By Renee Shay, Harvesting Thought
–explore–
I recently visited the San Francisco Zoo with family and had a wonderful time. I saw bears exploring their enclosure for treats left by the keepers, wolves playing hide-and-seek on their worn trails, orangutans climbing high up for the view while they ate breakfast and lions doing what they do, sleeping. The giraffes were bigger than life, they seemed like something out of a Star Wars movie, the elusive pacing tigers are always exciting to see and the grumpy faced gorillas, I am never sure what they are thinking of us humans. The good, the bad and the ugly part of my experience that day though was from an interaction with a group of humans during my second pass by the chimpanzee’s enclosure. I think even Jane Goodall would have been upset about it, though more so for the zoo allowing us humans to get so close to the troop, especially during the COVID19 pandemic!
One chimpanzee appeared to be doing its best to get close to us masked humans as it ate a carrot. We were within an arm’s length between us and them, except for a rose bush and a chain link fence. I have never been that close to a zoo animal before, it was impressive. The first time walking by the chimps that morning they were being shy and staying farther away while they ate their breakfast treats. There were several more humans then and I did not want to be near them, so I did not stay long. The second time it was just me, a family member, and another family, appeared to be two parents and a child. This time was different, one chimp was eating carrots with one of their hands while grasping the fence with the other.
As I was taking photos and observing the chimp that was up against the fence, I noticed that someone was throwing something at it. It was the child standing next to me, I can forgive once, but he continued to do it. I instinctively without thought and without any eye contact, turned slightly toward the child, waved my left-arm, and flipped my palm up at him and said with a stern but whispered voice, “hey, knock it off, don’t throw stuff at him!” Crickets, silence, not a word from the child. He paused, just a look up at me, not a word from the two adults standing next to him either.
Not sure what the chimp thought, it might like rose pedals and the child was not being bad, it was doing good as he could not reach through the fence himself and retrieve them? But from my perspective, the roses were not in its enclosure, they were on the other side of the fence for a reason. Thinking I understood the situation and was coming to its defense, how naive. No one in that child’s family group standing to defend the chimpanzee, why? Of course, they said nothing to defend the child while a stranger scolded him either. Where were the keepers? At what point is it our job in society to intervene when we think someone is acting in a way that is harmful to self or others, including animals?
–challenge–
Who am I to think it is my job to correct the perceived wrong in the manner I did? Did it call for immediate correction or could I have taken a step back and realized that the boy was not doing any harm? As a member of humanity, when the role of passive observer turns one to action, what does that say about me, what does that say about inaction of others?
One of my dearest elders, recently gifted me a book, “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran, who was a turn of the 20th century philosopher and poet from Lebanon. Woven throughout the pages are the age-old struggles of right and wrong, of good and bad, of humanities oneness, not separate or apart from, “but I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. And a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, so the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.” I contemplate my action on that day and come to the same space, intervening at times is the right course of action. Where would we be with our natural world if we all stood by as passive observers?
At what point would a child grow to a man and not learn right from wrong, not learn respect for animals? I could say that his parents did good by bringing the child to the zoo to learn about animals, our fellow companions of the world but in that learning were they drawing lines in the sand about how to respect them? Long ago someone decided that animals are separate from us, that humans are this separate entity and that we can treat animals with less reverence than our fellow beings. Not in my world, not in my elder’s world view, but in some people’s world, yes, that is what they believe. That is not what my elders have taught me though and that is not what I have learned and that is not what I will teach, even if to a stranger’s child standing next to me. [The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran]
–expand–
When we place ourselves in the self-appointed, self-policing, righteous societal authority of the good camp, we are saying to others that we are right in our perceptions of a situation and they are wrong, they are behaving in a bad manner. At times it does seem difficult to accept that a fundamental principle that governs our behavior, all our behavior, is derivative from the very innate notion that a mother to child or a stranger to a child, to highest form of governance, including authoritarian, are a type of societal policing. Afterall, the very fact that a zoo which locks up animals behind bars for a living is exerting their authority over something else to control its behavior. And then here I am trying to exert my righteousness over a human child on the other side of the bars in defense of the chimpanzee?
Oh, the masterminds are those who created religion so they could govern the masses, how genius though it did not work for all humans or animals, hence the creation of fences, bars and even zoos. During the time that the world began to populate, it became clear that humans were going to live in larger groups, it must not have been that much of a stretch to say that people needed governing. How genius to include in that the concept of governance, the ability to control one’s behavior even when no one would be looking. They created omniscient higher powers and called them God’s and Goddess’s, who would watch you and that one would need to be accountable to especially when no one else was looking. The opposite of that type of governance is an atheist dictator who takes on the role of God for a society and wields powers through force. How we as humans ebb and flow between these two spectrums, how many wars begin and end because of this.
Throwing rose pedals at a chimpanzee seems innocent enough if you know that rose pedals are something it eats. The animal could have moved away from the fence, it had the ability to do that, but it had not. The parents could have told the child to stop but they had not. All these creatures, excusing or not seeing the harm but me? Not like I have not stretched the bounds of etiquette toward other creatures on occasion. Is it all about perception or something else? Are we not all the same to a more or lesser degree as, is it true that “you cannot separate the just from the unjust and the from the wicked; for they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together?” [The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran]
We sure have created an ugly mess of trying to police right from wrong in our world, including virtually. Thinking that it is someone else’s job to do the policing to thinking it is our own. The good, the bad and the ugly of our existence on this planet could be the final decider as to whether we go extinct because of our failures in this arena. If conflict can start between strangers over something so innocent as a child throwing rose pedals at a caged chimpanzee at the San Francisco Zoo, then where do we go from here? What do I need to do differently as I navigate my world and interact with its creatures? Do I have an obligation to intervene when witnessing actions by others that I perceive as wrong? Yes, I do.
I will continue to intervene as it has never been in my nature to turn away. Feeling I am right, someone else is wrong and creating ugly situations to correct their behavior will continue to appear in my world, in my behavior. Humans nor animals have discovered another solution to date in the natural world to correct this. That would explain why it was so easy for humans to lean into a spiritual world to find the answers so long ago and even today, what other choice did they have. To a more or lesser degree, we all need to find a way to approach these types of issues with more understanding, more compassion, and less righteousness as eventually, our very existence on this planet will end because of it.
Harvesting Thought 