-----Original Message-----
From: Betty Alfred [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2000 10:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Homonid bashing
I'd like to read your article when it's published Kyle.  I'll also watch
Krat's Kreatures this afternoon.  This is a sensitive subject for me because
the nature world was my pre-disability world.  The underlying hostility with
which I was discarded after I became disabled is the basis for my
motivations
now.  I've needed a long time to achieve a fair perspective so I can look at
this objectively.  I'm not sure that I do now, but I'm closer to the mark.
It's the "quiet" hostility I think about -- what does it mean?  How
prevalent
is this in society?  And what can I do in my little corner of the universe
to
help change it?

It does frighten me Kyle.

Dang!  Where did I put that soapbox?  Oh well, here goes...

It appears to me, that in the last fifty years there has been a "sea change"
in public opinion, fueled in part by the media and celebrity elite, that the
lines between mankind (hominids) and the rest of the "living" world are
being both blurred and sharpened concurrently.  The idea of humans as
"stewards of creation" is being blended with "a dog is a rat is a boy".  So,
the thinking naturally proceeds that if we are "animals" in the same sense
as all other organisms with more than just a brain stem, we must "cull"
(socially or physically) the deformed among us.
Many "higher order" animals will kill and cannibalize those individuals that
can't keep up with the group.  The natural order being that one injured
individual can harm the entire group's survivability by drawing predators,
getting nourishment without providing hunting or protection, etc.  So that
individual is eliminated for the greater good.

I sense this came, innocently enough, as a result of the "Bambi-zation" of
the animal world.  After the war, in times of plenty, we had the luxury of
anthropomorphizing (giving human qualities) to animals.  Many began to take
the idea of stewardship and protection of plants and animals as a RESOURCE
(something to be used, albeit carefully (and this includes just having their
presence for enjoyment)), to elevating their status to one of equality
(PETA's "a dog is a rat is a boy").

Bridging the gulf between the human world and the animal by such
rationalization can be deadly for both.  In other words, I don't want to be
a dog and I sure as heck know my dog doesn't want to be a man.  ;>)

...Falling off soapbox due to mis-adjusted AFO.

-Kyle