Peace, And Not One Sparrow Is Forgotten

All of Today's Photos By Jan

My life is supported by the efforts of numerous benefactors whose exertions make my life more comfortable, and also more insulated from the unappealing underpinnings of modern life.

Ever chop the head off a chicken or pluck it? How about digging a septic pit? Running electrical cables in mud? Changing oil in a car? I'm thinking of slightly unpleasant jobs I've done in the past that helped sustain me and my family. There are many tasks that are much worse, like the steps to obtain and process the leather in my belt, or the performing of major surgery inside my chest. The list is long.

If you were a peasant in India or Congo, the great majority of life support tasks, no matter what the aesthetic, would be your individual responsibility. This is the context for what I want to talk about today:

On Christmas eve, we heard a rapid series of loud explosions. I looked out to see a man just across the marsh, shooting towards us. Actually he was shooting at the geese floating in the marsh between us. After a while he managed to maim at least three of them - that's how many were eventually floating in the marsh, dead. The man then went to his car with the child who was with him to get his fishing pole. He was trying to reach the dead birds.

This isn't a tirade about hunting. The camo-clad genius was shooting in the middle of a village, he was shooting into the marsh at high tide with no boat and therefore no hope of retrieving what he killed. And talk about sitting ducks - he was shooting big tame geese a few feet from shore. The Maine Warden Service subsequently recovered one of the geese as evidence when the water level dropped, and I'll be interviewed later this week along with others around here by the MWS for what I hope will be a prosecution.

If an idiot can get a driving license - and anyone who's driven in Connecticut knows that to be true - then the same is true for other licenses, including hunting permits. We don't stop all driving because of the actions of a few, even though cars kill more people in Connecticut than hunters do.

I'm irked by people who move into a rural state like Maine and complain about hunting; many families here put meat on the table by killing it themselves. We move-ins criticize something we've probably never seen that feeds people, while we ignore the origins of the plastic wrapped dead animals we slap on our grills for summer cookouts. Leaving this week's goose hunter aside, I'm quite sure the animals my friends and neighbors kill themselves are healthier and suffer less than the ones I buy at the supermarket.

The title of this post is a Shaker saying that's a favorite of mine. What I want to ask you about is, how can we have a sane and balanced life with respect to the suffering and death that sustains us?

My house and car are powered by petroleum from the blood of thousands. I eat chicken and fish, I wear leather, I walk on a wooden floor. The far-reaching web of extraction that keeps me going can be deconstructed from an ethical perspective until, if you have any sensitivity at all, you're ready to weep.

I want to explore possible responses from those of us at the top of the worldwide food chain.

One response is for people to feel guilty. This common response is least honorable. Guilt is not productive; it doesn't save a single chicken or Afghani villager. Instead, it's another form of First World self-indulgence, because it's mildly uncomfortable to feel guilty. I think people use feeble self-flagellation as an expiation - they use guilt as a tool to make guilt go away. Neat trick.

Another way rich modernists rationalize the disproportionate burden they place on life around them is to declare solutions impossible in order to grant themselves permission to pillage unfettered. "Nothing I can do," they say, often scoffing at people who do make an effort, like Occupy activists or vegetarians or hunters. Since those efforts are not perfect, it's not hard to find flaws that can be used as excuses to not even try.

I'd like to suggest a few things to address the burdens we live by.

First is the mental part. Let's have some right relationship here - dismount from the high horse. If you're an urban-originated person who reads the New Yorker like I do, let go of the sneers for those who kill their own food, and don't use sloppy careless hunters or the foul mouthings of the NRA as an excuse unless you're prepared to raise chickens and buy a hatchet.

And by the same token, lay off the vegans and vegetarians, especially if you have a Remington 872 in your closet like I do, because they have a lighter footprint, they don't hurt you in any way, and they're making a better effort than most of us.

Second, try to push yourself down the food pyramid to lighten your pressure on the earth. Don't you dare use the impossibility of perfection as an excuse to never try. Take very small steps, so you can get used to it and avoid  another fad that you dump after 6 weeks. The world is chock full of information about the environmental and health implications of every conceivable kind of food, supermarkets even have handy little labels. Just put in the small effort, and if you cook for others, keep strong in the face of whining and ridicule. You are so busy I'm sure, but somehow I think you can find 10 minutes - honestly no more - to read some labels and explore some new sources of food.

Give up beef. The cultivation of beef has been well shown to create vast planetary damage, massive suffering, and ill health. Please don't send me emails about the culture of ranchers. Some occupations like book binding are fading away, and while being a drug runner does create jobs, too much harm results. It's illegal to kill a cow in every one of India's states, and the billion people in that country apparently don't miss hamburgers.

In short, you can adjust your attitude towards those who behave in a way that is unfamiliar, from duck hunters to vegans. And you can slowly change your own practice in what you consume.

After those two ideas, is the really hard one. Create and maintain a spiritual or somehow transcendent connection to the living world around you. You can be as scientific and rationalist as you please. And I'm not telling you to sign up for a religion. But a healthy relationship to the world includes making bonds with what sustains you, however you may understand that. It is not enough to oil your gun or print out a wallet card of endangered fish species. Doing those things is fine as long as you also give a prayer of thanks to the deer or supermarket chicken that lost its life on your behalf. The root of our modern excess is our disconnection.

The most powerful tool we have to reduce our damage to the world is to move ourselves from the peak of life to the center of a complicated living lacework. Rationalist and reductionist thinking will produce lots more gee-whiz, but living with a modest and grateful heart is what will save us.

Peace, and not one sparrow is forgotten.