Prideful And Prejudiced

Last night May and I were on the phone discussing Pride and Prejudice which I had just finished listening to on tape. To be quite honest, I don't think I'd ever read it before and I'm not sure how that happened.
I told May that at first, I was not impressed with the book. I just did not CARE about those people and their silly crazy eighteenth century white English people problems. But I kept listening and before I knew it, I was suddenly quite involved in their lives and had put aside my OWN prejudice about how those people's society was run and cared very much as to whether Elizabeth would end up with Mr. Darcy. Mostly because I wanted her to live in his house but still....
Anyway, in the midst of this discussion, a fight broke out in my library. The young dogs had ganged up on old Pearl and I had to throw the phone down and break the fight up, tossing poodles and a Yorkie through the air to get them off Pearl who stood, shaking and confused.
After I got everyone settled down and checked Pearl for injury, I called May back and we talked about how animals just go crazy sometimes and it's so hard to understand what's going on in their minds. Look at Sam and Miss Betty- I don't understand why all of a sudden he has to prove his dominance over her. It's just so CRUEL, as cruel as the small dogs attacking Pearl.
But just as I can no more go back and live in the eighteenth century and truly understand the way their society worked, I cannot live in the mind of a dog or a chicken and understand how their society works.



The rules and opinions and culture of Jane Austen's time may seem silly and ridiculous to me and the rules and culture of dog packs and chicken flocks do too. And I have no more right to judge English society two centuries ago than I have the right to look at what my animals do and label it cruel.
It is what it is. Or, it was what it was.

And so it goes. I live in my world with my rules and my prejudices and my pride and I can't change the way the chickens perceive the pecking order in their world or go about establishing it. It breaks my heart to see Miss Betty hiding in the hen house day after day and it makes me furious and sad that Pearl gets attacked.

But it's the way of their worlds for animals to act this way.

The weak and the small and the old are not perceived as being worthy of food and attention, I suppose, and the way to deal with that is to kill the weak, the small or the old. It makes perfect sense to them and it has evolved this way for a reason, even if it disturbs my human sensibilities.
I wonder how humans evolved the way we have done- to care about the weak and the needy. There are stories always coming out about animals who do this too- mother lions who adopt puppies or chimps who act in what we would see as compassionate ways but these stories enchant us because not only do they remind us of US, but precisely because they are so rare.

I don't really have a point here except to say that just because we see things a certain way, it does not mean that is the way things are. Just because we would want the world to hold hands and be at peace, it doesn't mean it will ever happen.

Cultures and countries and societies and religions and social rules and our animal instincts and our human brains all contribute to differences between us that no matter how much we want to believe we are all, under the skin, the same, ensure that they are not.

And so it goes. It is interesting to read words written hundreds of years ago, to get involved with the characters, to hope they end up in happiness. It is human to want the animals we live with to all get along and act "civilized."

But what is "civilized"?

Hens being attacked in the chicken coop, dogs being attacked in the library.
These events occur in the societies of animals, civil or not.
I may not like these things but it certainly is interesting to observe them.
I may not feel completely at home in Jane Austen's world but it was a pleasure to visit there.

Meanwhile, the chicken house is very smelly and I need to attend to that problem, there is food to be made and taken to people I love, there is a rehearsal this afternoon and I should be icing a cake, writing my silly bio notes for the program for this weekend's performance and I haven't taken a shower or mixed up the salad and I am running behind.

But I'll leave you with this- I think it is a good and illuminating thing to observe other cultures, whether human or not, whether current or not, with an open mind. To cast aside our own prejudices and pride and observe and learn, thereby enlarging our own worlds.