New Blood
The cruelty of nature must be faced.
—Brazil—
Pellucid filament ascending, shadow with substance, undulating up from the murk towards the hordes of impoverished children playing in the fetid river. You think nightmares are not real life until the candiru secretly swims up your urine stream, raises its gill cover and sticks out its retrorse spines inside your penis. Spectacular pain and then they must amputate before your bladder bursts.
—USA—
The five-year-old girl lies unconscious in a hospital bed, surrounded by million-dollar equipment and a team of doctors who cannot help her. This is a hostage negotiation not treatment for bacterial infection. The sophisticated E. coli 0157-H7 bacteria communicate with each other, coordinating to respond in unison, readying to dump a brutal toxin into the child’s bloodstream and kill her immediately if the doctors should dare to use antibiotics. The bacteria somehow game out that they hold a gun to the child’s head.
—Burundi—
At night twenty-one-feet-long Gustave cruises under the water of Lake Tanganyika, like an invisible dragon, right up to the shore of a city of half a million. The infamous Nile crocodile hunts for fishermen, policemen, tourists with cameras, French herpetologists, anyone available. Unlike any other crocodile, he’s learned to use his massive tail to knock men out of their boats. He weighs over a ton and has killed over three hundred people. Machine gun bullets scarred his side and head but did not stop the beast. Researchers filmed him once from a distance just after he killed a full-grown female hippo. The locals accuse him of hunting people and then not eating them; just leaves their dead mangled bodies on shore, easy to find, like some kind of message.
Cruelty, violence and survival are inextricably linked. You spell it out here in large blood stained capital letters.
Maybe the Bonobos got it right, but they did have a head start I guess.
Ha, i thought i responded to your perceptive comment but didn’t. Anyway the Bonobos, our closest relatives, solve most of their disputes through sex. They took a different pathway from us.
AIMA in greek, blood, shows us it’s a tetractys and so is ΓΑΙΑ, earth, (four letters) By that pure, holy, four lettered name on high, nature’s eternal fountain and supply, the parent of all souls that living be, by him, with faith find oath, I swear to thee. the Pythagorean oath, not many know that Pythagoras studied in the Asclepieio of Kos first, he was a healer, a doctor. yes, that crocodile message is the bottom line. people do not pay attention to the real primary enemy of our well being which is our self, who according to Asclepios’s legacy… Read more »
Blood is the key. What an erudite comment, you know your Greek culture and history. Yes, i put the crocodile last thinking of ancient Egyptian worship of the animal and how they used descriptions like “crafty as a crocodile.”
Yes, these are major sad issues that need to be faced. I heard of Gustave and think, in my own limited way, that the croc is not killing without a reason. Everything in nature has a reason, just as thoughtless actions also have thoughts. I am sure research is going on to study the pattern of behavior of the animal. This makes one think. A good share.
Thanks for the comment Supratik. Some speculate that Gustave only became a committed man-killer after the genocide in Rwanda. The Hutus dumped thousands of dead and still alive Tutsi bodies into Gustave’s river and only then he began hunting people not for food but for, apparently, the thrill of it.
The interesting topic resurfaces (excuse the pun) of moral purpose in nature.
Do creatures of whatever ilk, kill out of necessity, or do some for fun?
Great comment Dodgem. Young predators like cougars will practice killing, say a bunch of sheep in trapped in a pen. But Gustave is a healthy and successful hunter. Along with the pair of lions Colonel Patterson finally shot who apparently dragged their prey off to a cave to collect them, Gustave is a thrill-killer.
Many years back I was staying at Burford Priory, and one of the brothers showed me their lovely ducks – quite tame. The next morning they lay dead – killed by a fox; and it seemed just for the sake of killing; it is a difficult question – is nature morally neutral; or, is just like us – perverse?
I would have to say nature is perverse. But it is complicated. It took billions of years for evolution to produce higher creatures like us who are able to feel some empathy. That same evolution produces Ebola viruses. It’s a terrifying world, but like I tell my daughter it is the only one that makes sense. How could a world where nothing bad ever happens be worth anything? The bible says that all of creation is fallen but still redeemable. Someday given voices to praise god. Lambs lying down with lions.
The two ‘saints’ I can relate to in my own culture are St Francis, and William Blake; both of whom seemed (to me) to have an understanding of God and Nature. And being human we seem to be Janus faced – looking back into raw nature, while at the same time looking forward into transcendence.
Yes, i agree. Great comment.