Lonely Animal
Our Craving For Natural Connections And How It Manifests In Primal Stupidity
We are living in what must surely be the most daunting and arresting moment we have ever faced as a species. We face a developing reality that can either condemn human beings to oblivion or inspire us to wake up to our lives in a dramatically more interesting way. A way that begins in living soberly and creatively towards the crisis of our planet-not as a problem to be solved by engineering an ever better, safer, human “bubble,” but as a constantly unfolding obligation to begin considering the remaking of ourselves as ecologically awake human beings. — Susan Murphy in “The Koan Of The Earth”
Yesterday I gave a presentation to a group of fellow naturalists. In it, I shared a photographic celebration of the wildlife of one of Florida’s natural spaces. During the series of lectures that I sat for, I noticed something. People “oooooo” and “ahhhhhh” over pictures that contain other animals. Even people that are largely drawn to plants and raw data are intrigued by our two-leggeds, four-leggeds, winged ones, gilled ones, and slithering brothers and sisters of Mother Earth.
One thing I made sure to mention, albeit “tongue-in-cheek” since I was preaching to the choir with this group, was that bison and alligators don’t tolerate selfie attempts by humans.
As I travel the trails and rivers of the natural world, I witness things, and hear about things that often astonish me. And from time to time, I’ll be sitting in the break room at work when I hear similar stories on the national news. They go something like this:
“Woman tries to take selfie with crocodile. Gets bitten.”
“Endangered baby dolphin dies after swimmers pass it around for selfies”
“Bison attacks woman taking selfie in Yellowstone”
“Cruel bloke pulls shark out of the sea to take selfies with it”
“Man killed while taking pictures with a 1.5-tonne walrus as the animal ‘playfully dragged him into the water’”
So what’s up with all of this?
Sure. I know we are social animals. I know we have a primal instinct to be seen, to demonstrate our prowess, our coolness, our desirability, and to attract mates and form supportive communities.
But what happened to our genetic memories regarding basic survival skills as a species? Where did they go?
Why does someone not know that you cannot take a selfie with a crocodile, or with a bison?
Why do I hear stories about tourists in Florida attempting to walk up and put their arms around an alligator to attempt a selfie?
These sound like candidates for the “Darwin awards” and in a sense are absurd enough to make you cackle with disbelief — that can’t be true!-but when you realize that these stories are true, the horrifying aspect of them hits you like a sledgehammer.
I’ve asked myself “why” this occurs and I’m convinced that people are different enough that there are likely myriad explanations for the phenomena. Yet I also believe there are some common threads running collectively through our species, and it boils down to this:
We are out of touch with our primal animalistic nature.
A large proportion of humanity does not hunt or gather food. In many parts of the world, a human picks food up in plastic wrappers where the items are stored en masse in a well-lighted, wide-aisled, tile-floored, market that is relatively free of predators. I say this because I once did know of an alligator to venture into a Publix, but that’s such a rare occurrence as to be trivial…:-)
Likewise, we are generally protected by laws that prohibit violent acts and theft, unlike times in human history where it was assumed that you might have to kill other human beings in a fight for resources, whether it be prime real estate or food.
Of course we still commit these acts, but I’m sitting in the middle of a city in Florida and my top concern at the moment is not someone stopping by to take my house or my food. I get to worry about things like the future of the planet for my nieces and nephews.
You catch my meaning, hopefully.
I’m no technophobe, and I’m not someone who concerns myself with the futility of wishing for a return to former times.
I do, however, like what Zen teacher Susan Murphy Roshi had to say about awakening ourselves as an ecologically competent species again. To that, I say we should return post-haste.
I do think there is a lot of attention seeking in the wildlife selfie phenomena. But I’m more interested in what is underneath that. Whether we are conscious of it or not, our genetic memory says the following:
It’s cool to be connected to other life-forms, and to nature.
A wildlife selfie says “Look at me! I’m connected!”
Wildlife is often in the form of an animal that is superior to us in strength, speed, and agility. And to take a picture next to something like a bison says “Hey, check me out! I’m superior enough to be standing by this big animal! I’m cool. I’m desirable! Give me your attention because I’m worth it!”
It’s a momentary collective brain fart of humanity. We want so much to demonstrate our connections, yet the very act of having to demonstrate it in a completely unnatural manner, betrays the lie. We are not connected. But we very much want to be.
Our DNA knows better than we do, like it or not. We are a part of the web of life, but we live our modern lives as if we are not. We live as if we are separate, and this is killing us slowly, and killing other species far too quickly.
I think of us as a lonely animal.
We are lonely because we’ve displaced our brothers and sisters — the other species of the earth. We’ve been poor stewards. We’ve raped and pillaged and murdered for convenience and in ignorance.
What I’m trying to do with wildlife and conservation photography is to help educate and inspire people of all generations, and notably the powerful younger generations who can raise their voices to the injustices occurring regarding our natural resources and other species.
It’s a catch-22 when educating the public. You want people to be inspired to preserve habitats and natural spaces, but you don’t want them to love them to death.
There is a lot of work to be done. I’m hoping that we can pass on information and evolve into a new, more appropriate form of human species, one that is environmentally responsible and ecologically conscious.
Please consider joining me in this journey.
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