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What are the animals thinking? Daniel P. Beckmann 09.19.02-Paris, France |
At times like these I always like to ask What are the animals thinking?<-they're a moderate bunch I would say...
{click on me please}
We share this planet with the animals too and while they don’t have their own treaty organizations, they should have a role in what effects them and nobody seems to want to take them very seriously anymore. Now I’m not advocating more animal rights in the human world, no, that’s not my point at all. We all know they had their turn at world domination and quite frankly they blew it. The Grizzly Bear that lost his food source or the poor and prissy dinosaur that got too cold Boo-hoo, they must be thinking,… but still, they blew it.
But animals are the best guage when it comes to making even the most civilized decisions in the human world…as a base rule, if its going to fuck their shit up, then what the hell is it going to do to us? We are rather similar don’t forget.
Dogs have had a great relationship with humans for sometime. Whatever created them and made them so happy and nice, deserves a happy meal®. I always like watching my dog when something happens to his environment that either makes him fall on his ass or he just can’t react well to it for some reason. Ice in the winter time is the best example. I love seeing Harry walking along, luvin’ the snow and everything, pulling me like the mutherfuger that he is only to reach an ice patch to fall on his ass. He’ll get up and start trying to pull again, almost ignoring what had just happened, only to fall on this ass again. Then he’ll stare at the ice with a question mark on his face and then try to run only to fall on his ass again. Then you have to help him because he’s scared of the ice…it keeps hurting him and its cold on his paws.
But, what do the animals think? 
I was in my bathroom in Washington, DC taking a dump…in that compromising position with your pants down around my ankles(ain’t it cool that even though nobody talks about Boutros Boutros Gali anymore, I garuantee that that guy still shits everyday like everybody else?)… and there was this huge bug that occasionally was flying around and making some buzzing noises. I had heard from somewhere I guess that bugs carry disease…that bugs have these little pricklies on their legs…that big bugs are scarier than little bugs. I also have seen many places people killing bugs, even without a giving them fair trial, not even finding out if they had a family or they contributed to their community’s Boys and Girls club®.
I just sat there on the shitter, watching him, hoping that he just wouldn’t come close to me while I was shitting. I wouldn’t fuck with him if he wouldn’t fuck with me I decided. I didn’t know what he was about to do. I consider maybe killing him flat out so he didn’t fly into the toilet bowl or something and attack me from behind.
He occasionally would fly around, making more and more buzzing noises at each pass and where he would land I just couldn’t tell. What the hell was this thing thinking? Was he concerned with me at all? Didn’t he know that they I was supposed to squash him and if he didn’t just get out of my sight I would have to protect myself?
Then I lost track of him by sight, I only heard him flying around somewhere. I had lost my chance to get ‘em, and although he could have been doing some damage serious somewhere, I just had to learn to live with it…scared as I was I just had to learn to live with it.
But, what do the animals think?
I have two circles of interaction. One’s large, the other small. One’s reach is far, the other near. One is civilized, the other natural. One is projected and the other is one your can feel.
The small circle incompasses all the you can actually see, all that you can actually feel.
The large circle incompasses all that you need an additional devise to see and feel and understand. This could be a newspaper or a telephone or a even a p air of binoculars in some cases.
The small circle is natural; the large circle gets larger as people become more civilized.
IT is to my understanding that animals don’t have a comprehension of the civilized level for they don’t get newspapers, nor, does it seem for instance that koalas are making ultimatums to the Madagascar Hissing cocha-roaches to shut the hell up or else!
Animals are concerned with eating, sleeping, popping/peeing and of course fucking. That’s it.
Yet, in the civilized world we have a situation where we are told the larger circle is of importance to our everyday lives. In most cases, the larger circle makes up sad and scared, in others cases some may see potential for a positive future.
But right now, within the larger circle that covers Europe and the United States, there are two standards.
Europeans are apparently scared of what the violent, gun-slinging Ameri-cons with their cowboy president are going to do next. They consider America to be on the offensive, going after their own interests and leaving the security of the rest of the world behind in a united front of nationalism. It has become cool to hate America and its on everyone’s minds. Just ask George Michael.
IN America, Europe is apparently considered an impediment to international security. The French won’t help out the war against the surprise attack by sharing intelligence information, Germany is a breeding grounds for surprise attackers. Why aren’t they scared of Iraq too…they must be friends with them or somethin?
The United States may indeed be scared but who created the paranoya? The U. S. is made up primarily of crazy religious nuts exiled from their country, get-rich-quick schemers lookin’ for gold and your tired and huddle masses who were thrown out or ran away from where ever else they came.
Does Europe not remember its history? OF course they do, it’s what binds the individual countries. They must recall their history of intolerance for people other than people with noses similar to theirs. Yet they still to this day continue to blame immigrants for their own short comings and the issue is coming up as a prominent issue in their elections.
It’s this intolerance that helped to create what the United States is in the first place and it’s this intolerance that makes Americans turn a cold shoulder to the opinions of countries that they have left behind now that they have their Sport Utility vehicles and their lawsuits to make them feel safe from not only you, but the whole slew of other oppressive bastards that span the globe that have sent people packing in the middle of the night. The US is violent because most of the people in the US have either seen violence in the first person or their ancestry have been at the but of violence done on them before they came there.
But the larger circle extends much farther than that. You see, on the surface the United States backs Bush and the war in Iraq. ON the surface France has an outcry against
But in most of the smaller circles in the U.S. you won’t find Bush and in most of the smaller circles in Europe you won’t find hatred.
If the larger circle is not a sum of the smaller ones, then who draws it?
The problem with the big circle is simply put: Would you subscribe to a newspaper talking of places far and far away that told you there were nice people living there getting along that were concerned for each other? The editors of newspapers and the producers of television programs don’t think you would buy that. You gotta hate somebody or the larger circle just ain’t that interesting is it?
The large circle currently is a situated, at least in the United States, where you have a country that is obsessed with itself looking inward and a foreign pool of journalists that are obsessed with themselves looking inward and not being able to tell the story that’s out there (Just because they are out there and have those positions does not mean that they are the best journalists and in fact, these international posts take a certain type of person that generally wants to be more disconnected from America which is why they left).
The editors and producers back home go to the government to get their facts and figures because that’s where their story really come from. The government decides who’s to be hated next and some governments only work best when there is someone to hate because otherwise they would have to give the people something to like-which is hard. Most governments are made up of people need to justify their existence and are motivated to expand their office space to increase their reach of power because their office buildings lack boundaries.
For the most part, similarly to animals, people are content with eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom and making some whoppie with a babe that they feel is alright. If they have those afforded to them, the larger circle really doesn’t effect them too much.
IF you ask most people, as the larger circle is getting bigger and bigger, it is getting much harder to prove that its physically there. Most people won’t realize, nor want to realize the importance of who’s drawing their larger circle unless they feel it in the smaller one.
The solution to all of this circular logic is simple: more animals/ less humans.
-Musical Context-
“At the Zoo”:Simon, Garfunkel
Before I even get started here I’d like to point out that the reason koalas aren’t asking Madagascar hissing cockroaches to shut up is that koalas live only in Australia and Madagascar hissing cockroaches live only in — well, let’s see if you, the reader, can figure that one out.
Now, most sarcasm aside, let’s look at the things Mr. Beckmann tells us that animals care about doing during the course of their day — eating, pooping, sleeping, and reproducing. The choice of words on that last one is important — animals fornicate due to an instinctual drive to reproduce, humans because it’s better to brag to friends about sex with a partner than about masturbation. If we take these characteristics and roll them into one single ball, we might call that ball “survival.” Animals do what they do for the sake of survival. And not always individually, as the case of worker bees stinging to protect the queen illustrates. Even when animals play, it is most often a form of practicing behaviors need to survive in the wild.
An important fact to remember in this discussion is that HUMANS ARE ANIMALS. Most humans want to separate ourselves from the animals when talking about behaviors, but often to do so is to overlook the basic motivations behind many of our actions. Where do the unemployed like myself spend their savings and build up their credit card bills? Paying for food, shelter, heat, and women — all in one way or another essential to survival. And while women may not be essential to my own survival (I’d be long dead if they were), they are indeed essential to my efforts to propagate my species, as it were. Only a few bizarre traits separate us from those cute, furry, slimy, etc. animals from other species. First, we have developed a language beyond the grunts and moans of other animals, although at our most primal little else escapes our mouths. Second, we trot around in uncomfortable, concealing clothing. And finally, our brains have developed so that we may think more than just “SURVIVE,”. We can ponder, fantasize, worry, and most importantly, strategize.
Now these three characteristics unique to humans may explain why we feel the need to bomb (literally and orally) those people that are not quite the same as us. Our politicians are sent to Washington and the respective state capitals and county seats based on these three characteristics: they put on fancy, expensive clothes, get on television and talk a good game, and they are always thinking about what they should do in order to get re-elected. For because of our ability to think, survival takes on a meaning beyond “not dying.” Survival means never falling below our current economic and social status. Survival doesn’t mean being thankful we weren’t home when our house burned down, it means cheating the insurance company so we can buy a bigger TV. And for politicians, survival means retaining your seat in the senate until you die or get a promotion.
So when President Cheney and Vice President Bush and Overlord of Death Rumsfeld tell us that Iraq is a threat to our and that the solution is to bomb the country and kill their leader, maybe they’re right. (By the way, wouldn’t it make more sense if we DIDN’T tell countries when we’re thinking about blowing them up?) But when they say “our” you have to realize who they’re talking about. These men (and in Bush’s case his family) have been in the federal government for thirty-plus years, and they’re not ready to leave. They’re all out of a job, they won’t “survive” if the Democrats regain power in Washington. Do you think Cheney wants to go back to Wyoming to fight his heart disease? Or even worse, Nebraska, where he’s actually from. Do you think the papers will quote Rumsfeld’s funny little sayings if he’s hanging out on a farm in Illinois, the state the trees forgot?
So if you’re trying to figure out the motivation behind this idea of attacking Iraq, or just about any other idea a politician lays out before the public, you don’t have to think any further than the animals are, you just need to do so in a different context. What would you do to save your job, assuming you like it? Who would you blaspheme? Would you lie? Cheat? Steal? If so, don’t worry, you’re not going to hell. At least not for that. It’s human instinct. To be even more simplistic, it’s animal instinct. Look at male lions. They let the females do all the hunting while they sleep, then they chase them away and devour their kill. The actions of politicians, and most people in general, are no different. Only the stakes are.