This song summarizes my sentiments exactly;
Hunting deer with dogs is illegal in my state, but I knew an old farmer who used to refuse to own a dog that wouldn’t run deer. “It was the only way you’d know if he was any good,” he would say.
I have no use for “hunting is a bloodsport” arguments.
I find them appeals to morality I don’t have, not do I see any purpose for them, other than we cannot separate the contrived from the real.
The real world is not a Disney cartoon.
Animals have been dying for millions of years, and for most of our history as a species, we have been engaged in the hunt.
It’s only now in this postmodern, postmaterialist epoch that we in the West get so worked up about something so primal. It contrives a guilt where there should be none. In much the same way that Christianity has forced us to have guilty feelings over sex.
Guilt is not a good moral basis, for it is a morality based upon weakness and hatred for what you are. True morality is based upon the strength that comes careful consideration.
I don’t hate that I am human, nor do deny that the flesh of other creatures kept my ancestors alive. It was only through their ability to design weapons that they were able to be efficient hunters, and this prowess at developing technology is what allowed my species to become so successful.
I do not resent the simple reality that dogs are predators. They evolved as predators, not as the sniveling scavengers that populate Third World villages, which have cultivated bizarre quasi-scientific theorizing by too many dog experts who think Raymond Coppinger provides the best refutation of dominance theory, simply because his domestic is the most incongruous with it.
I am glad that I grew up in the country, where dogs were allowed off-leash and boys were allowed to exploring in the woods. I am glad that I had a rural childhood that was not so filled with such denial of the human and canine condition as it seems too many people today are.
I am not a follower of Ted Nugent. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a Republican.
But I am not someone who thinks with his emotions. I never have been.
I refuse to demonize rural Americans, for the same reason that I won’t demonize anyone else.
In a world where so many people are starving and wars and genocides rage on, don’t you think it would be a little more moral to worry a bit more about these issues than go on about how evil hunters are?
So many of these people claim to be environmentalists and conservationists, but they don’t seem to understand a simple axiom: Real tree huggers also hug hunters. Hunting is just another way people relate to the natural world. It generates a lot of revenue for conservation purposes, which wind up benefiting whole ecosystems.
The Darwinian world that is nature is not a pretty place. No one would ever want to build a society based upon those principles (at least not within the mainstream body politic). Predation is one of the factors that keeps nature what it is. Because nature requires predation to keep things in balance, I have often thought this to be the best argument against intelligent design.
If I were an intelligent designer, I’d make so that predation never happens and is never necessary.
But that isn’t reality.
And for those who do not understand that humans are actually part of the guild of predators, all I can say is that you’ve not really looked at your evolutionary history. You are an organism on this planet. Your ancestors were once totally controlled by the forces of natural selection. In the end, we still are. One of the most dangerous delusions of the modern world is for us to think we are forever separated from nature because we have all this nice technology.
In reality, nature still casts a shadow onto our condition, whether we like that shadow or not.
The moral thing is to accept it and to use it for purposes that uplift our species and the whole of animate creation.
thanks for this article! just the wrong dogs. ;-)
I appreciate your point of view, and your simple and eloquent way of expressing it. You always make me think.
However, for your dislike of appealing to emotion, you do so right here: “In a world where so many people are starving and wars and genocides rage on, don’t you think it would be a little more moral to worry a bit more about these issues than go on about how evil hunters are?”
That is a fallacious argument.
Unless one knows for certain that every single person who considers hunting a bloodsport does not care about starvation, war and genocide, that question holds no validity. It appeals to emotion – you, over there, you who thinks hunting is so awful, what are you doing about starving people in other countries, you must not care about them if you care so much about hunting? That would be almost laughable if it wasn’t used so frequently to demonize and diminish the opinions and beliefs of others.
What I meant that it is a more fruitful endeavor to work to solve human issues than waste so much energy and money trying to worry about some guy whose dog killed a raccoon.
I did not mean it as an appeal to emotion.
People are not kind to people. Human rights may be universal, but they are not universally accepted.
I’ll give you an example that might be a better:
In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, people are starving and arable land is scarce. So they begin to encroach on the land that was once set aside for wildlife. And from that comes poaching, the bush meat trade, and poisoning large predators, such as lions.
The only way to conserve these species is not to moralize about the rights of these animals, but to actually solve the real problems of poverty and land distribution. Those problems are much more of a root cause of extinctions than anything else. I remember some game warden in either Kenya or Tanzania had a shoot to kill policy for anyone caught killing elephants on park land. That sounds nice, until you put the calculus together. It was saying that a desperately poor African’s life is worth less than that of an elephant, and well, that’s a terrible way to create popular support for conservation.
I cannot accept such a moral calculation. It’s bad for people, and in the long run, bad for elephants. You can only control people with guns for so long.
I also see something else in many animal rights movements. I have to make this case through an imperfect analogy, but you’ll see what I mean.
What if Brazil decided that the indigenous people of the Amazon could no longer live as hunters? The state could just go through and collect all their various hunting instruments, and then the state can have them settle on one of those public estates like you see in that film The City of God.
I’m sure you’d be crying foul. I know I would.
I oppose cultural imperialism, which is when one culture decides that every single aspect of a culture isn’t worth preserving and thus decides to destroy.
That is what is happening to the rural cultures in the West. Because the people are white and well-fed, we don’t think of it as cultural imperialism. But it is.
That’s what bothers me so much.
Now, I’m not a total cultural relativist. If a culture victimizes humans and uses the cultural excuse, I am not for that. I am also opposed to culture when it tries to go against reason.
That’s because I recognize human rights as essentially universal. I can even go along with given some rights to great apes, but once we move beyond that into other animals, it gets very tricky. If you kill a wasp or a fly, are you violating its right? I’m sure you’re aware that many states have a right to hunt in their state constitution. Are we going to violate the rights of people because our cultural mores say that hunting is immoral?
I apologize if I created a straw man argument. That was not my intent.
My intent is that politically I am a deeply progressive individual. No, I am not making this up. I am.
But I think we cut no mustard with the bulk of American society when we show contempt for certain aspects of their culture.
Look, I have contempt for creationism, because creationism goes against scientific evidence. My attacks on it are from an evidence-based perspective, not a moral based perspective.
LOTS I could ramble on about relating to THIS post/comments! First–about dogs running deer(and this has nothing to do with hunting-versus-anti-hunting, but differences between hunting cultures in this country–U.S.A.). I, for one have never understood the vehement taboo that has arisen involving dogs chasing deer–at least in the Southern half of the country. I can understand where snows are deep up North, and deer must yard up and have limited fat reserves to survive the Winter, and the tremendous effort trying to escape in deep snow creates, but in more than half the country, this IS NOT an issue in Winter, yet the same taboo exists in all but a few spots where it is legal(usually very thickly brushed swamp areas, and there the whole hunting culture revolves around running deer with dogs–the next county over–TABOO!!!). I grew up and have lived in the Majority Dogs-Run-Deer-Is Evil subcultures, where any dog seen chasing a deer is shot on sight, if at all possible. To admit you might have a dog that will chase or trail deer is like something between admitting you are a pedophile or a yankee. I can also understand how this may have begun historically, when Whitetail deer were so low in numbers(hard to believe these days!) that some sort of hunting restrictions were necessary to allow them to recover from severe, unrestricted overhunting. Nowadays it makes no sense, of course, but the taboo is so deeply entrenched in the hunting cultures against it, it is clung to like a religious belief. Yet these same hunting subcultures use dogs to hunt bear, raccoons, ‘possums, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, cougars, quail, pheasants, ducks, geese,–virtually all other types of game, without blinking an eye! But not hoofed, antlered animals! That is EVIL and WRONG! I have shocked many by my blasphemous comments like saying the music my hounds make running deer is as sweet as running a fox–I might as well had admit I was a pinko-commy-atheist! Luckily, I have lived quite isolated from civilized rules and regulations all my life, and so have dared to allow my dogs to chase deer whenever they please(kind of hard NOT TO, when you live surrounded by zillions of deer, and don’t believe in keeping your dogs imprisoned on leashes all their lives…), so I have seen undoubtedly THOUSANDS of deer races. Let me tell you, the deer have all the advantages(in thick mountain forest, at least)! I have never seen any dog even come close to pulling down healthy adult deer. The deer make absolute fools of the dogs most of the time! I have watched deer kick up their heels and frolic like they were having a blast, and stop and watch the dogs, so confident in their own abilities to escape were they. And boy, do the dogs get a great workout! Any dog that DID catch up to a grown deer is likely to get pummeled but good! The few places where it is legal and acceptable to run deer with dogs, all the dogs do is get the deer moving and visible for the hunters who are waiting at known deer crossings and trails–the dogs rarely even get close to the deer after first jumping them. So this notion that slavering packs of dogs run deer to exhaustion and pull them down and tear them apart in savage glee on such hunts is very inaccurate. Yet this taboo still exists in most areas……
In much the same way that Christianity has forced us to have guilty feelings over sex.
Guilt is not a good moral basis, for it is a morality based upon weakness and hatred for what you are.
Then there’s feminist-induced guilt for beta males.
“I don’t hate that I am human, nor do deny that the flesh of other creatures kept my ancestors alive. ”
Neither do I, nor does any other smart vegan.
“I do not resent the simple reality that dogs are predators.”
See above.
“I am glad that I grew up in the country, where dogs were allowed off-leash and boys were allowed to exploring in the woods. ”
Having only recently moved to the big city, I am also glad that I grew up in a place with good access to off-leash wilderness.
And yet…. I espouse the morality you find so pernicious.
Your argument is a naturalistic fallacy. Natural law does not dictate human morality, at least not in most accepted moral codes. If it did, we would have to re-examine our position on many of the moral propositions I’m pretty sure you do hold. That nature is red in tooth and claw hasn’t stopped us from halting other “natural” red practices.
“I refuse to demonize rural Americans, for the same reason that I won’t demonize anyone else.”
A proper activist realizes that demonizing won’t get one anywhere. That we can agree on.
No. It is not a naturalistic fallacy.
Humans require animal protein in their diets.
http://fitnessblackbook.com/diet-tips/why-we-need-meat/
It’s an inconvenient fact.
What you’re talking about is cultural imperialism, which we rightly condemn when others do it.
This is why we don’t have a left or anything really progressive in this country.
The majority of people are going to be meat-eaters, and among the white rural population, hunting is integral to who they are as people.
If you think that a progressive movement, which I support, can be built on demonizing hunters. Well, maybe in Europe, but not here.
This is one thing progressives just need to give up.
Talk about economic issues.
I suggest you familiarize yourself with Erich Fromm’s take on hunting:
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~powlesla/personal/hunting/text/sadism.txt
I just wanted to let you know I’ve mentioned your weblog on mine. You can view it here…
http://ridethatthing.blogspot.com/2011/02/great-take-on-hunting.html
Thank you!