Killing as Sport
This has baffled me for years. Some people enjoy killing and others abhor it. Of course there are degrees to the liking or abhorring. This sport has seemingly nothing to do with any of the other human differences such as ethnicity or religion or economic class or environment etc. My brother enjoyed killing things, I did not and such differences are endless across the human spectrum. I don't think it is something that is taught, at least not in many cases. I used to raise chickens as a boy and sell the eggs. If a chicken was sick or being mercilessly attacked by other chickens it had to be killed---strung up and it's throat cut till it bled to death. No matter how necessary I was just traumatized, totally turned off by it all.
Hunting never appealed to me. I simply never have any desire to kill anything outside of small insects. It never struck me that ending a life is something to find appealing. I never saw hunting as much of a sport in that the danger and risk is almost always on the side of the hunted animal. I can't recall any hunter I have known to ever have been killed or maimed in any way by the animals he was hunting. My father hunted but he rarely came home with anything, maybe a quail or pheasant now and then. I don't think he ever tried very hard. I had an uncle who used to raise pheasants in pens and then let them go in his corn fields so 'hunters' could parade through the rows of corn and shoot them. Seems silly to me.
I have sat at the top of hills with my brother and shot groundhogs as they emerged from their holes great distances away. That was easier as I was not close enough to watch the death. Some ghetto gang members learn to enjoy killing, sometimes killing during a robbery for no apparent reason. I have chatted with many a young person who can't wait to join the army, are turned on by the risk and adventure and look forward to the killing fields. I always think I wouldn't want any army around my neighborhood with soldiers like that part of the army. In far too many cases a volunteer army attracts those young people looking for a license to kill. When we read about some of the atrocities they commit we then act shocked and often don't believe these atrocities happened. It is just a small few we like to say. Maybe, but the small is larger than we admit, and why do we accept these young people into an army which will represent us abroad?
Hunting does not appear to be a moral issue as such. Throughout evolution there are always the hunted and the hunters. It is an integral part of evolution. There are certainly times when killing other humans is justified. If your country is invaded defense is legitimate. German soldiers did not belong in Poland or Russia or France. Russian soldiers did not belong in Afghanistan. American soldiers did not belong in Vietnam, etc. Mass murders endorsed by government leaders does not make it legitimate. Blind patriotism as the reason for participating in such mass murders is unethical. In the end each of us is responsible for any acts of murder we commit. There needs to be a legitimate reason. Religious people who kill or support killing crusades are the most difficult to understand. Religious based killings are often of the most vicious kind. I find that strange. It is like if a person believes God wills they kill, they then feel free to be as savage about it as their feelings dictate.
We all know sex and violence sell, attract audiences. We also know that the kind of senseless violence found in modern invasions or internal genocides can leave all involved with deep mental problems. Many of our soldiers come back from these kind of senseless brutal conflicts with an inability to have normal feelings of empathy or tolerance or patience. Their emotional state is all screwed up. Some call them heroes, I call them victims. Heroes are soldiers who fight valiant battles on a battlefield against an invading uniformed army. Hardly see those kind of contests anymore. The only ones pretty much left running around the world in military uniforms are Americans. We have military bases, green zones, safe zones, whatever you want to call them, all over the world. Sort of like Britain, France, and Spain did back in the early days of our history. We copied, they gave it up, and we go into massive debt to overextend ourselves all over the globe. This is hardly endearing ourselves to the rest of the world. We are always saving somebody---from communism, from religious extremists, from bad leaders, from drug trafficking, from their refusal to let us control their own natural resources, and whatever else seems to be in our own best interests. The word sovereign hardly exists in our vocabulary anymore. I kind of liked that word and know our founding fathers kind of cherished it. When our own frontier expansion was used up we kind of just kept on going----it was our manifest destiny. I guess not much different from the manifest destiny of Hitler, the Taliban, Irish Catholics, Irish Protestants, the Moral Majority, the Jews, the Communists, the Muslims, etc. I prefer to look on the Universal Golden Rule as the only legitimate manifest destiny. All else is self illusional bullshit.
I will never know why some people like to hunt animals and kill them. If I see two deer in a field and I shoot one, I know the other one will miss it's fallen friend. Yet I also know that humans and other animals depend on the killing of other animals for food.
If I shoot one of the deer because I don't have any food or I kill it for sport, the remaining deer will still be sad. Some aspects of life are just beyond human comprehension. Maybe some day down the road in God's evolutionary process humans will understand mysteries like this. Right now, I just don't. I used to get my exercise in a different county in my state. There the forest preserves were overpopulated with deer. Now the county in which I live has forest preserves devoid pretty much of animal life. They shoot, for example, all the deer they can find. I have watched these 'professional' hunters arrive at dusk in their huge all terrain vehicles, all dressed like about to go on some rough and tough hunt. Most of them are grossly overweight and merely park near a deer trail, climb up in a tree and wait for a deer to walk by and then shoot it. I get more physical exercise in an hour than they do all night. I have no objection to deer herds being culled, overpopulation is bad for the environment, and humans are no exception. But of course, in this case, the 'Yahoos' with a need to kill for pleasure are turned loose and simply kill anything that moves in the forest preserves. Maybe they stuff animal heads and hang them on their wall. Each of us, myself and them, consider the other an asshole.
I can never reach any conclusion about hunting. It just remains, to me, a mystery as to why some people enjoy killing animals and others find it emotionally traumatic. Of course there is a continuum here, not any sharp division. Feelings on either side can range from intense to mild to indifference. I guess it just is.
