BY JOHN NASH
Robbie Kroger’s webcasts on Blood Origins celebrate world hunting – the very title recognises that hunting “is in the blood” of hunters. His recent “Origins” webcast featured a fascinating interview with Ben Hudson, ex-hunter and born-again vegan with a 100-acre organic farm in South Carolina, 50% of which he has rewilded.
Like many vegans, Ben holds several modern philosophical views about hunting, including the popular civilian perspectives that animals are individuals rather than a resource, that ethics are important when dealing with wildlife, that a plant-based diet would more efficiently use the more than half of all agricultural land presently used for feeding animals, that natural predators do a better job of controlling wildlife populations, that ecotourism can replace hunting revenue, and so on.
Space doesn’t permit detailed coverage of Ben’s interesting ideas and Robbie’s exchange, but the podcast is an easy listen (with a sun-downer in hand or while driving, preferably not together), and it’s a pleasant chat, unlike the usual rants of the blind shouting at the deaf.
However, it needs context. We go right back to the very beginning. Briefly, evolution walks on two legs – step 1, to survive long enough to breed, and step 2, to breed in order to try again.
Step 1 is the violent, “male”, sudden-death competition in nature, where things either survive or they don’t. Step 2 requires cooperation in a safe “female” environment, protected from nature’s unremitting competition “outside”. Survival requires being the “fittest” in both steps. Like the other animals, we were once exposed to both as well. If you are reading this, you are one of the amazing winners in evolution’s long 3.5 billion-year competition.
So, like many other animals, we once used some kind of “den” strategy to protect us from the dangers outside and over many thousands of years, that den evolved into our very complex modern den, now called human civilisation. Unlike nature’s uncivilised competition “outside”, civilisation has evolved a lot of very involved “indoor, female” nurturing rules called ethics, morals and human rights. But they are still our indoor human den rules – they don’t apply outside in nature, where things kill each other all day long. It’s not “wrong” when a cat kills a mouse – that is simply evolution’s competition and “outside” nature at work. Civilisation, with its ethics and morals, and its human-nurturing function, is the difference between us and the other animals in nature. Dear Readers, read Dear Townies by me and the Editor, Dom Wightman)
We never did have any animal, vegetable or mineral resources inside our den, so for a thousand human generations, we have sent people out of our protective, nurturing den of human civilisation into nature to take into ownership the many things that civilisation needs to survive – hence the caveman metaphor of a hairy bloke with a large club and a dinosaur slung over his shoulder.
When humans go out of “female” civilisation to get stuff, they become “male” predators in nature, not civilian visitors to nature. They become predators and a part of nature, the normal state of affairs in nature. They become uncivilised predators in order to compete in uncivilised nature. Hunting is uncivilised – it has to be, and that is the point. If it wasn’t, it would not be competitive, and we wouldn’t be here because we would have failed evolution’s fitness test. Hunting outside in nature is not “wrong” – it is uncivilised but perfectly normal, and has been for thousands of years. Hunting, and its modern equivalents, the primary industries, are the very opposite of indoor nurturing human civilisation. But it is not a psychopathy – when predatory human hunters return to our den, they become civilised (civilians) once more to share out the spoils that nurture us.
After thousands of generations of our obligate predatory behaviour and the sexual division of labour, hunting is built deep into the “male” (objective) side of the human mind and the biology of men – it really is “in our blood”. Hunting is a deep-rooted passion, driven by evolution, and “Sport hunting” (hunting that is not obligatory) is the exercise and celebration of its importance to masculinity and human survival. For those with a “male” mind who desire and experience it, successful hunting, especially high-risk hunting, offers a huge reward – an evolutionary rush, similar to the terrifying exhilaration of surviving uncivilised, close military combat. Success is accompanied by an intense surge of excitement, emotion and deep satisfaction that is unimaginable to “female-minded” minded, nurturing civilians. It is the success, not the killing, that is rewarded.
Why?
Because evolution decrees it – if hunting (step 1) is successful, the supply of resources increases and the den of human civilisation (step 2) grows bigger. Human “nurture” – the standard of living indoors – rises. Put the other way round, the higher the human standard of living, the more we take from nature (and the more living things we inevitably kill in the process). After long periods of peace and plenty, civilians, well-fed and safe inside our nurturing and protective den of civilisation, grow insulated from our uncivilised predatory behaviour outside – they enjoy all their indoor animal, vegetable and mineral resources with the blood washed off. They don’t need to hunt – they are all civilised, nurturing and entirely kindly humans.
Completely insulated from evolution’s tough side, some civilised humans begin to argue subjectively against hunting because hunting is uncivilised. They don’t realise that all primary industries are, in fact, hunters who go out to get stuff from nature for us, nor do many deep civilians realise that their own anti-hunting sentiment is a product of high human consumption.
You won’t find any anti-hunters and animal rights campaigners in poor refugee camps or among hunter-gatherers – they cannot afford such well-fed philosophical luxury. Like civilisation itself, their bodies need feeding before their minds can enjoy such elegant speculation.
Which brings us to the modern, abstract, civilised, indoor ideas of animal rights, vegans and anti-hunting campaigners in general. After thousands of generations of hunting, these modern anti-hunters have been around for only one or two generations, so they are hardly the norm. Unable to imagine hunting, let alone imagine themselves as a predator and part of real, uncivilised evolutionary nature outdoors, they rage from their indoor, civilian point of view, even though it is irrelevant to nature outside and more than a tad hypocritical.
Whether the anti-hunting comes from fundraisers’ propaganda or religious dogma, it makes no difference – it is a human minority belief, not a reality in nature. Without hunting, we wouldn’t even be here.
Ben’s vegan idea that animals are individuals rather than a resource is one-sided, too. Animals are no doubt individual, but he ignores the fact that animals have also been a resource of our food, clothing, shelter and implements for the whole of human history – animals are individual, but they are also individual things, not persons. They have no rights – ask any antelope in the jaws of a lion or songbird impaled on the talons of a hawk.
As a human, you can give consideration (welfare) to your chosen animals if you so wish, but that is a gift from you, not something they own (rights), and welfare depends on what you can afford. It has nothing to do with sentience, genes, personhood or any right to life – evolution doesn’t give a hoot for any of them.
Only humans, born in the human den of civilisation, have human rights, part of our nurturing shelter from nature’s violence outside. The other animals do not have similar rights – they are a resource we use, directly or indirectly, including pushing them off their land for our cities and roads. Even Ben’s lovely organic farm has pushed thousands of creatures off his land, effectively a death sentence for them. The land can only carry so many, so animals will die in the ensuing competition that will spring up elsewhere.
Ben’s vegan claim that ethics have a part to play in wildlife conservation is equally erroneous – ethics are an indoor human thing, and to extend them over nature would be an act of civilised colonialism. Nature works largely by evolutionary competition. Over-consumption is a matter of applying common sense, not ethics, a separate argument.
His claim that a plant-based diet would save (and more efficiently use) more than half of all agricultural land (presently used for feeding animals) is as correct as it is a pipe-dream, because people all over the world eat increasing amounts of meat as living standards improve. They do so because we omnivores evolved to eat mainly plants and only a little meat and sugars, if and when we could find or catch them. We are, however, programmed by thousands of years of need to value and want them, and the desire for meat protein means hunting animals in outside nature or raising them on farms. Meat is therefore often considered “male”, suggesting that vegetables and sugars might be considered “female”, a further resonance with evolution’s two steps in popular culture.
Ben claimed that natural predators do a better job of controlling wildlife populations, overlooking that they predate us, too – the reason why large predators have disappeared wherever humans congregate. We invented human civilisation to avoid predators and civilisation doesn’t tolerate them, regardless of modern eco-piety. Civilisation nurtures humans, not predators. His 100 acres of organic farm would be very different if visited by a herd of elephants or a pride of lions, and, once such beasts are removed, we humans have to manage conservation matters.
Like many civilians, Ben believes that hunting is not conservation, and eco-tourism can replace hunting revenue, but eco-tourists only go to popular eco-tourist places with easy access, amenities and lots of human-habituated animals to look at. Hunters go to remote places with fewer, secretive animals. Mass eco-tourism also has huge infrastructural and carbon costs. Either way, conserving wildlife costs money, and conservation, especially in Africa, relies on both income streams – the reason why wildlife increases, sometimes by 1000s of per cent, in regulated hunting areas – and each has its appropriate application, so why cut off one of them?
Sadly, like many modern vegans with confirmation bias, Ben fails to see the big picture – that his kindly philosophy is born of modern human consumption. He can afford to “give away” half of his farm to re-wilding and, in the process, reduce by half his ability to produce and pay taxes. He sells his reduced volume of produce in farmers’ markets where prices are higher than many can afford, and his high-paying, high-living-standard customers are themselves an increasing drain on nature, too. He is happy to accept government subsidies to plant his trees and wild flowers, but his farm doesn’t produce the surplus needed to pay for a modern infrastructure, government, national defence, or, to be unkind, enough surplus to pay green subsidies to organic, vegan farmers, let alone foreign conservation schemes. That money has to come from elsewhere, and, at the bottom line, it all comes from resources taken from nature.
Ben is concerned by “the biggest biodiversity crisis in history”, but apparently unaware that human civilisation and its immense consumption of resources are what allows us to be kind and nurturing. That well-funded kindness and civilised behaviour – his own existential foundation – is what is gobbling up natural biodiversity at an alarming rate, yet he looks around for a more obvious scapegoat, one that doesn’t match his civilised, nurturing perspective. His civilised mind turns a normal evolutionary drive and passion for hunting into “killing for fun”, animals into “persons” and a demand that our den’s indoor “no violence”, civilised rules must be extended to colonise the whole of nature.
Ben is undoubtedly a wonderful, considerate, extremely civilised man with a nurturing perspective and opinions that he is, of course, as welcome to express under freedom of speech as they are necessary for civilised indoor human behaviour. But he doesn’t realise that he is a symptom and part of the problem, not the solution.
Hunters inhabit another world.
John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa. John is the co-author of Dear Townies with the Editor and his book, “Animal Rights, complete and utter bullsh*t” both available on Amazon.