A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [95]
I nodded agreement to her unsaid statement. Neither of us spoke. We poked at the meat on our plates, the remains of some creature's existence. I said, "Had I killed the goose last week, the hen would be alive."
"I didn't want to say that."
"But..." I paused, and took a bite of chicken. "It's true." I realized I was responsible that day not for one but two deaths, one through the use of a hatchet, the other through inaction. By not killing the goose, I killed the hen as surely as if it had been me and not the goose who tore the skin from her scalp.
The hardest part for me is always that moment of inevitability, the microsecond after the decision has been made, but before the hatchet begins to fall. At every moment up to then I can let go my hold on the bird, and allow her or him to return to scratch and peck at the dirt, but from that instant the bird, though still fully alive for the time it takes the blade to fall upon its neck, is as good as dead.
I feel the same each time I hook a fish, and I felt the same the one time I had a deer centered in the sights of my rifle. It was standing in a thicket, and had I been able to discern antlers amongst the tangle of tiny boughs, my finger would have pulled the trigger, and that animal's life would have ended. It is an awful power to hold another's life in your hands.
This morning I killed a baby goose. Born blind and deformed, it would never have walked. Before I killed it I cradled it in my palms, holding it secure so it could at least once in its life feel the warmth of the sun on the still sticky down of its back. Its head wobbled, and it cried as loud as it could, as loud as any just-born goose can. I stroked her or his neck, and said good-bye.
When I was younger, I would turn off my feelings before I killed a fish, or a bird, or a grasshopper, or fly. I would look with almost disinterested eye at the bluegill on a stringer or the chicken on a chopping block. Something did stir, but it was too deep, and I knew also that if I allowed it to well up I would never go through with what I intended.
I no longer go away—allow my body to become what Descartes called "a statue made of earth"—while my arm raises and brings down the hatchet. I know that the answer—to what question I've no idea—is not to shy away from death, or even from killing, and especially from feeling. Death is everywhere, and will seek me out no matter where I hide, now and again in the causing, and later in the receiving.
This understanding came to me, oddly enough, when I was using the toilet. I realized that every time I defecate, I kill millions of bacteria. Every time I drink I swallow microorganisms, every time I scratch my head I kill tiny mites.
Because life feeds off life, and because every action causes a killing, the purpose of existence cannot be to simply avoid taking lives. That isn't possible. What is possible, however, is to treat others, and thus ourselves, with respect, and to not unnecessarily cause death or suffering. This seems so obvious I'm embarrassed to write it, but it's so frequently and savagely ignored—consider factory farms, the mass rapes and child abuse endemic to our culture, the one hundred and fifty million children enslaved, ad nauseum—that I've no real choice.
Viktor Frankl died yesterday. Although most famous for his book Man's Search For Meaning, in which he described his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz, and articulated his understanding that