Primordial Inspiration
For me there is something indescribably awesome about the below video that I just cant seem to capture with words. As I watch a shiver moves slowly up my spine, my eyes widen and my breathing quickens. It’s as if the ghosts of my primordial forebearers sleeping dormant within the kilometers of DNA coding within me, within the cells of this body, within the nuclei of each of the 100 trillion cells, are awoken.
There are elements within modern society that propagandize the bogus and misanthropic message that humans are weak and defenseless creatures. That you’re not supposed to eat other animals and we never did or we did only rarely because we don’t have claws or some other feature that predators classically possess.
Yet over the course of thousands upon thousands of years the snows have come as long ice ages descended and then receded again and again. Not all that long ago most of Europe was a treeless tundra with permafrost extended as far south as modern day France and Germany. Think about what that means for what those people had available to them to eat. Permafrost requires a jackhammer to dig in, it’s that hard and frozen. Think Mongolia. Go look at the traditional Mongolian diet. In contrast lush forest lands have been scorched by a relentless sun and in their place vast deserts have formed.
And yet with little more than sticks and stones your very ancestors survived, adapted and overcame. Think about that. Think about what that means about who and what you are. You’re not some pathetic weak creature that must cower indoors insulated away from the savage elements. You are the savage. You are the inheritor of a line of strength and natural wonder that stretches far back into the primordial mist of time.
This fact is so deeply inbuilt in human physiology that humans are seemingly healthiest, seemingly most primally vital, when placed under classic environmental pressures or stress. Hunger strengthens the body and the immune system, helps rejuvenate brain cells, weaken cancer cells, and prevents diabetes. Stress caused by radiation from the sun causes cholesterol in your skin to be converted into vitamin D.
If you deprive the human organism of natural healthy stressors, you affect its epigenetics and gene expression. Do that and you get a pathetic animal with little to no survival value. And that’s when mother nature in her great wisdom decides it’s time to take your ass out.
For subscribers who can’t see the video, you can watch it here.
July 17th, 2010 at 2:09 am
I thought the video was unnecessary. I understand the fact that the man in the video needed to kill the animal to eat and this is how life works, but the end of it’s life was way to graphic and doesn’t seem to fit the theme of your blog. I grew up hunting and fishing, I’m as close to the opposite of a vegetarian as possible, but I don’t enjoy seeing anything suffer as you seem to (I’m only going by the shiver up my spine comment). I enjoy the outdoors and outdoor survival, so I think I know what you were going for. This just clearly missed the mark for me.
July 17th, 2010 at 3:56 am
Hello Ken,
Successful communication can be defined as the achievement of shared meaning. As the originator of the message I take responsibility for my part in your failure (as recognized by your feedback in response to the message) to share my intended meaning.
I do not enjoy watching anything suffer. That was a potential perspective on the video clip that you have personally chosen to emphasize. And it appears you’ve then projected that onto me. After all, if that is how you saw it surely that is how I saw it to, right? This is not the case.
To me as I watched the video I watched the primordial struggle to survive. A battle of intelligence, will, strength and endurance. I watched the coordinated way in which each individual hunter utilized their specialized strengths in a coordinated effort. I watched them creatively model another being and it’s behavior within their own human minds in order to deduce where the animal had gone when tracks no longer could be found.
Most importantly I watched emotionally with a tear in my eye as the hunter demonstrated his love and thankfulness to the animal he had just killed. When the hunter released the animal’s soul back into the mother earth, to me the hunter demonstrated precisely my philosophical understanding of the nature of reality. That everything is a unified wholeness. That eating an animal is a part of a cycle of energy transference and love.
This was a being he had himself become during the hours of the pursuit. If you’ve ever trained boxing or other combat sport you would know that after fighting hard with another person, each giving as good as they take, often the result is a relationship and deep respect that others will never experience and perhaps never even understand.
I hope that clears up the meaning of my message. From my perspective there is no conflict between the video and the theme of my blog. I know animals AND plants die every single day so that I may live. Their throats cut, their life blood pouring out, their internal organs removed and their skin peeled back. I choose not to shy away from this reality.
If you want to see suffering, go watch a video showing factory farming for what it is. Go see what you’re supporting and endorsing with your money if you buy regular food from the supermarket instead of from your local small farmers who look after the earth and their animals.
As long as you don’t have to see it, get your own hands dirty and feel uncomfortable its all good right?
July 17th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Stephen,
I don’t feel there was a failure on my part to interpret your meaning, I’m just using your own words. I found your blog last year in a search for more information on The Noble Eightfold Path. This video doesn’t fit in with your tag cloud (to me). I appreciate the article and the effort to expound upon it in your reply.
I understand that you bonded with, and almost assume the role of the hunter in the video and feel what he is going through. I just personally don’t interpret the video the same way as you have. Isn’t it okay to have a different perspective than you do?
I grew up on a farm. I know what has to be done to make the world function and that people choose to ignore it. Whatever helps you sleep at night right?
I boxed Golden Gloves; played football, baseball, soccer, and ran track. I get what you are saying about facing a mighty opponent and gaining deep respect.
I still think the ending of the video takes away from an excellent article about the struggle for existence. I am not trying to project some deep seeded and unrecognized belief from the inner recesses of my mind onto you. I see something completely different when I watch the video (or any video when I see something killed). The great beast gasping his last breaths, quivering to hold on to existence, finally collapsing in pain is what stuck with me and completely distracts from your intent (once again, for me).
Perhaps that is something that comes with experience with death. If you have ever lost anyone close to you, I mean really close, it gives you a completely different perspective on life. It makes you want everyone and everything to live and makes you more sensitive to death. It makes one understand just how precious and fragile the gift of life is. I get that the warrior honored the animal’s soul with his ceremony, I just have a completely different take away.
In the end I guess this, as with many things in life, is a matter of perspective. Our perspectives will be different based on many factors, and I just need to appreciate the fact that we saw different things when we watched it.
July 17th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Indeed Ken, perspective is all powerful. Please don’t think I’m suggesting yours is in any way invalid simply because it differs from my own. And not even all that much as far as I can tell.
An important part of my message is to try to bring people back closer to reality. Many people have not have the benefit of growing up on or around farms or experiencing the wildness of the earth. They don’t know where their food comes from, can’t even identify basic types of vegetables let alone the heirloom crops that never appear in supermarkets and have no clue how produce their own or what is involved.
As a result I see a huge disconnect and when there is a disconnect from reality all sort of problems arise. Factory farming and other raping of the environment of which we are an inescapable part can go on no problem and those who are disconnected don’t even blink away from the fear mongering on the 6 o’clock news.
Another facet of reality for me is the question of death. I’ve thought about death and the nature of the phenomenon a great deal over the years. This questioning has been precipitated by the death of family members, friends, the observation of death in nature and my own personal brushes with death.
If you’ve read many of my posts you would already know that
I have a sneaking suspicion that death as it is generally perceived does not exist. If the Buddha’s teaching of dependent origination is so then everything is so interdependent (read: really a unified whole that quantum field theory is suggesting) that distinguishing hunter from hunted or eater from eaten is the product of a purely arbitrary perspective that does not appear to reflect reality.
The way I have come to understand the nature of our existence is that nothing ever dies in the sense that it ceases to exist. It transforms.
In the end I hope our sharing of differing perspective has enhanced each others.
July 18th, 2010 at 3:50 am
I have had some time to reflect upon your intent and interpretation and definitely can appreciate where you are coming from more clearly now.
You are right about the disconnect of many if not most people from mother earth, and a great way of reconnecting with that is through exploring the spiritual practices of our ancestors and cultures that have a deep connectedness with it, such as African and Native American cultures.
In remembering where we came from, we can begin to alter our perceptions back to a time where we embraced our relationship to the earth and treated her with a great deal of respect and honored her as the warrior did.
You are indeed correct, we are not that far apart. Through our discussion here I have a deeper respect for and appreciation of you. All of your posts are insightful and astute and for that I thank you.
July 19th, 2010 at 7:05 am
The spiritual practices of our human ancestors have always interested me. When I was growing up I went to a school here in Australia that had a lot of Aboriginal students. As a result I experienced first hand and was taught about the Aboriginal culture from an early age. The idea that people don’t own the land but rather belong to the land like a child to a mother has always stuck with me. And to me the ceremony performed by the hunter seemed like a deeply spiritual act.
It’s been my pleasure to enjoy our discussion. It’s not every day that I get to hold an adult level discussion with someone on the Internet. Hopefully Balanced Existence will continue to be a source of interest and insight for you. Always feel free to comment when you feel motivated to do so.