by evilgenius » Sun 19 Nov 2017, 13:41:45
Ok, so when a village of native Alaskans sets out in a boat and hunts down a whale, even if they don't need to for their physical survival, in order to fulfill something about their heritage, that is considered some kind of lofty thing. When an entire country does it, like Japan, out of what could be considered a similar thing, their cultural disposition to eat seafood, it is considered a tragedy. Either way, living things die. In both cases life was sustained also. In neither case was there a one for one trade off. The native Alaskans came closest because they don't have the same complex food distribution and production system that the Japanese do as a country and an economy. They might say that even though they didn't specifically learn something from having to hunt and eat for survival they got close enough to learn from the symbolism. But they could have left the whale in the sea and survived quite well.
I come from a culture of hunting. People in my family hunt. My friends hunt. I don't have anything bad to say about hunting, but I don't hunt. When I was young I killed a few things, like squirrels and birds. I did set out a few times to kill larger game, but couldn't get a safe shot off at the few that I saw. Along the way I realized I didn't have an inner compulsion to hunt. I was following an outer compulsion that I reckoned ought to meet with an inner compulsion. That inner compulsion simply never materialized. That was enough for me. I go to the store. I can read Hemingway to catch up on the rest.
Many people I know found that inner compulsion. They can wax poetically about the virtues of hunting. When they talk about it you can hear truths expressed in the metaphors that their experiences provide. It's very much like how sports fans use sports to talk about life. It's a boots on the ground philosophy about how the world is formed.
Despite there being a kind of nobility given to the opponent in these philosophies, especially in their more primitive one to one forms, there is not an equivalency. I don't know if that is what is required either. I think that is what environmentalists who criticize such things say about the juxtaposition of the players within the philosophical framework. But I think it has more to do with understanding the basis of fear, of not flinching when you discover your aloneness in the world. Knowing that alone was restraint enough to keep me from taking another thing's life. I had no need. There was no empty place that needed filling. In any case, if there was, it was inside me and could not, other people's fears aside, be touched by the outside world.
I discovered I didn't need what the outer compulsion, the urgency to be a part of the culture or the team, said I did. Others swung the opposite way. At some point, I suppose, some who made the sort of decision I made were caused to suffer by the cultures they came from. I was never made to suffer. I wasn't called names, or resented. I guess I was cut off from some secret group stuff where I might have missed out on bonding or economic opportunity. I reckon, however, that if I have any conviction at all about my understanding that I have what it takes to be a living being without the need to resort to the primal practices, then I can rise above any lack in my life that may exist as a result of not participating along with the others. If I needed a group to belong to, anyway, the existence of the grocery store was proof enough that one existed.
There are other ways to express primal needs, if one does discovers that one has them, than engaging in primal practices as well. Though, reasonably, for most people the primal contained in them provides something they don't feel they can get anywhere else. A person can, however, seek experiences. They can worship heroes. They can seek after their dreams on more advanced levels, using the symbolic language of the hunt, becoming their own personal hero. Or they can go beyond whether there is the need to maintain such a struggle at all, by seeking wisdom. The last one is the loneliest of all.