( – promoted by buhdydharma )
One of these turtles is a socialist DFH. The other is a democrat.
Oct 12 2010
Oct 12 2010
( – promoted by buhdydharma )
One of these turtles is a socialist DFH. The other is a democrat.
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…. years ago. This dog was a stray I had found, and we had her for 15 years until she passed on. Smartest dog, almost supernaturally smart, one of the old fashioned kind. Could not hunt for ***, didn’t point much, and had no instinct to harm or chase birds, had been abused and probably dumped because of this. She would pick up anything smaller, very gently, and carry it to you if she thought it needed attention.
One day was in the barn, and she cocks her head quizzically and then goes over to the side interior door and opens it. She lets the other dog thru that was waiting on the other side, silent, stuck, but could not open the door herself, then lets it shut again. When they passed they exchanged a look, I’ve never forgotten that look, like it was a telepathic “this is how you do this if she doesn’t hear you, and one of us is in there.” Then she came back over to me.
turtles do this. Or actually, one turtle to the other–not sure if the 2nd one is smart enough (or the 1st may not be dumb enough to get stuck upside down at all)
….excellent diary on rec list. Don’t stay long, come back here.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
In Maryland’s Chesapeake region there is a Bald Cypress Swamp site supported by the Nature Conservancy. A few weekends ago I went on a stroll with friends on the boardwalk through the swamp and also checked out the exhibits in the visitor’s center.
The center has kept a live albino snapping turtle on the premises since 1991. He is very large fellow, and he was by himself in a rather small, completely featureless tank, without so much as a rock to rest on or twig to break up the monotony of the surrounding green paint. While I was watching him, he tried mightily to scramble up a vertical corner of the tank to escape his sense-depriving solitary confinement.
A sign at the tank said that the quarters were “temporary.” I wonder. For days afterward (and still) I was troubled by the image of the poor beast trying hopelessly to scramble out of his prison. Had he been trying every hour of every day for the past 19 years?
Had he been removed from his natural environment and completely alone for 19 years?
Perhaps it is hard to feel anthropomorphic about a reptile, but as I watched the snapping turtle struggle to find a better place for himself, I sensed a startling connection. He may have a brain the size of a grape, but he can sense his captivity, be frustrated by his lack of sensory stimulation, and resent the tedious monotony of his lot in life.
I can certainly now better understand why someone would wish to be vegan, a Buddhist, or even a Jain, though it would be exceedingly hard to live a modern life with a gauze mask, a broom to sweep aside insects before stepping on them, and a proscription on eating root crops because of the disturbance that harvesting them would cause to the homes of insects living in the ground.
And the snapping turtle’s plight helped me to understand what may be the key character trait of the far right, ultra-conservative mind: an utter lack of empathy for the “other,” whether the “other” is of a different skin color, creed, less fortunate economic circumstance, nation, or even species.
So is right wing extremism primarily a reflection of this absence of empathy? Is wingnuttery essentially a personality disorder–one that is some how a typical subset of sociopathy or perhaps of the set of behaviors referred to as Borderline Personality Disorder? Does this lack of empathy help to explain the right wing mind’s preoccupation with conquest, “winning,” physical violence, bullying, NASCAR, football, cage fighting, guns, invasions, occupations, looting (profiting from suckers), fraud, intolerance, sanctimony, hypocrisy, and the tendency to willful ignorance (don’t give me no stinkin’ facts that contradict my perfect faith!) and narcissistic hubris?
Just wondering.