Deep in the inner core of the lowly human (as well as the more civilized animals that inhabit the planet) is a sense of left and right, hot and cold, safe and dangerous… very binary concepts. You will never convince a rat that the alley cat has good intentions and needs only a hug to get over its deep-seated anger. This dualism has been the foundation of belief systems for thousands of years. Every step forward through the jungle or across the open tundra calls for assumptions and generalizations. Is the ground solid? Will I die if I take the next step? Is that animal baring its teeth at me dangerous or just embarrassed about being naked? Are animals of a similar type predictable that way? Is it unfair to discriminate against lions and call them man-eaters? What if we hugged them once a day rather than pointing at them? Would they become like us—civilized and tolerant (Insert smiley face here!)? What if some of them do not want to be hugged, possibly not trusting our strategizing? Are they then to be ignored? A man who loved bears tried hug therapy one time and got his head bitten off. But it could have been his own fault for being cheap with the hugs. A respected modern strategy for dealing with lions is re-education of humans (by humans!) to change our attitude toward lions starting with an apology. That appeases the lions, they say, and sets them up for compensation—every creature’s answer to unhappiness…apparently.
There are two kinds of people you can never help: insider fanatics who game the system and outsider self-annihilators who want to take their inner pain out on random strangers. The believers and the half-educated are the most dangerous. Each is capable of leaving a path of destruction on the way to re-educating the blind majority and recreating the world to match their vision. Vested interests are vying savagely for a piece of the pie before entrenched powers have gobbled it all up, even if by smash and grab. There is hardly a common citizen on the planet who could not benefit from primal scream therapy as a result of their machinations.. . . to be continued
