Preservation of America's Wildlife

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  • The False Narrative of Myth: Cultural Perspectives

    Written by
    John Cox, M.A. C/M

    “The idea that animals willingly offer themselves up to be killed by humans is a cultural myth. Animals possess a strong, natural instinct for self-preservation and fear death or pain. No scientific evidence shows that any animal wants to die or consents to be slaughtered by people.

    Where did the origins and context of this erroneous myth develop? Or, Why did they develop?

    The answer simple — folklore and religion, as well as Fear from human instinct, to perform a symbolic ritual, or a false-respect so to speak, to win favor rather than animosity from the spirits within the mountains and forests and ranges. Ancient hunting cultures often told stories of sacred beasts or game spirits that “gave” themselves to hunters, under the auspices of proper rituals to be performed — so the belief goes.


    We can also observe, through research, the Psychological Comfort or, the Imagining that an animal consent helps human’s ease feelings of guilt or moral conflict regarding hunting or eating meat.


    Also situations of Misinterpreting Behavior, where the less experience or knowledge a person has obtained, they assume,sometimes, a trapped or cornered animal’s calm or shock response, for acceptance or willingness.


    Once again, we can understand scientific and ethical realities do exist, and all animals, wild and domestic animals, will fight, flee, or show severe stress when facing danger or slaughter. Yes, they experience pain before death.


    We can also find, through science, animals lack the abstract Concepts the humans can develop toward painful experiences, or death. The human mental dysfunctions such as ignorance, bias, bigotry, or Pathological Narcissism, does impose upon the life and death of an animal, to the point of tragic results for all animals.

    Science also indicates, through credible research and observation, and experience, animals lack the complex, future-oriented self-awareness required to comprehend and willingly accept their own permanent death.


    The unmitigated fact is the choice to harvest (a non-conservationist term in today’s terminology and very debatable to indeed use) or raise animals for, is driven entirely by human needs, culture, and choices, not from of the animals themselves.

    We need to think more, about the things we, as humans do to other life-forms on this planet. The acceptability of Myth, at times often Rubber-Stamped as a cultural circumstance, with heritage and history, can be wrong, unethical, and morally inept.” — John Cox, M.A. C/M

  • Duality of Science — Attention Must Be Given

    Written by
    John W. Cox, M.A. C/M


    Advancement of our Technical World, our Science, has created a battle-zone, of narratives.  Authentic-Science versus Misinformed-Science.  And the Misinformed-Science is winning.  We seem to have sacrificed our Values, our Morals and Ethics, to achieve the science of Industrialization over our own humane-beliefs, and our very sustainability toward survival, on this planet.

    We seem to pass it all off as Science Fiction.  Yet, those of us interested in Science, as necessary advancement toward civilization – know the term to be a metaphor of absurd hypocrisy.  

    When we acknowledge the very roots of Science Fiction, Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein”, historically, we discover from the outset, the intrusive qualities of science, when ethics and morals ignored.  This ignorance, the human behaviors, pave the way toward Individual, as well as cultural, an obscure narcissistic dysfunction, where pathological lies excepted as truth, and control of the scientific narrative, taken over by questionable individuals.  Politics and industry, and science, becomes a tool to achieve monetary record-breaking profits.  Evidence of this abundant.

    Authentic science, within a truthful presentation of data gathering, the allowance of “all” information gathered used to process and generate a truth, apparently disdained by politicians and industry alike.  No longer are there individuals that would make a stand and “Fight for the Integrity” of science, other than a few, against those who lack ethics, in reality, those who control the budgets and who control the narrative within those budgets, as well.

    The fact is, Science and a thorough understanding of it, can be, and should be, a positive-influence upon our perceptions of Nature, Wildlife, and all the things around us, inclusively.  The paradigm that “all” Carbon-Based Life” on this planet matters, is a dynamic of proven necessity, as well as to be respected as such.

    It is merely the lack of our, profoundly, human-nature, that misdirects our ethics. 

    1. We favor wars to be of necessity, yet sacrifice human’s and our Natural Resources abundantly, freely, without explanation toward the ethics or morality of it all. 

    2. Then we find, it’s all based upon our Hunting-Culture as a heritage to be honored, that combines modern-technology with false-narratives and disinformation, to achieve a false-pretense, via disinformation campaigns, to kill-off Wildlife (i.e. a population control, considered a sport, that is questionable at best), then referring to it as Wildlife Management, or worse, Conservation.

    3. Then an extrapolate of hunting is trapping — a culture that assumes sacrifice of Wildlife, under the distinct guise of heritage and historical significance for our culture, for clothing, or entertainment as a sport, remains a thing of necessity.

    4. We then go to the destruction of our Wildlife and Lands, being far more prominent, morally decayed, and lacks ethics, precisely, yet false narratives promote these unethical values as being worthy and respectable necessities, as the American Way — Ranching & Industrialized Corporate Culture, alongside our Political Culture, that ignores ethics and morals completely.  Sacrifices abundant, and some become rich, the general public loses many Natural Environments, once cherished by all.

    And worse yet, all of the above give us ingenue excuses, and lies, while doing so, favoring their definable mis-conduct as something of a historical heritage.  It all evolves into an assimilation of sacrifice, those things and life-forms of, what they assume, as “less-value” and okay to be sacrificed; thereby, defined from those, supposedly those of us with advanced intelligence, awkwardly and arrogant at best, to be of necessity. In truth, a painful paradigm of ignorance, bigotry, and obscure bias.

    The type of science that generates these types of “Mind-Set-Dynamics”, as obviously illogical as it appears, and it being even close to acceptable, what so ever, we can assimilate as a science itself.  This being the science of “False-Narratives”, or as some would say, “Propaganda” (never the less what we call it, it is very dangerous), and bad conduct, conducive of keeping the general population of people in a shroud of Darkness.

    Science Fiction, although it is fiction, and at times novel entertainment, does apply its significance, in the many warnings given to us, from Science Fiction writers, historically.  Where we set our ethical bounds, and moral virtues upon boundaries of acceptability, attention must be given.  I will leave this conversation with a short speech by Albert Einstein: 

     “It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man’s blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors… in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind.” – A. Einstein — In a speech given at the California Institute of Technology in 1931, Einstein warned students about the dual nature of technical progress.

    Written by
    John W. Cox, M.A. C/M