PhilPaine.com

I could write, tonight, about some of those things that Nature uses to suck you in, like the pleas­ant sun­set I just saw. It was mel­low, rather than spec­tac­u­lar. A glow­ing tan­ger­ine sun descend­ing slow­ly behind the ridge, with clouds daubed onto the sky by some minor 17th cen­tu­ry Dutch mas­ter. The sort of sun­set that makes you feel the sphere of the Earth rolling under your feet, but does­n’t look like it was con­jured up by Indus­tri­al Light & Mag­ic. But I would rather write about the nas­ti­er side of Nature.

I already had a taste of it, a few days ago, when I suf­fered five hor­net stings, two of them on the back of my hand. This seemed exces­sive. I was­n’t doing any­thing to antag­o­nize the hor­nets. I have the utmost respect for hor­nets. I would vote for one, if it ran for Par­lia­ment in my rid­ing. But the hor­nets appar­ent­ly don’t have the same “live and let live” phi­los­o­phy, and I’ve had to spend three days typ­ing with a right hand that looks like it was drawn by a bad cartoonist.

But far more dra­mat­ic was what hap­pened this morn­ing, as I went to the mail­box. The lane from the house to Devel­op­ment Road (a road not­ed for its dirth of devel­op­ment) is closed in by a small for­est of tall spruce and birch. As I walked, I saw an extra­or­di­nary sight: a black rab­bit fly­ing among the trees. It rose from the ground and fol­lowed a straight line ris­ing upwards about thir­ty degrees, mov­ing at about 30kph, and dis­ap­peared into the sky. This dra­mat­ic action was accom­pa­nied by a sharp screech.

I did not actu­al­ly see the red-tail hawk that most prob­a­bly was respon­si­ble for this appar­ent­ly super­nat­ur­al event. It’s the only thing oth­er than a bald eagle that could have car­ried off a fair­ly large rab­bit with such ease, and its chaot­ic brown, beige and white colour­ing would have ren­dered it near invis­i­ble in the woods. As it was, the blur­ry flut­ter of the preda­to­ry rap­tor hard­ly reg­is­tered in my vision, while the stark out­line of the rab­bit was clear­ly vis­i­ble, and appeared to lev­i­tate from the earth and zoom by like a bizarre canon-ball. It looked more like some­one’s pet than any wild hare or rab­bit. Wild rab­bits around here are not black. This made me shud­der. I have a pet rab­bit at home, and I could not help trans­fer­ring my affec­tion to this hap­less victim.

Nature is not all fluffy cot­ton­tails and painter­ly sun­sets. The world is harsh and cru­el, and almost all ani­mals die hor­ri­ble deaths in the wild. They are torn apart and eat­en, usu­al­ly while still half-alive, or they die a slow and ago­niz­ing death of star­va­tion, or mis­er­able deaths from dis­ease. There are no retire­ment homes for elder­ly for­est ani­mals, no atten­dant nurs­es hov­er­ing around their deathbeds. No flow­ers or eulogies.

So, as much as I delight in nature, it is not Nature’s Plan that I want to see for human kind. Nature’s Plan con­trolled us for thou­sands of years… we sick­ened and died in hor­ri­ble plagues, were devoured by preda­tors, and were dis­patched with steely cyn­i­cism by the same Nat­ur­al Wis­dom that decides that ten thou­sand tur­tles will hatch on the seashore, and only one hun­dred make it to the sea. Nature’s Plan was for us to live in ter­ror and mis­ery, just long enough to breed anoth­er gen­er­a­tion, then die at the age of thir­ty. Phooey to Nature’s Plan.

What we are slow­ly build­ing for our­selves, thanks to human con­scious­ness, is a dif­fer­ent sort of thing, that has not exist­ed before on this plan­et. We can appre­ci­ate nature, and see the beau­ty and majesty of it, pre­cise­ly because we have bro­ken the rules and made some­thing of our­selves that is rather dif­fer­ent from what came before us. Nei­ther the red-tail hawk nor the poor rab­bit, I’m sure, spent any of their spare time appre­ci­at­ing the sun­set, though they each must have their own sorts of plea­sures and pains. I don’t want to live the life of the hawk or the life of the rab­bit. I want some­thing better.

When you look at the tale of human his­to­ry, you see most human beings bare­ly able to live beyond the imme­di­ate threat of star­va­tion, trapped between two kinds of preda­tors — micro­scop­ic pathogens, and aris­toc­ra­cies of own species. Before we turned our minds to sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion and rea­son­ing, half of us were casu­al­ly killed or debil­i­tat­ed by bac­te­ria, virus­es and fun­gi. Most of the oth­er half were enslaved, exploit­ed or mur­dered by rene­gade humans who turned against their own species, imi­tat­ing the actions of the micro­scop­ic pathogens. The kings, emper­ors, dic­ta­tors, aris­toc­ra­cies, gen­er­als, mul­lahs, popes, sul­tans, par­ty boss­es and com­mis­ars are, after all, mere­ly larg­er ver­sions of bubon­ic plague bacili, exploit­ing our weak­ness to feed on us, killing many of us in the process, only tem­pered by the need to pre­serve enough of their hosts to repeat the process. Democ­ra­cy, art, sci­ence, and rea­son are the med­i­cines, the pub­lic health mea­sures, the vac­cines with which we fight these pathogens. The ulti­mate aim of this med­i­cine is not to pre­serve nature’s bal­ance or nature’s plan, but to beat the system.

The argu­ment of all tyrants has been that their crimes are noth­ing more than Nature’s com­mand, that they are the hawks and we are the rab­bits, and that the Gods bless their palaces and their armies and their secret police as the Gods bless the crea­tures of the for­est in their per­pet­u­al blood­bath. I’m sure that ver­min such as George W. Bush, Jr., or Hu Jin­tao see them­selves as glo­ri­ous eagles, soar­ing above us. I would like to dis­il­lu­sion them. I want to arm the rab­bits with ground-to-air missiles.

And when the rab­bits are safe, liv­ing in free­dom, I’ll appre­ci­ate the sun­sets even more.