Professor H sat by the campfire and said something like: -A place is neither beautiful or ugly before man walks into the landscape. It just is.
He didn´t continue speaking about it much, but what he meant was (as i would interpret it) that the human defines the value of things that have no value before that moment. More precisely, there is no such thing as value without a human beeing creating it.
Professor H said this a number of years ago, and I hadn´t thought about it for a long time until a couple of loud hunters made the walls shake last evening. One of the guys started the discussion by asking if the other would go sealhunting with him sometime soon. The invited one wasn´t too eager, as he felt that the way a seal resembled a dog made him feel bad. -I could never shoot a dog, he said. -Cats, ok, but not dogs. I asked him what it was that made it easier to shoot a cat. He answered: -The cats are wily (sv: lömsk, suomi: katala), while dogs are loyal like true friends. If you hit a cat real hard you´ll see that it will run away and won´t come back. If you do the same to a dog, it will forgive you and stay by your side. I asked him: -What does this example tell about you? Also, doesn´t the animal show wisdom by staying as far away from you as possible?
He was quick in replying: -Well, I wouldn´t hit an animal, but this is just how it works.
There´s a variety of ways that we form our relationship to animals every day. We have them as pets, tools, toys, stories, in our environment, in commercials and on the stuff we buy, in and on our clothes, on the sofa and in our beds, in jewellery and accesories, in cosmetics and chemicals, on the front page of the tabloids, in glue and candy etc. Every single day we take part in the enormous machinery that has tamed and reshaped rules of nature, whether we want it or not. The moral in us humans makes us emotionally react on utilisation or behaviour that doesn´t fit the conception we´ve built up. The values we´ve given to the different creatures we share this planet with are like day and night in relation to each other. It´s just agreement. In China they eat dogs, here we dress them in Burberry-coats. Cows can be holy or mad, depending on what continent they grow on. On this island they print t-shirts with ”Fuck the union” when they get orders to stop killing eider-ducks, while I´ve been told that the farmers on a distant shore in the arctic cry as if they´ve lost a child when they find a dead individual of this same species. Relativity, culture. The conception of us colours all we have around us.
11 comments:
Hej Sara,...
You are right, there is no such thing as real value without us creating it, especially not for people that feel no real connections to others beings , that be animals, plants or spiritual beings , we share this state of being with ( I think, something like that).
All words, conceptions, philosophies, thoughts only make sense to beings that understands, and your examples with the dogs in China and Finland or the eider ducks in Finland or here in Iceland are good because they show that there are no universal law in which you can find answers whether this is valued good or not so good. Peolple are disconnected from them selves instead they take their communitys tradition and rules as universal truth.
But maybe this is what makes man so great to adapt to all kinds of environments and circumstances, that we can understand each other. Unfortunately when circumstances change tradition keeps up unnecessary behavior.
This is the fate of mankind,… what makes us men,….. do not feel too bad about it,….
WalkWell vakre Sara,… Jan
Hej kära Sara! Thinking about the values...I´m sitting at my desk in the museum I´m working. Gloria-magazine´s shooting in our exhibitionhalls today, (it´s a monday so the museum is closed) and I´m trying to do something useful by the computer. Still I keep thinking about the photoshooting upstairs. Gloria is making a "lifestyle" article for the next magazine. 20 pages of dresses, furniture (sikakalliita, tietenkin),pink champaigne and pink roses (not kidding, the boxes are in my workshop)...Sweet life, especially with ART at the background...So: I have found today that I´m propably narrowminded and have lack of humour. When your working daily so very hard trying to turn art somehow understandable, it just feels so funny when it´s beeing used as a background for something with so very different values. On saturday we made a long walk with our dog Saaga. It was the coldest day of this winter this far, but we didn´t mind, ´cause the sun was shining so brightly. (and we stopped to drink hot red mehu)Talking about animals and dogs, Saaga is a good friend. Very loyal and sensitive as a human. She also has a coat to keep her warm, but it´s not Burberry. It´s also because her skin gets easily infections and the fur huopuu when wet. Now I just realized I call her SHE/HER instead of IT. Have to tell you that I was first thinking to read the blog all through and then send some very beautiful, special thoughts. But I didn´t and now I just send all my floating thoughts and hugs. Veera
Aj Veera, kikattaa... Valloitit tavallasi kertoa tämän myöhäisen illan. But I will have to get back to this, because now it´s late and I just got home and the house is shit-cold.
Och Jan min, I shall not feel bad. I´ve chosen a path in life on which I feel I need and want to make things visible. This is a part of that. But more thoughts tomorrow if I wake up.
Elsku Sara sæta mín!
Þú ert svo mikill hugsuður:) en ég er sammála þér með hunda og ketti, ég held að það væri betra ef allir líktust köttum aðeins meira: Kettir taka lífinu með ró og kunna að meta litlu hlutina í lífinu, eins og að liggja malandi á bakinu og láta klóra sér á maganum! mmmrrrr >','<
Gaman að fylgjast með blogginu þínu:) Ég kíki hingað reglulega.
Bestu kveðjur til þín frá öllum hér við 66°n og nágrenni,
Þórunn
Já, Thórunn mín, ég held nú alveg ad vid skulum liggja malandi allan heiminn elsku mamma... Snillingur ertu. Takk fyrir kvedjurnar!
The night always sneaks up on me before I get to this point, but I´ll write shortly again to avoid stagnation...
You can imagine how the sentence "This is the faith of mankind..." caught my attention. Yes, surely we are conservative by nature, but I´m not sure I can agree on that our way to transfer attitude and knowledge from one generation to another would be the same as it seemed to be - let´s say, a hundred years ago. I would assume our education is of a different kind of questioning today, and a culture has a hundred subcultures.
Yesterday the news showed the conflict around the commercial whaling that Japan wants to get started with. How massive aren´t the protests against this and that these days. The opinions are based on emotional aspects, "knowledge", greed, what not... In which ever case the fact remains, - people don´t agree on what the faith of mankind is. Take examples like USA bombing Iraq or organ-bussiness that silently tries to erase children in India. Big societys go berserk. The term ethics seeks its meaning.
Hej vakre Sara,
I am impressed by your possitive attitude towards mankind, maybe I am just too depressed by the same. I think we have had this conversation before, haven't we?
Maybe mankind has not just yet reached the point of total harmony with all beings, but is approaching, I just do not see it. There has just been a case from Greenland where inuit hunters, an original people, in order for their dogs not to bit and hurt eachother, knock out the biggest teeth a hammer. Besides from that they tied the dogs down all summer without foods, and when asked, they said that they did not know that the dogs needed to eat when they were not working during the summer,.. I simply do not understand, and this is a people that have lived for centuries/milleniums with their dogs. Has it always been like this? Has our culture messed up their way of thinking? I do not know.... Naturally f.ex. the education sytem has change a lot the last hundred years in some parts in the world, but not in others. Is there a general increase of insight among human beings?,.. or is history just repeating it self, in different ways over and over again? I think so, Wars are a great example of that,... Are mankind willing to learn from previus mistakes? Does not seem like it, does it ?
I think, for me, it is difficult to love and have faith in mankind as species, but I try love life and the individuals of mankind I meet in this life.
Det er dejligt at kunne blive ved med at have disse samtaler med dig, selvom du ikke er her,.. jeg har en bog jeg vil anbefale Jyrki, Barefoot Zen af Nathan Johnsson,...
WalkWell Vakre Sara, Jan
Spännande tanker! Vad gör ett djur till en parsonlighet i människans ögon istället för en nyttosak? Hunden har haft en annan roll än katten, mera människonära, så många ser den som en människokär och tillgiven varelse, medan katten ses som självständing och oberoende... Men om man uppfostrat en kattunge som en hundvalp, så kommer den att ha ett beteende som mycket mera liknar en hund än den ällmäna uppfattningen om katten! Det är människan som kan välja att öppna sig för djurets möjligheter eller att fortsätta behandla djuret som enligt den stämpeln det har fått tidigare. Heliga kattor, heliga kor, heliga hundar. Men då människan börjar behandlar djur illa, djur som människan behöver för sin överlevnad, som hundarna som lämnas utan mat då dom inte arbetar, så har nånting blivit ordentligt vrickad!
Nu skall jag iväg och hämnta två paket med hundmat från färjan, som har rest i fem timmar för att komma hit till mina två underbara hundar.
Eva-Lotta
Well, sure doesn´t sound like the harmony that has been described to reign among inuits and the creatures they share their land with... On the other hand, in this case harmony is surely relative. The people that have needed animals for their work and survival can not have had an attitude far from pragmatic.
I took part in the moosehunt this fall, just to experience one of the important things for this society. (And also to collect the moose stomachs and try to make leather of them...) I was the only woman in the group, accompanied by 18 greendressed men. The fact that I was new and childlike to them made them talk and tell about their opinion of the hunt. I mainly walked with the men that had been doing this for 30-40 years. One was hunter emeritus and enjoyed the specialist-status. He talked about how terrible it is that the young hunters don´t know the names of places in the forest anymore. Another one was bored, couldn´t bear doing this much longer - same shit, different year. As I walked in the rain with him through the slightly frozen forest we heard on the radio that one of the young hunters had shot two calves. I was surprised they do that, shoot both calves if a mother has 2, and asked the hunter if it wouldn´t be tough for the moosecow to loose both. He answered calmly - "Animals don´t feel like that. They don´t think like humans". And this is what the tough guys on Kumlinge have been teaching their children.
I´m sure he´s right, a moose probably doesn´t think like a human. But I couldn´t conclude what a moosecow feels when her calves suddenly lie on the field broken.
Yes Jan, you´ve said many times that my view upon mankind is too (or very) positive. But you´ll still have to try to market your "Livet är en lidelse"-attitude better...:) I don´t know where we´re heading. Of course it´s mad, the way we leave destruction in our footprints. And there are days when I see little point in trying to make a difference. But I do want to believe that the young that seek their own truth might be on the road towards respecting difference, heterogeneous life. If we learn to love the fact that nothing really fits our models, we´ve taken a big step towards what you might call harmony. In this way I think understanding that we can never understand diversity is unity.
Och ja, det är en glädje.
It´s a sad sad world for mother goose. Poor thing. Your story reminded me of something that happened in years and years ago. A hilarious childhood memory. It was summertime and we were driving around Korppoo with my dad. There was a fleamarket going on at one backyard and we stopped there for a while. My dad found something strange for our eyes: An old goosehunter´s hat. It was bright red with a white tupsu and a black lippa. It was SO FUNNY. (a bit too small for his head, too) And he bought it, of course, and we took it back to our place to represent it for my mom. (She didn´t quite care for it...) But my dad fell in love with the hat and finally named it his "swimminghat" and used it for the rest of the summer while swimming! Strangest connections...Veera
Never underestimate animals feelings... When studying ethology (animal behaviour) one of the mail points are that bahaviour is strongly connected to animals practical life. I think a lot is easier to understand when you think of it. Life has to continue, so animal reproduce. Quantity or quality, many children at once or in a shorter time or a longtime connection to one or two children. The longer the time of the childrens dependency, the more they need to be connectet to their mother and visa vi. In other words, their mother is defintively missing them if they suddenly disapear. But this is not easy to explain to the superälgjägare, because he doesn't want to change his life. Poor guy, he is missing a big part...
Eva-Lotta
You write very well.
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