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(2)
Plunging down into the woods – entering the break between the trees
where the path begins and plunging headlong down the gully into the
woods – I hear the sound of witches laughing. A crow emits a
raspy shriek from somewhere up above. I look all about me, into
the trees, into the sky. But inside my head, it's not a crow I
hear. What I hear is the sound of witches laughing.
"It's not about compassion, dearie," I hear the witches
say. "It's about power."
I know what it is that makes witches frightening – and seductive:
the source of their appeal lies in the fact that they speak the
truth; the source of their horror lies in the fact that the truth
they speak is both base and easy to act upon.
The day was fine, bright with sun though still quite cold. A
spate of warm, spring-like days has been followed by a spate of
wintry ones, complete with harsh, frigid winds and fresh storms of
snow. But also the crocuses have blossomed, and the daffodils
are now shooting up at last; at the bottom of the gully where the
ground is soft and soggy, the skunk cabbages are pushing the hard,
pointy nubs of their leaves above the soil. Still, the buds on
the bushes and trees have not cracked open yet; in the woods the only
color to be seen is the color of bark, grey and brown. Here and
there patches of snow still remain, and the creek is edged with
ice. Stepping across the water, bits of ice snapping beneath my
boots, I'm reminded of a fanciful little game I used to play as a
boy. I used to pretend that I was "spring's helper":
kicking small piles of snow into the sunlight, breaking off chunks
of ice along the edge of a creek, I liked to imagine that I was
helping spring to emerge from winter's chill just a tiny bit faster
. . .
"It's not about compassion, dearie," I hear the witches
say. "It's about power."
I notice, as I begin to clamber my way up the gully's far side, a
swarm of gnats swirling about in a shaft of sunlight beside a
tree. Even on a day as cold as this, a few small insects have
made their appearance. I've already, on previous forays into the
woods, noticed some tiny beetles crawling about, even one or two
mosquitoes. Where do these bugs come from, so early in the
year? They must hide the winter through, as eggs or pupae,
under the bark of trees, beneath the stones, in tiny burrows dug in
the ground. But what do they feed upon once they've
emerged? I've wondered this too about the spiders which take up
residence in my apartment over the winter months: What
do they eat – each other?
It's not about compassion, dearie . It's about power.
Is it merely power upon which the struggle for survival
depends? The clever, the crafty, and the strong ever preying
upon the slow and the weak; or is it compassion – compassion
of life, itself, for life, itself – that fuels the endless
battle, allowing some to live though others must die? If this
be the case, compassion is merciless in its operation. When the
lioness brings down the leaping gazelle, when the spider bites the
fly entangled in its web, there is no sympathy expressed towards the
prey; nor, it would seem, is there any cognizance of the pain that is
being inflicted. Certainly there is no moral judgment passed
upon the act of killing; the operations of conscience are not
involved. So much for the predator – but what of the prey?
What must its experience of pain and suffering be like? There
are some who suggest that animals, lacking the self-conscious
capacity of humans, are thereby rendered incapable of experiencing
pain and suffering with the same intensity that humans do.
Lacking the ability to formulate any conception of self, these
people say, it may be that animals recognize neither the
"subject" nor the "subjectivity" of their own
suffering. If this is so, then it would follow that animals may
well not not feel "pain" at all. Yet it seems clear
that all living creatures – even down to the lowly fly –
are sensate beings; and even if we describe the sensate experience of
what we would otherwise think of as "pain" as a mere
"reaction" to "noxious stimuli," it remains
incontrovertibly true that this reaction is based upon sensate
experience. The lack of all sense of self, of there being any
subject of sensate experience, would render such experience
meaningless. Sensation would exist without purpose or
justification. Thus it would seem undeniable that some sort
of "self"-consciousness exists throughout the whole of
nature. True, it has found its highest form of expression
in humans; but we err seriously in our judgment if we believe that
our psychological complexity grants us unique status with regard to
the capacity for consciousness in general, and consciousness of self
in particular.
One of the most intriguing aspects of human psychology with regard to
pain and suffering concerns our ability to imagine the pain and
suffering of other sentient beings. Perhaps this is simply a
more highly evolved form of that responsiveness which all living
creatures, generally speaking, feel towards members of their own
species; as such, it may be said to merely constitute a tool evolved
to promote our own species' survival. And, this being the case, it
could then be argued that to imaginatively experience what animals in
pain feel is nothing more than a displacement of this evolutionary tool's
functional capability. Philosophically speaking, I cannot assert with
absolute certainty that I know what an animal feels.
Philosophically speaking, I cannot assert with absolute certainty
that I know what another human feels. Philosophically
speaking, a gap opens up between myself and all other living things
. . .
I hear the witches laughing. It's not about compassion,
dearie – it's about power.
I delve farther into the woods, find a tree, and squat down under
it. There's more snow here, deep in the woods; but there's more
green stuff too, because of the number of pine trees surrounding
me. I notice as well the leaves of last year's ferns, splayed
here and there upon the forest floor like discarded fans; these too
are green. I squat down under a tree and close my eyes. I
listen to the sound of the birds, to the sound of water rushing in
the creek, to the hushing wind . . . And then I notice that,
at the edges of what I hear – through the cracks, so to speak,
of all the sounds occurring around me – other sounds, faint and
mysterious, begin to emerge. They are high-pitched squeaks
mostly, more like the sound of bird calls than anything else; but
it's not birds that I hear. Like the noises that come to me as
I edge into sleep, these are the sounds that emerge when I begin to
listen beyond sound, behind sound. Yet the sounds
I hear now are not coming from inside my own head. They emerge
from the world around me. Or rather – they emerge from the void.
Very soon – much too soon – the cold begins to seep in. And I
find myself thinking of all the things I must do and want to do with
the rest of my day; my mind fills with the compulsion to act.
"I need to go, I need to go," I'm thinking – but also:
"No! I want to stay here, in these woods, forever . . ."
I open my eyes again and look all about me. I remember,
suddenly, and for no particular reason, the lone deer I saw a year
ago while sitting in this wood. It had come upon me unawares
and stood a little distance off, watching me. As I gazed back
at it, it began to slowly stamp one hoof against the ground, though
whether as an expression of curiosity, anxiety, or irritation I could
not tell. I stood up; the deer bounded away. In the space of
time it took me to draw a single breath, it was gone.
I had not understood then what the deer had been trying to say to
me. But I knew now. It had been saying:
"Be careful. This is a dangerous world we live in."
It's not about compassion, dearie – it's about power.
How easy it is to use our power over others as a means to self-empowerment
in this world. How easy it is to succumb to this means in our
desperate bid to obtain that self-empowerment. For we do need
to feel that power, now more than ever. Without it, we become
mere subjects of conformism, and lose our individual liberty in favor
of such "freedoms" as are offered to us by the state.
Yet we are given no other choice but to sacrifice that liberty; and
when individual liberty is thus sacrificed in exchange for the safety
conferred by the status quo, a dichotomy opens up between that which
is "animal" in us and that which is "human."
And so it is that we find ourselves become nihilists, directing the
destructive passions born of this dichotomy against nature, against
each other, and against ourselves.
The self-empowerment that is to be found through claiming one's
individual liberty in opposition to the state gains its force through
the practice of nonjudgmentalism, both towards oneself and, by
extension, towards all others. But what then is there to
prevent us from committing any act whatsoever, no matter how
heinous? Christ himself said, "Judge not, lest ye be
judged," but through appeal to the authority of God prevented
this from becoming an invitation to chaos. Authority of some
kind is necessary lest we fall prey to the animal within; without the
judgment of authority always at hand, we have no moral standard by
which to measure ourselves. Yet the desire to be free of
judgmentalism persists; thus is born the struggle of which Christ,
and Christ's sacrifice, stands as the ultimate warning. We must
in fact sometimes judge, and in turn be ourselves judged – or select
some scapegoat upon which judgment may be levied in exchange for our
own salvation: this is what religion teaches us.
Small wonder, then, that it has so often been used as a weapon by
governmental powers for the purpose of maintaining control over the
citizenry of the state.
Desiring to throw off all such constraints, and attempting instead to
put into practice the Buddhist ideal of detachment, I found an unease
developing in me between the self that acts and the self that watches
the self that acts. I have tried to resolve this dichotomy
through the understanding of experientialism – and have found myself
hampered in this endeavor at every turn by the modern-day,
post-industrialist society in which I live. All of which leads,
it seems to me, to an experientialism defined by self-destruction,
again born of the nihilism which results from the dichotomy between
my human and animal selves, this once more becoming manifest in an
implicitly destructive attitude towards nature, people, and
myself. Nature has its own rules and guidelines, of course; and
I find that I am once again wondering how to survive, grow, and
flourish while following those precepts to which I am obligated by
both my animal and human personas. The Watcher observes with
nonjudgmental detachment; embodied as the "animal" self in
human form it examines what it means to be this strange, conflicting
amalgamation in experiential terms . . . And the Warrior? The Warrior prepares to dance.
I stand up at last, shake myself, stretch, and then begin clambering
back down the side of the gully to the stream at the bottom.
The stream isn't deep, but at this time of year it becomes so wide
and turbulent with melting ice and snow that I have to jump from
stone to stone to get across. In the middle of the stream I
suddenly lose my balance; perched on one foot, arms flung wide, I
spin round like some crazy ballerina attempting a pirouette – then
steady myself just long enough to make a leap to the creek's far
side. But once there I immediately become entangled in the
branch of a small tree, a branch that curves round my shoulder and
hangs on. I twist round yet again to free myself from it and take
another small leap up the bank. There I stand a few moments,
panting a little; then look back over my shoulder at the tree.
It rocks up and down, up and down, like some old friend I'd just run
into on the street, a friend who'd grabbed me round the shoulder as I
stumbled, and now stands shaking with merriment, mocking me, cajoling
me . . . My mouth drops open – in consternation, and in wonderment too. And then I begin to laugh. Stepping on a skunk cabbage – ah! Spring From the shadows of trees, bird songs echo
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