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The Horse Whisperer - "Gentling" rather than Breaking them
Humanity needs to be treated humanely [all life does];
We are HUMANS, but we are not yet HUMANE.
Date: 9/24/2006 8:07:05 PM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 2960 times
I am just getting started into the book written by the horse whisperer himself, a book called "The Man Who Listens to Horses", Monty Roberts. {You may remember the more popular "The Horse Whisperer" that was made into a movie.]
Essentially, he talks about how he learned to read and "speak" horse language, which is almost totaly done with the body, not sound. From that, he found he could communicate with horses, understand them, and then just "coax them into a partnership of trust".
Breaking horses - the "usual" way is essentially just removing the horses' willpower and getting him to submit out of fear. And pain. Brutality. Abuse.
"Breaking horses" is "inhumane" especially since there is an option now to use another technique, the one Monty Roberts showed us.
Fear is one way, but trust and understanding is better, more modern, the new way, humanised.
- "humanised" is the key element.
Humanity needs to be humanised and we need humanity to rule and we need to ALL be treated like humans. [it is odd that only one species is not humane, and that is HUMANS, almost like it is a message to us all to get on with becoming humane]
ALL of us need to be treated with humanity or NONE of us are humane - one inhumane act reduces us all to the level where we are able willing and likely to be inhumane. When torture is used on one human, it does something to all of us. Such an act makes us see that we are still capable of doing thses outrageous pains to another human.
Humanisation can be extended to our treatment of animals, which is either humane or not despite that the subject is not human - this is obvious to us for some reason, more obvious than the "treating one human inhumanely reduces us all" idea. Also, we now accept that a person who harms and abuses animals is also capable and likely to abuse humans. It is all the same rage I think, using anger to deal with problems.
Looking with compassion - giving infinate compassion - to a person who abuses animals or people is a difficult task. However, when we do we see that these people deserve our compassion, for they are also wounded in some way, likely abused themselves. So, its either rage or simply not having any other "tools" for dealing with problems. The value we place on life in general has a lot to do with it, and people who have seen a lot of death might be less inclined to be compassionate, and some will be more.
This - being consistently humane - is essential to the "oneness of all things" movement, but most of those proponents are lost on cloud nine, not knowing where to focus their attention in propelling the movement forward. I consider myself part of that movement, but I am frustrated with the others bringing in religion and doctrine to it, and not applying it to anything concrete and common. Addressing torture and other abuses against humans is a good place to start!! [hint]
Besides gentling horses, there are other examples of where humanisation is working, or where it could be working to get better results:
- Treating drug addicts with harm reduction and treatment programs, or even giving their drugs to them so they do not commit crimes, is so much better and more usefull than simply using fear and punishment. [just like with gentling horses]
- terrorism, War on Terror - there are many advanced thinkers who see that using fear and brutal punishment to make our way of life seem acceptable to foreign cultures that are not capitalist and democratic is utterly insane.
- health care - using the body to make itself healthy rather than cutting parts out or killing cells off with radiation; pharmacy drugs interfere with the natural processes that would otherwise be usefull in healing.
Those are three big ones, but it becomes obvious that humanity could be applied to almost any problem and it would have better outcomes than using brutality, pain, fear, and the other basic tactics of the neocons:
Manipulation
Deception
Division of peoples
Demonising
Distraction
Creating Instability
Those are all 'inhumane' ; using these tactics reduces us all and takes us further away from becoming "a humanised species". I am certain that that is what we want to be, our species' name suggests it.
We are HUMANS, but we are not yet HUMANE.
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