Credit: Elk by U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Animals can’t balance a checkbook or
post on Facebook, but when it comes to health and survival, many animals are
invariably smarter than humans. Unless
trapped in a cage, you will likely never see an animal take a dump in the same
place it intends to eat and live, yet humans do it every day and in countless
ways. Animals insist that all those in
the pack abide by all the social rules that affect the social order. Those that don’t abide are driven out, which
usually means death, or they just have their throats torn out resolving the
problem immediately. Humans fool
themselves into believing that they are more humane, more evolved, more
sophisticated, and spend billions of dollars to house, feed, and care for those
who will never be part of nor contribute to overall social welfare in any way. Animals, and even insects, understand that
everyone must personally contribute, but humans assume that there is always
someone else to look after their needs and responsibilities. Animals and humans are alike, however, in
that they get what they deserve. The
difference is that animals understand this, while humans don’t. Humans, like turkeys looking up to find the
source of the rain, witlessly stare at the heavens, confounded by the cause of
their own suffering.
Animals work and strive to create the
world they want and need to survive. They
understand the need for shelter and habitat, food supply, and the continuation
of their species. You will never see them
work against these goals, because, again, when it comes to survival, animals on
the whole are smarter than humans. The
leading reason why this is so is because animals are not subject to
self-delusion. Humans are not guided by
much beyond self-delusion, and there but for our curiosity, I would suggest, is
the next single, greatest distinction between animals and humans, our apparent
limitless capacity for self-delusion. In
comparison to animals, we are less faithful, less honest, less dependable, less
rational, less objective, less cooperative, less supportive, and a long list of
other ‘less-es.’ We have no doubt that
we are more intelligent, more perceptive, and more diverse than animals. We are taught that we are created in God’s
likeness, but in total honesty, too many secretly strive to mold God in their own
image.
Let us take more concrete subjects
that are dear to most of our hearts as paddlers---nature, wildlife, waterways,
natural resources like beauty, peaceful solitude, clean air and water rather
than resources like copper, coal, oil and gas and whatever else can be turned
into money. So, it would seem totally
alien, totally against our interests, to vote against our desire to protect and
preserve these priceless treasures, and yet we did. We put into offices of power the largest
collection of people ever in American history to create our new
kakistocracy. These are people who only
think in terms of what can be dug up or torn down for money, and who think only
in knee-jerk terms of today with no ability to conceive how today’s actions will
impact the long-term future. We had the
power to prevent this, but sat on our duffs and ignored the chance to avert the
disaster we now face. Almost 100 million
eligible voters did not vote in this last election. According to the Environmental Voter Project,
if “did not vote” was the name of a candidate, he would have won by a landslide
with 490 electoral votes. Even among
those of us that consider ourselves environmentalists, over 10 million of those
that think in environmental terms did not vote.
This proves we are not as smart as animals. If we had simply performed the easiest and
most rudimentary task of walking to a voting booth and flipping a lever, we
could have protected our public lands and parks, forests, streams, rivers, and
oceans, wildlife, the health and safety of our planet, and the lives of our
children and generations to come. This
is not about politics, party, bigotry, emails, pussy grabbing, loss of decency
or many other things that were used as a smoke screen to hide what was
important. We willfully and wantonly
caused issues to turn against our own best interests. If we really think of ourselves as being
further along the evolutionary continuum than the simplest animals, we need to
prove that by being more discerning and less easily manipulated, and to use the
power given to us as citizens. We need
to shake ourselves out of our sense of comfort and superiority as to be above
such matters. Since any political party can
begin to look more to its own greed and power over the need of its citizens and
society at large, we need to demand better candidates and proposals. Instead of political platforms that are made
of lofty promises, we should demand proposals that contain actual detailed
plans for action. We need to look at
news not as reality TV, but information upon which to make wise decisions. As Dorothy Thomas would warn both the citizen
and the journalist, “There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to
find out the truth.” We, therefore, need
to demand the end of fake news regardless of source. We need to protect what is important and
ignore the crap thrown in our paths as diversions. Instead of all this, while we had the power
to protect our most important treasures, we squandered it all. Since, instead of seeking wisdom and truth,
we have insisted upon being voluntarily stupid and led about by our need for incessant
titillation. No matter how bad things
get, we have proven that we deserve the worst, and are likely going to be getting
it.
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