I love this. The only part that hurts is equating pigs to man. Poor pigs. They are smart and abused by our factory farms yet still get used as examples of the most wretched creatures on Earth, the Americans and our minions.
You are right about pigs being basically fine critters. I met and was acquainted with several individual animals in my boyhood and youth, and have worked around them in large groups on farms as well. They are smart and endearing and can be terribly dangerous. They will eat until it kills them if allowed, and trample their own offspring in the rush to the trough. If the mood strikes, they will savage a keeper who has raised them from piglets. You will rightly suggest these traits are bred into them, and that their living conditions contribute greatly to such behaviors: those true things also make of pigs an excellent metaphor for domesticated humans like us.
I know. Moreover, we will always find a way to excuse our cruelty. The pigs behavior in captivity or out has absolutely no bearing on how we treat them, tho men like to say so. We can choose to do differently, we just don’t. Therefore no animal is a good metaphor for men.
I love this. The only part that hurts is equating pigs to man. Poor pigs. They are smart and abused by our factory farms yet still get used as examples of the most wretched creatures on Earth, the Americans and our minions.
You are right about pigs being basically fine critters. I met and was acquainted with several individual animals in my boyhood and youth, and have worked around them in large groups on farms as well. They are smart and endearing and can be terribly dangerous. They will eat until it kills them if allowed, and trample their own offspring in the rush to the trough. If the mood strikes, they will savage a keeper who has raised them from piglets. You will rightly suggest these traits are bred into them, and that their living conditions contribute greatly to such behaviors: those true things also make of pigs an excellent metaphor for domesticated humans like us.
I know. Moreover, we will always find a way to excuse our cruelty. The pigs behavior in captivity or out has absolutely no bearing on how we treat them, tho men like to say so. We can choose to do differently, we just don’t. Therefore no animal is a good metaphor for men.
There ya go mans’plaining again.
When the shoe fits…