The Furious Spinner

I wrote this essay late last night when I should have been doing research on my novel or sleeping. Ah well. Here it is. See what you think.

Lately as I watch the news, I am struck by how crazy people seem to be acting. The Israelis assassinated a Palestinian leader, and a news reporter commented that “there will probably be more revenge than is normal.” More revenge than is normal? What a strange world it is when revenge is considered normal and sane.

I know, I know. I’ve heard it before: “That’s the way it is. People are violent. That’s why we have rules and laws. You’ve got to keep people in line.”

I’m all for rules and laws—I think—and I’m the first one to applaud culture: art, plays, literature, flush toilets. But I wonder if we’ve become caged by our cultures, religion, belief systems and because of that, we have gone a bit crazy. These systems were designed, after all, to protect us from the wild—to protect us from our wild selves. Our ancestors thought the wild was something to be feared. In many ways they were right.

Nowadays, however, people confuse the words ‘wild’ and ‘crazy.’ A wild animal is not a crazy animal. Most wild animals act in very logical ways.

It is caged animals that often go crazy. They have a word for it: zoochosis (the words zoology and psychosis combined). Birds pull out their feathers. Elephants and bears compulsively circle in their habitats, placing their feet in the exact same spot each time around the circle. Chimpanzees will rock incessantly, bears and elephants will sway back and forth and bob and weave their heads to and fro for hours. Big cats, bears, and primates will self-mutilate, biting or chewing their legs and/or tails and hitting their heads against a wall. Gorillas sometimes develop a peculiar kind of bulimia where they vomit and then ingest the vomit. Barry Lopez said that a bear in a zoo is a mammal, but she is no longer a bear. She has lost that wild something that makes her a bear.

On a reserve in Africa recently young male elephants began killing rhinoceroses. The park officials were at a loss to explain this abnormal elephant behavior. As they kept investigating, they realized the young murderous bulls were orphans; the park had “culled” older elephants some years ago when the population of elephants spiked. The bulls had missed the important “teachings” of the matriarch, aunts, and older bulls. When the young bulls began going into musth, they started killing rhinos. (Being “in musth” is a peculiar glandular reaction that occurs mostly in male elephants; it has not been completely explained but it appears to cause hormonal changes that make the elephants highly excitable and sexually aroused.)

The park found an older bull and steered him in the direction of the rhino killers. Immediately, the young bulls were either thrown out of musth or when they went into it, it lasted only a few days at a time and was accompanied by much less violent behavior. The rhino killings have stopped, for now.

A wild animal in a forest, desert, savanna, or wetland knows how to find food, raise its young, and what to do or what plants to eat if it gets sick. For instance, an elephant with a tooth abscess in her tusk will rub it against something hard until it pops out and relieves the infection.

Put a cow in a field of clover, and she’s likely to eat herself to death. Cattle seem unnatural to me. The cattle near one of my hiking trails will one day be hamburger. When I pass them on my walks, my macabre sense of humor kicks in, and I whisper, “Dead cow walking.” Animals who are bred in captivity cannot be released back into the wild. They have lost the sense—whatever it was—to take care of themselves. They have no sense.

Humans once lived in the wild. When war, disease, famine, or ecological disaster caused populations to move away from Nature and become more domesticated, humans lost their wild senses.

Or was wildness bred out of us? Any conquerors would have killed off the rebellious people, the ones who tried to escape, who stirred up trouble. Are we like cows, then? Bred to be docile and do what “the man” says? Waking up, going to jobs or going shopping, coming home, watching television, going to sleep. Or waking up, planning violence, committing violence, coming home, going to sleep. Waking up...

Dead people walking.

Have we also lost the wisdom of our matriarchs (and male elders) as women’s rights and their status around the globe have been put in jeopardy by male-run religions and governments, as the world becomes more consumer-driven? Perhaps so many young men turn to outer violence and young women to self-destruction because they were not socialized by their elders—or they were socialized by elders who have lost their senses, too.

If we now have no wild sense, is it completely gone? Or is it dormant? When I go into the woods, I often look around and try to determine how long I could survive. I wouldn’t starve the first day. Maybe the third. Are any of my innate senses still intact?

Could I become wild again?

Nearly everyone I know has some kind of addiction and/or repetitive compulsive behavior. Around the world we see examples of violence daily. Addictions, compulsions, and violent behavior could be human forms of zoochosis. Perhaps we are all zoochotic, locked in the cage of this bizarre consumptive Nature-fearing culture.

Can we come to our senses?

When I am out in the woods, I feel necessary anxiety— alertness. Depression lifts. I have to pay attention. It is not a safe place. It isn’t a psychotic place. It is a natural wild place where anything could happen. We need wild places on this planet—even if we never visit them. Sometimes it is enough to know they exist. They are the keys to our cages.

Ahhhh, freedom.

Perhaps if all people felt free, felt autonomous, and believed they were the captains of their own fates, violent psychotic behavior would end. Maybe if we reconnected to the wild places on our planet and in ourselves, we would stop acting like caged animals.

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