Hunters
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| Kingini and her kittens - mother, not hunter |
Kingini, my cat, is an appalling hunter. Anything that
moves catches her attention: a fluttering leaf, a lizard on the wall, even a
dangling thread. She will observe it with the sharp eye of a hunter before
pouncing on it with her feline playful killer-instinct. Once she even brought a snake home.
Is hunting a basic instinct of most
animals? I was struck by this thought as I tried to engage in a friendly
conversation with my young partner yesterday. We were both judges at a spelling
competition. During the intervals I tried to have some meaningful conversation
with her and failed pathetically. She was a teacher by profession. Yet she
seemed scared of people. Do I radiate some predatory waves? I wondered. That
question soon became generalised in my mind. Are too many animals hunters by
instinct, some being potential victims like my young companion?
Evolution has etched the hunter deep
into the nerves of my Kingini and her counterparts. What about human
beings?
We flatter ourselves that we have
risen far above such instincts. We are builders of proud civilisations. We
write constitutions that sound profound. We preach noble morality, speak
eloquently about peace and cooperation. Yet beneath the polished language and
carefully ironed clothes, the primitive hunter still prowls.
Only the prey has changed.
If our ancient ancestors hunted
animals for survival, today we hunt attention, influence, wealth, followers,
votes, market share, and sometimes even the humiliation of rivals. Social media
platforms have become forests of ambush. Television debates resemble ritual
combat. Political discourse thrives not on understanding but on tearing down
the opponent. Even ordinary conversations often carry concealed weapons:
sarcasm, suspicion, ridicule, passive aggression.
We don’t bare fangs; we weaponize
words.
Maybe, this perpetual hunting
instinct has eroded trust among some gentle creatures like my young companion
mentioned above. Trust requires the assumption that the other person is not
constantly preparing to exploit, deceive, or overpower us. But most people seem
to be doing just that: exploit, deceive, overpower…
Apparently.
A shopkeeper suspects the customer
and vice-versa. Citizens suspect governments. Vice-versa again. Friends
screenshot private chats and share it on social media. News channels hunt for
outrage instead of truth.
The result is emotional exhaustion.
People become guarded. Simple friendly conversations seem impossible.
Are we advancing materially while
retreating psychologically into a primitive jungle?
A society without mutual trust becomes
a gathering of isolated hunters – surrounded by others, yet unable to connect
with them.
Kingini hunts not for survival, but
for sheer fun. Cruel fun. It’s her instinct. Are humans like Kingini? At least
in the perception of quite many people?
Do I look like a human version of
Kingini? The thought did make me move out of the room where I was supposed to
relax with my young fellow-judge as we waited for the next level of the
competition to begin – and I took a selfie to look at the potential hunter in
me. Here it is, that selfie.
xZx
I used to think stalking came from hunting instinct. the predator-prey business. But it turns out, that modern day stalking is about power play.
ReplyDeleteA lot depends on who makes the rules of the game. Look at today's dominant leaders. All are hunters at heart.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteWe are all animals and the survival and territorial instincts are there, no matter what level of mind we have any claim upon. As humans we have achieved so much, and have become the dominant species, precisely because of those instincts. We also turn them against ourselves and not just on other critters. Nature is not cruel. Kingini is not cruel. They are just existence and curiosity. The concept of cruelty is purely human because of the intellectual ability to make decisions on whether to act or not act.
Humans are, without any doubt, able to perform acts of extreme cruelty. This can be said because there is the capacity to hold back from such acts, as we have the concept also of goodness. So often overlooked cruelties are within personal relationships - no matter how much is put towards prevention, spousal and offspring abuses abound, bullying, mental and physical tortures, enslavements... we perpetrate these as a species and much more besides... because we are all, ultimately, hunter or prey... unless we apply our intellectual power and override those instincts. Even then, our thoughts can sometimes betray us... YAM xx
Human cruelty vs nature's curiosity - I like that angle. Kingini is not aware of the moral side of her deeds and so she cannot be cruel. We have the faculty of reflection and awareness and we need to check our deeds.
DeleteA lot of cruelty is perpetrated in homes. On spouses, children, parents... That alone places us humans on a much lower rung on the ladder of behavioral standards.
We certainly are a predatory species and we inflict terrible cruelty without remorse.
ReplyDeleteWithout remorse. Yes. That's perhaps the tragedy. Repentance would have made us a better species.
DeleteThe law of the jungle says that the animals do not hunt for pastime orl to prove themselves. They. hunt when. they are hungry. As a rule, they do not attack any animali or even humans unless under threat especially their offsprigs are under perceived or imagined threat. Animal- human cofliict is rather recent phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I used to think too. Until I started keeping cats as pets. Cats attack just for fun. You know the Malayalam proverb: elikku pranavedana, poochakku veenavayana: The rat's agony is the cat's entertainment.
DeleteI mentioned Kingini bringing in a snake. When I went in to check on the kittens as I do occasionally, I found them playing with the deadly one-foot long snake. The snake was almost dead, killed by the kittens with their playful yet cautious games. Kingini was watching it with apparent amusement.
Then. Perhaps, more than before under the forces of colonization, Globalization and Neocolonization and Neoliberalsim, the humans have become geedier or rather lost more expeditiously and exponentialty, the natural and inherent and innate wellsprings of care, compassion and the sense of species being. alienatiin, as the humanist Marx would envisage. Violence is induced, more than inbuilt, for animals, humans and the creatiion. Cum-Passio=compassion is the inherent dynamics of Evolutiionary rhythm and dynamics as Dawin also would have it. In the state of nature, the cosmothesndric reality was Roussesueswue, and not at all Lockean and Hobessian, just the Species being, graced and poised, as early Marx intuited. When the bubble of Capitalism is burst, the prstine innocennce would reemrge, like the Meessianic times if Isaiah, where Kingini and a Mooshikastree will lie together. The Mangoose and the King Cobra. The trees and the humans. No more cinfict and conflict resolution. Only the flow of the wellsprings of compassiin. The Rainbow will return.... Swords into ploughshaes. Spears into pruning hooks. Divine Romance will be in the air
ReplyDeleteLife has become tougher for humans in spite of all the progress we have made as a species. Globalisation and neoliberalism may have much to do with that. In such a struggle that life is, I don't know whether Raimon Panikkar's cosmotheandric principle would make sense to the person on the street. The world I see every day is more Hobbesian than Rousseauesque: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
DeleteDo you really think that a day would come when Kingini and the snake would be friends? When I was in the novitiate I was very much taken up with the Divine Milieu of Teihard de Chardin (Novice Master was quite fond of him) and I really believed we were evovling towards that Milieu. But as I grew older I got wiser. Now I can't even imagine that sort of "Divine Romance"!
Sometimes it's just hard to talk to people. I never got good at that sort of thing. Someone I know well who I can talk about something I know well, I can talk for hours. But someone I don't know and talking about surface stuff? I have nothing to say. Your young fellow judge seems like that sort.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. That young lady was apparently not interested in conversations with people whom she wouldn't meet ever again. I was actually trying very meaningful topics for an English teacher: like the latest Englishtextbook introduced in Indian schools by CBSE. English without English writers. Indian writers were presented in the English textbook. How do students get to know the culture of the English language that way? Etc. My conversations aren't hollow generally. Yet...
DeleteSo many questions without clear answers.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. And there's always some mystery about every individual.
DeleteInteresting perspective, Beautifully written
ReplyDelete