My Big Red Friend

I spent some time with my big, red friend this morning. I ran across this statement that Carl Jung made in a seminar back in 1930.

"We are prejudiced in regard to the animal. People don't understand when I tell them they should become acquainted with their animals or assimilate their animals. They think the animal is alway jumping over walls and raising hell all over town. Yet in nature the animal is a well-behaved citizen. It is pious, it follows the path with great regularity, it does nothing extravagent. Only man is extravagant. So if you assimilate the character of the animal you become a pecularily law-abiding citizen, you go very slowly, and you become very reasonable in your ways, in as much as you can afford it." [Pg.296, The Red Book]

It's interesting to note that the other day when I called into Wisconsin Public Radio the guest from the Wisconsin Towns Association kept repeating throughout the program that local ordinances must be reasonable. I'd say that if the citizentry assimilates the "character of the animal," as Jung recommends, a very reasonable response to any potential harm moving into a community is to simply say NO. You cannot mine our sand, spray pesticides on the fields, spread shit across a 1000 acres, or pack close to a thousand head of cattle on less than adequate acreage.

Our Form Of Display: Rhetoric

I'm following my fascination with Hillman's work this morning. I like the idea of our speech as a form of display in the animalistic sense.

"I think that the human form of display, in the ethologist's sense of 'display,' is rhetoric. Our ability to sing, speak, tell tales, recite, orate is essential to our lovemaking, boasting, fear-inspiring, territory protecting, surrendering, and offspring-guarding behaviors. Giraffes and tigers have splendid coats; we have splendid speech."--James Hillman, Pg. 295, A Blue Fire

No Respect

The other day we went ice fishing. It was my dad, son, and I. And, for the first time, we took our chocolate lab out there. Before we left there was a concern that he would find something to roll in, perhaps a dead minnow or some fish guts. But I figured the chances were fairly slim that he would actually find something, so we took him anyway. Well, he found something to roll in right in the middle of the lake.

What was it? A dead racoon with tire tracks across it's back. During one of its evening hunts the racoon must have been out there eating dead minnows or fish that fisherman had thrown up on the ice. Unfortunately someone thought it might be fun to run it down and kill it. The first word that came to mind when I saw it was: cruel. And this quote that I came across in David Abram's Becoming Animal also came to mind:

"We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better. The white man has been only a short time in this country and know very little about the animals; we have lived here thousands of years and were taught long ago by animals themselves. The white man writes everything down in a book so that it will not be forgotten; but our ancestors married animals, learned all their ways, and passed on this knowledge from one generation to another.[A Carrier Indian From British Columbia, pg.259, Becoming Animal]