Blaming the “Brutes”

Social power has always been problematic.  It can be used for good or used for ill.  (That story is as old as Adam and Eve.)  In the West today, many people have become increasingly aware of how social hierarchies have been one avenue through which social power has been misused -- such as slaveholder over slave, and men over women.  There have also been hierarchies that have fostered condescension toward animals (or even worse, their abuse).

Frequently in the U.S. and England, such condescension came in the form of applying the word "brutes" to other mammals, whether wild or domesticated.  And it is no coincidence that definitions of the word "brute" include not only "an animal; a beast," but also "a brutal, crude, or insensitive person." As one of countless examples, the 18th-century philosopher George Berkeley made the following parallel:  "To degrade Humane Kind [humankind] to a level with Brute Beasts."  Even the 19th-century nature-writer Henry David Thoreau, who we today think of as being enlightened for his time wrote:  "None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter.”

This long-standing tendency to condescend to both animals and people lower on the hierarchy continued into the twentieth century, even if it sometimes became less obvious.  I chanced upon an example when I was reading, of all things, Michael Downing's history of the U.S.'s struggles over daylight saving time.  In the early 20th century, after legislation required an annual time-shift, The Nation magazine reported that "the ceremony of putting forward the clack has passed... without friction save for a growl from the farmer who anticipates trouble with his hired hand and his cow."  What caught my attention about that depiction was that the word "growl" -- a word usually used for the sound some non-human animals make --  was applied to a human being.  And, the two kinds of beings lowest in the hierarchy (the "cow" and the "hired hand") are blamed.

But farmers were the main opponents for a reason:  Even if they got up an hour earlier, that did not mean the cow's milk-giving had made any adjustment in its natural rhythms.  Moreover, what that statement by The Nation did not explain was that it was not just those underlings who objected to the time change.  But the underlings get blamed.

Today, our still expanding knowledge from the science of ecology has made it harder to think of our relationships with animals as their being on rungs below us on a vertical ladder. Instead, we -- humans and non-humans -- are related through multiple strands of a web.  Not just in the milk we drink and the food we eat, but also in cycles of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus. Moreover, we humans are more dependent upon other species of life than most of them are dependent upon us.  We could not live without many of them, whereas most other species could do quite well without us.

As our ecological awareness expands, maybe we can also come to be more aware of our dependence upon people who are lower than us on the social scale.  And more sensitive to their needs as well.

~~~

Which animals or people "beneath you," which you depend upon, come to your mind?

(The Berkeley quote is from Alciphron [1732], I. i. xiii. 48.)

(The Thoreau quote is from Walden [1854], Chap. 1:  "Economy.")

(The  quote from The Nation, April, 1919, is in Spring Forward, by Michael Downing.  © 2005 . p. 22.)

Hope in a Hole in the Ground

It would seem to be a sad thing to have to bury one's hopes in a hole in the ground.  It would seem to be the final recourse when a person had to abandon a long-held hope, trying to put it out of sight.  Even Jesus tells his disciples not to behave like the servant who "went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money" (Matt. 25:18, NRSV).  Nevertheless, a hope of a kind is put in the ground and covered over trillions of time around this planet every year. That hope is encapsulated in a seed.

If ever there were a question about whether the earth were good, it would seem to be answered by that act.  As the early 20th-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke poignantly put it:

"In spite of all the farmer's work and worry,

he can't reach down to where the seed is slowly

transmuted into summer.  The earth bestows."

This connection between hope and the ground came to me when I encountered again a one-line quotation by someone much less known than Rilke. The quotation was by Lucy Larcom. Although few people know about her, a fair number of people may have encountered a statement of hers that is used by organizations such as the Arbor Day Foundation.  Larcom succinctly wrote:  "He who plants a tree / Plants a hope."  Of course, in this case, the "hope" is not completely buried, seedlings or young trees being the ways trees are usually planted.  Nevertheless, what dependence upon the earth and upon a tenuous life other than our own is embodied in that act of planting!  A number of U.S. cities are now more aware of how precarious the life of trees can be, because droughts over the past years have killed so many trees, both young and old.  And how even more dependent peoples' hopes must be in countries where water cannot be obtained through a garden hose or a transporting truck.

To be fair to Jesus, I should point out that when he guides his disciples not to put their "talents" in "a hole in the ground," he is using an agricultural metaphor to provoke insights about human behavior (as is often the case).   He is encouraging his followers not to remain holed up in their own houses, but instead to put their "talents" -- both money and abilities -- into circulation. His words could be paraphrased as, "Don't isolate. Interrelate!"

As I return my thoughts to those seeds being placed in the ground and covered over with soil, I now realize that the instructions we are giving them without words are very much the same.  We are in effect saying:  "Don't stay isolated in that sterile paper envelope where you've been. Instead, return to that world your family came from.  Get back in touch with the earth with all its nutrients and microbes.  Interrelate with the life-forms that are in the soil.  And soak up the rain that filters down, letting your life interrelate with the clouds and sun above.  Grow."

And upon that instructed seed, we humans place our sometimes frail hope.  It is a hope that has not been entirely disappointed billions and billions of times.

~~~

Have you ever gardened?  Have you ever thought about the wonder in those seeds?

(Rilke quote from "The Sonnets to Orpheus," XII, trans. Stephen Mitchell, in Ahead of all Parting, © 1995. p. 433)

(The quote by Lucy Larcom [1824-1893] is from "Plant a Tree,"

as quoted in A Dictionary of Environmental Quotations, ed. Barbara K. Rodes, © 1992.  130:8.)

(Both photos by Roger Culos, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenses.)