in our grocery stores.
I understand misanthropy, but I also understand compassion. This is a very confusing world, and it is worth regularly trying to look at it from new angles. I have many answers, but I always remain willing to ask myself if they are the right answers, and I always put out a place-setting at my Table of Knowledge for uninvited but welcome strangers.
Post Script/Edit: I wonder if we might see in the outrage over the killing of Cecil some measure of the number of people who secretly would like to strangle someone. It has long been my observation that people who are obsessed with compassion often harbor latent and not always well hidden animosities, angers, spites,and violence.
We will forget about poor Cecil soon enough. All of us but the dentist, whatever his name is. This is going to be a life changing nightmare for him. Does he deserve it? Not my call to make. I’m going to forget about him. Killing him won’t bring Cecil back, but it will demolish a source of income in a poor nation, and nobody is going to care about them, or any of the lions they themselves kill in self defense or even hunger.
I do think this: this is a referendum on how many people would secretly like to strangle someone. I think the capacity to read people’s minds would be profoundly traumatizing.