Savage Nature

Certainly in the quest and competition for food, nature can be savage. We are even encountering cases of psychotic violence among such species as lions in the wild. The debate also rages as to whether human beings themselves have only a veneer of civility over a savage interior. Yet these considerations must be balanced against an equally strong force in nature for nurturing and social bonding, which the media, for whatever nefarious agenda, chooses to under-emphasize. Testosterone and estrogen can both be sources of chemically-fueled aggression, depending on whether one is male or female, but they are also pathways to physical vitality and therefore the foundation of spiritual vitality. Our cousins among the great apes do not act violently unless there is competition for mates or there is a trouble-maker threatening the well-being of the group. Most of the time potential aggression is sublimated through social bonding rituals and shared labor activities, including child rearing. Among the simians, peace is the preferred norm, and violence causes communal stress. It is not celebrated. Violence is only a necessary tool among many other resourceful social behaviors which are healing and nurturing. I myself have witnessed the capacity for kindness in animals that belies the sensationalistic stereotypes our media like to harp upon. Our family Rottweiler dog, by the name of Brutus, loved horses. He was in awe of them. When he would come to a fence, he would get up on his hind legs, resting his front paws on the boards, and the horses would go up to greet him on the other side. They would touch noses, snuffle each other, the horse very placid in its interaction, while Brutus would be wagging his stubby tail rapidly. I think his canine mind might have seen these great equine beasts as supernatural beings, perhaps as "big dogs" or "god dogs". He was always thrilled to visit horses, and made a bee-line for them. We had another dog, an Australian sheep dog, who rescued a foundling kitten, and nurtured it like she was the mom, and it her pup. It was quite a beautiful thing to behold. That animals are only concerned with savage needs to seize and protect a source of food of procreation, and not socially aware of the innate value of their fellow denizens is another falsehood. A second generation Rottweiler of ours, Luka, was running through the woods with me one day, when she suddenly came to a stop. I was puzzled as to why she would have halted in her headlong romp of joyous exploration, until I looked up, following the tilt of her head. Upon the broken top of a dead tree, perched a perfectly tranquil owl, not a feather ruffled from the thrashing movements that had brought us into its midst. Luke showed no aggression toward the stately bird, and the bird, just oscillated its head, calmly taking each of us in. Luka was mesmerized, but she did not try to jostle the tree. We left the wonderful creature to its peace. There are many stories like this in the annals we keep of daily experience. Do not allow the presumptions of the media prevent you from experiencing the equally vital tenderness of nature. Do not allow yourself to become alienated from nature because of media-manipulations that endow the natural world with exaggerated menace. The menace is a projection of our own collective psyche held captive by the perturbations of an unhappy culture. Welcome what is truly there, and develop your own more wholesome culture.