Please read the Glossary of My Terms to be able to follow this post.
Earthscheme’s principal feature is the phenomenon we call ‘life’. This life is carried in ‘bodies’ (plants and creatures). These bodies need regular intake of nutrients for their continuation. Desire for continuation rules all life forms. E a t I n g then is a sine qua non of this scheme. Observers from another system probably refer to Earth as ‘Planet Eat’ (or perhaps ‘Planet Excrete’).
As regards eating by carnivores … Heinous cruelty is brought home to us by YouTube. A zebra quenching its thirst has its muzzle mangled by a crocodile, a lion eats a live wildebeest’s testicles, lionesses devour a hog without bothering to kill it first, a crocodile and lioness play tug-of-war with a baby buffalo. Most creatures must continually guard against themselves or their offspring being killed for food; apex predators included. Terror and pain precede death, varying from little to considerable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHIH5RAD3cI Lions start eating live buffalo calf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xytCNSbNp1Q Crocodile rips off zebra’s jaw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bao21OQrjn4 Komodo dragons eat live animals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAUsTPxCiX0 Lions start eating a live zebra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcuV_PQ-4P8 Wild dogs eat live deer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg7xp9lMyZw Lion eats testicles of live wildebeest
Human procurement of animals for food – and medicine, apparel, entertainment – too is riddled with cruelty. There is the mass killing by hypoxia of fish, preceded in many places by hooking into the mouth. There is the harpooning of whales which makes them suffer terribly before they die. Lobsters are boiled live. Bile is extracted from a live bear’s liver for medicinal purposes. Seal fur : “To make sure the fur stays intact, sealers often hook seals in the cheek, eye, or mouth. Once a seal is hooked, he or she is dragged across the ice and skinned. What’s more, sealers do not take the time to check if the seals are alive before skinning them” https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/5-reasons-seals-should-not-be-hunted/ . In sport there is the bull-fighting, and in a few – “more civilised” – parts of the world, persons on horseback chase a fox accompanied by a pack of hounds, often till the fox is exhausted. The dogs are allowed to rip the fox apart; in many instances it is disemboweled before it dies.
The nature of a crucial component of a scheme serves very adequately for branding the scheme … describing earthscheme as ghastly is therefore entirely apposite. Most humans are purblind, unable to see the scheme for what it is. They’ll say the cruelty is ‘Nature’s Way’; or more perplexingly, ‘Nature’s Wisdom’. Millions submit to reason-trashing ‘explanations’ in religions.
All the u n r e m i t t i n g e a t i n g sustains nothing finer than the discharge of the proclivities of the ego; conflict, cruelty, misery are omnipresent. Music, art, poetry, are purely balm.
Erstwhile Transcendentalists bathed in Nature-centered rapture; there was no YouTube at the time to rupture this. But Nature adoring has been widespread … also deployed by The Church to scupper this question : what manner of being could craft a system dripping with selfishness and cruelty ? The hymn ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ is an example of how naked the brain-numbing can be. “All creatures great and small” are made by the “Lord God” … yes we have plasmodium, the komodo dragon, the syphilis bacterium, but here in the house of God, drown reason in joyous song and the hypnotic organ, just praise, praise, praise. Don’t overthink the lyrics … certain bits are just a wee nod to accuracy. “The cold wind in the winter” is in the “wise and wonderful” group. Finally, go to your Sunday roast with this takeaway : “How great is God Almighty, who has made all things well” – ! ! !
What we label ‘beauty’ is that which – subliminally – gets associated with what is life giving, or security, or a virtue or attainment ... colours, trees, rivers, lakes, mountains, and so on. To a dung- beetle beauty is a brown lump. ‘As horrid as moonlight’ is commonly heard in bat caves. But we – sages too – wax about beauty as a quality in itself … bestowed upon the planet like jam upon bread … elevating it to ‘wonnnderful creation’.
We can’t finish with ‘natural’ cruelty without noting the accomplishments of humans in their treatment of humans. Burning at the stake, boiling in oil, gouging out of the eyes, cutting out of the tongue, are some of the shinier examples.
If you find yourself tranquilised by the – heavily sold – notion of earthscheme as God’s own soul refining academy, are you able to accept that The One hatched one so Horrific ?
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease” – Richard Dawkins.
