Momentous or mundane

215a

Why is everything so momentous when, at the same time, it’s also mundane? Sitting here, I can’t think of anything more momentous than writing about an animal’s right to a life when the humans have enslaved it. It’s surely momentous stuff - the very quality of our relationship with the world we live in. But how do we marry that with the mundane? The ordinary, routine, never-changing world which is the only reality for almost every human on the planet?
I’ve got no answer to that, probably because I know that most humans don’t give much thought to anything but ‘my own life’. Liberating animals is pie in the sky, since the animal trade is so entrenched in our culture. It seems absurd to try to interfere with it. But still I sit here wanting to interfere with it, to bring it all into consciousness, in order to set off a course-change in thinking - if such a change occurs it will only be brought about not by some physical improvement but by an attitudinal one, on a higher plane of consciousness.
A friend of mine, Tom, quotes Forster’s maxim “only connect”, and he goes on to say the he believes that what we are all trying to do is to connect with the people and the world around us and with our own true nature. I couldn’t agree more but in practice it may not work out that way.
The teacher, inspired by “connecting”, takes her students to the zoo, but by taking them she implies that it’s all okay. And what if the kids kick up a fuss about the caging of animals, what can the teacher say? Behind her stands the institution of the zoo which makes itself look as if it’s a conservation centre for endangered species. When kids ask questions about the individual animal’s life in this imprisoned state, when they ask some very fundamental things about freedom, how can their teacher respond ... to the children’s satisfaction? They may have to be fobbed off ... since she was inspired by her students’ need to connect with animals ... to see the animals who they feel part of. She inspired the zoo-visit.
Tom says, “I am fairly sure that you would dismiss a hunter’s professed “love of nature” as mere hypocrisy; a smoke-screen behind which he can continue to have his fun. I certainly don’t condone hunting, but I can believe them when they say this. I just think their impulses have taken a wrong turning. Indeed many ex-hunters now do their shooting only with a camera; their love of nature now having found a more positive outlet”. .
Would ‘people wanting to connect’ be the primary reason people go to the zoo? I’d suggested (in a previous blog) that they go to mock the caged lion - “me human: you animal ... me great: you nothing but a banged up prisoner” - but that was just me trying to sound cynical. I know the people walking around the zoo are not sadistically revelling in the animals’ discomfort, but at the same time they aren’t empathising with the animals either. They aren’t asking how the lion feels. And they may well say “who cares what the lion feels?” ... but there’s the rub.
How is it that we do something which hasn’t been thought through empathetically? In today’s consciousness-raised atmosphere why is an animal’s perspective not relevant and important?
If we can accept that zoo-prisons are okay places to visit, isn’t that rather worrying? Isn’t that a sign that we really ought to be trying to interfere with a culture that encourages children to accept one-sided connectiveness?