Domestication

The raging stupidity of humanity is reaching epic proportions. I have been thinking about this for years now, and I think I’ve sorted out what our problem is – we’ve domesticated ourselves.

We’ve lost the ability to make the sort of decisions that any wild animal can make without a second thought. For example, if you ask any wild mammal “is hanging out with a 6-ton predator a good idea?” the immediate answer is “no.” If said 6-ton predator has killed members of your species before, the answer is rapidly upgraded to “hell no!” Never the less, we seem to think that chillin' with an Orca like “Tillicum,” the whale who killed a trainer last week at Orlando Sea World, is a good idea, especially if it makes the park’s owners tons of money. I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Tillicum was involved in the deaths of two other humans over the last 20 years – so why was he being used in a show? For that matter, why is he still in captivity? Seems to me he has made his feelings about humans pretty clear, on three occasions now. Any wild animal would have the sense to stay away from Tillicum, and probably all of his kind, but we just aren’t that smart any more.

Another common problem of domesticated animals is the inability to self-regulate their diets. It’s common knowledge, for example, that domesticated horses will eat themselves to death if left with a surplus of food - humans are no different. In the US roughly 2/3 of adults and 1/3 of children are currently obese. In a classic show of nonsensical domesticated thinking, we have on one hand, First Lady Michelle Obama rolling out her “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity, which encourages young people to participate in sports, and on the other we have Coca-Cola and McDonalds sponsoring the Olympics. Any wild animal instinctively knows that peak physical performance is not likely to result from gorging on bits of meat you can’t really identify the origin of, yet we apparently believe that if you have Mcnuggets for lunch and wash them down with a Coke, you’ll snowboard just like Shaun White. Perhaps on the X-Box that is true, but certainly not outdoors where gravity has consequences.

In a sense, our situation is far worse than the domestication that we have forced on animals, because at least there are some perks for those species. For example, we tend to protect domesticated species from disease by vaccinating them, we protect them from predators and the elements, and sometimes we even bring them into our homes to live in relative luxury. There are few such perks for the domesticated human, because the force that domesticates us is mindless – it’s simple greed. The continuous quest for the almighty dollar is what puts Orcas in tiny pools where they can nom the occasional trainer, it’s what plops our chubby kids down in front of the TV to watch sports rather than participating in them, and it’s what continues to make us stupid, fat, and lazy.

I believe it’s not too late. You can make choices based on your intelligence and instincts, not on the last commercial you saw. You could go out and try to remember what it means to be a wild animal.

I know you are all sitting there thinking, “The Black Pope is right. I’ll start doing that – right after this show is over…”