Remember this: To have an enemy, one must be acknowledged, created, and labeled as such.
I
logged on to social media. I saw hunting participants arguing over
the pivotal issue of trophy hunting with non-hunting participants,
who were against killing animals for sport. I felt like an external
spectator to these particular arguments. I spoke to people in comment
conversation but never got into some brawling free-for-all with a
total stranger. I didn't drive my energy to these types of
conversation or seek them out. I planted a tree and observed.
Yet
on my monitor was the call for knowing your enemy. Enemy spells
futility. A great bottomless pit of negative emotions. Of course, I
have enemies that showed up to the hospital when they thought I would
die. It seems they couldn't live without me or didn't want to move on
to another person to hate. My enemy showed me love and concern in a
bizarre way. I should have asked, “Why can't you just love me?”
When I got better they resumed hate for me.
I
mulled it over in my head; enemy. What constitutes an enemy in
Hunting? How does this work itself into hunting? Who are these
people? What creates an enemy? How do you diffuse an enemy's
creation? What is the real issue and how do you at least alleviate
the problem?
The
first considerations are: there has to be one or more separate sides
or teams. A center conflict must exist, which this maelstrom revolves
around. The things lacking are: absence of diplomacy, compromise,
intellectual discourse, or solving the problem. There is also the
pre-existing information that prescripts the parameters of the
argument. This type of information is the factual guidelines that
dictate the existence of the supposed problem, which can't be
ignored.
In
brief, here is the situation: hunters and anti-hunters argue over
killing animals for sport.
Let
us focus on the commonality of the hunter and non-hunter. I consider
both activists with a different adjective. Nothing more. Nothing
less.
Hunting
and non-hunting participants use the concept of conservation and
filtering money to activities, while having strict laws that govern
the hunting or non-hunting experience. These monies are used by
governmental or non-profit agencies. These types exercise wildlife
management in the form of veterinary assistance afield, ecosystem
monitors, tallying wildlife numbers, and to some extent citizen
science. Both groups monitor and intercept poacher activity while
interacting with game reserves or the local people. This illustrates
a general love of hunting or non-hunting activism. Yet there are
those individuals that desire for the two groups to be distinctly
separate and at war. A better use of time is to work together.
Each
group may or may not work in jobs where animals are in derogatory
conditions. They may work in ecological, conservation, or non-science
based jobs. They may not work at all but sit on the computer surfing
the internet. It aids animals who can't verbalize needs. Action is
taken on the part of animals or humans to make hard decisions then
carry those decisions through to the end.
There
may be hunters or non-hunters that track or euthanize an animal
because of suspected disease, nuisance animals (in the way of causing
damage to other wildlife or local people), or to stimulate the
economy in a impoverished country. Professional and safari hunters
do stimulate the economy in a positive way. Governments utilize
hunters to help deal with overpopulation through culling and
legalized hunting expeditions. Exploitation of wild game is handled
at the governmental level to ensure neither hunter or non-hunter is
taking advantage of the system in place. They are also contributors
to ecosystem and habitat construction via personal money and land
management tactics. It is established that this is a fact without
discrediting the direct role of science based research the hunter
revolves in and out of. There are hunting based organizations that
procure money specifically for these endeavors as supplements to cost
incurred for the benefit of the knowledge. This knowledge directs the
distribution of funds to the best possible treatment of conservation,
habitat, and ecosystem management.
Non-hunting
participants garner funds to pay for the protection and propagation
of species as does the hunter. These funds go to combat exploitation,
abuse, ecosystem construction and management, and overpopulation of
animals. Overpopulation is approached through adoption after
ovarian-hysterectomies or castration. For deer, it is contraceptives.
As with hunting, there is no verbalization on the part of the animal
on how they wish to live. They are occupants on the human landscape.
Thus are treated as indigent creatures at the mercy of
decision-makers. These decisions based on what is best for people,
ultimately, and not the animal as a whole.
Considering
contraries to these positives:
Of
course, no one asks the animal about its rights when they are being
sterilized or adopted out. That is one of the ironic things about the
animal activism stance; wanting to give a voice to the animal yet
taking away the animal's choice in its best interest, if it indeed
has a choice, to force off a procedure that would end its ability to
reproduce. No matter what is being done physically to the animal as
long as it survives for a greater good should be enough. Here again
you have a group making a decision on behalf of a creature that can't
verbalize what it does or does not want. Yet someone makes the
decision all the same because it can be a nuisance reproducer. The
same goes for hunters. Governmental agencies dictate the legal
parameters of the hunter while the hunting participant decides to
shoot a animal for food or trophy. No one asks the animal how they
feel about it. The reality is both sides force off a decision to act
on a creature that can't really say no. I am not bleeding animal
activism here but both parties are guilty of some negative oversight.
Animal
cruelty cases cause several problems. The outcome doesn't have an
argument based on the cruelty inflicted. It stimulates economy but as
a deficit because owners or the animal abusers aren't held
accountable. Medical staff are presented with the wounded animal then
have to use products and services to treat or euthanize the animal.
These bills go unpaid, are paid by a non-profit, or someone not
affiliated with a non-profit donating money. The bulk of the work
does go unpaid because the person presenting the animal wants the
medical professional to show sympathy towards the animal with no
reimbursement for the material or service used to diagnose or treat
the animal. Professionals in business might feel taken advantage of
but never say so. It might reflect poorly on them when it hits the
public grapevine. This would label the business in the negative.
These professionals then go along with the predicament and unpaid
bill.
There
are some participants from both hunting and non-hunt who have a
common sense about them. These people want to do positive work in the
world employing channels of education, information, and being a
conscientious citizen. They do not bang their head on internet
walls. This shows you can be mature, productive, creative and
maintain something truly wonderful or worth fighting for. Contribute
and promote that narrative.
The
other telling issue is dominance on both sides. One side wants to
defeat the other through hostilities. Animal based issues fall to the
wayside. There is no right way. There are a series of paths that can
take you to the same or different outcome. The pivotal moment is
making the decision as to which path to take; whether it will or will
not be self-defeating for the purpose.
Let
us focus on the element of the enemy.
An
enemy is a person or group that incites an attack on another. What
creates an enemy? Conflict, but it's not necessarily the disease.
It's more a symptom. What creates an enemy is the behavior or
approach from all sides and how they handle the conflict.
When
you consider conflict, approach, and then choice in the way you
manage a problem, middle ground is the key. You have to be open to
the dialogue. If there is no dialogue, you have monkeys tossing
excrement at each other in unlimited supply.
I
then reflect over the wordage of enemy in posts. There is an
insinuation of some faceless army of people lurking. Am I suppose to
be angry at or wary of these people? Are they spooks waiting to
attack me (for what reason I am not sure) and ruin my life? Do I want
to invite negativity into my psyche? If so, to what end? Now
henceforth, should I monitor everyone under this yard stick as the
enemy while culling people before I even get to know them?
This
is the seed of fear. “Fear is the mind killer”, circa Frank
Herbert's book, Dune.
I
believe in warnings. If you directly know who certain individuals are
or if their behavior could cause a problem. En masse, this is
difficult to approach. Is it prudent for me to waste energy on such a
thing? When did I get recruited like an eighteen year old going to a
war I didn't start? I am not a fan of someone starting a fight then
sending someone else to fight their battles. Mano-a-mano, I say.
People
are taught to fear and avoid where danger does not exist without
question. One issue of hunting is the fear the non-hunting
participants could change certain avenues in hunting that would
slowly make it obsolete. Facebook might be right about their research
on a a virtual emotional contagion. There seems to be a long spread
panic by hunting participants on losing hunting all together. If I
were not on the internet looking at propaganda, I could be sitting in
a boat fishing, oblivious to makeshift hunting issues. Is this panic
relocated solely to the internet? I paused to consider the fact I
wasn't particularly threatened by my state's mode of governance on
hunting or fishing.
To
diffuse an enemy's creation, one need only act like accountable
adults, who can sit down and have an intelligent dialogue as to the
problem. Work it out. Why make an enemy? What good does it ever do? I
am not partial to the term ally either because allies are the first
people to get tossed under the bus when a better deal comes along.
When someone says, “Can you be an ally?”, translated this means
can you temporarily help me out? No promises.
Hunting
and Non-hunting participants are crucial to life on this planet. Both
are interactive parts of the field work that is needed to monitor the
ecosystem of Earth as a whole. Both are useful in discovering animal
abuse cases, providing information to the scientific realm in the
proper fashion, and sources of pertinent education to the public.
These
groups employ different platforms with the same common goal in mind
yet their approach is different. Each of these could act as a lone
agent or supplemental to the conversation of wildlife, domestic
animals, and ecological systems.
Each
group should be accountable for the decision-making subjugated upon a
species that cannot agree or disagree with the treatment. There
should always be the truth that enforcement of any policy upon a
sentient species is not at the behest of that particular species but
the enforcer, their desires, and decision of conservation or
exploitation of non-human entities.
More
could be done to improve the quality of Ecosystem Earth if the energy
for petty arguments were set aside. The welfare of Ecosystem Earth
and its inhabitants should take precedence.
In
closing, do you decide for yourself where the threat lies? Or do you
go along with the pointing fingers?
Written
by: W Harley Bloodworth
~Courtesy
of the AOFH~
