Sunday Confessions: Caring is Creepy?

Forgive my shameless thieving of a Shins song for my title, but I felt like it fit what I was thinking about today.

The worldwide shock and horror this week of the illegal poaching (that’s KILLING, not “taking” as the hunter so un-eloquently put it) of a lion known as Cecil was pretty universally supported on social media in terms of  ”Yes it’s wrong, obviously, what this idiot did.” But once the dust settled a bit, it didn’t take long for a mini backlash to begin. Everything from “Animals are important but there’s way worse things happening to people in the world” – yeah, no duh. It doesn’t make this particular situation irrelevant though, does it? As Ricky Gervais said to someone who trotted out this line of thinking this week:

People who tweet me things like "ending war is more important than animals", please, be my guest. Get on with it. I support you all the way.

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) July 31, 2015

Of course it’s easy to mock silly things like the woman who speaks to dead animals coming out saying she had communed with Cecil, but that led to a quick procession of trickle down mockery in my feed  - “Thank god I can stop pretending to care about that” being the underlying tone of many posts. “Animals shouldn’t be anthromorphized” is a quick fall back when defending apathy towards a wild animal being killed or otherwise mistreated. To which I say…really?! Who among us has not anthromorphized a beloved pet, attributing human emotions to it, naming it with pride and affection, treating it like a family member – no, a wild animal is not the same, but I for one do not think that regarding them with thoughtfulness and wishing they were afforded dignity and respect by the human race is such a bad thing.

I have a history of getting too emotionally involved with animals, be it following animal studies (the black bear study in Ely, MN, in which viewers worldwide were able to follow the birth of black bear cubs on their den cams and their subsequent activities as recorded by Dr. Lynn Rogers) that end in tears when hunters illegally killed several  research bears – which didn’t get nearly the press Cecil did, by the way, but I don’t begrudge Cecil. Because if one story about an animal being poached can inspire change in the world I only see that as a good thing. 

I cannot help myself from caring and wanting to do whatever small thing I can, so if my petitions irk you (honestly I keep them to a bare minimum these days, feel free to mute me) so be it. I re-watched Blackfish last week when it was on BBC Three again, not intending to, but filled with the same feeling of hopeless outrage I had when I first saw it. It feels like we get a brief surge of outrage and then inevitable apathy when faced with injustice, unless we are to become lifelong advocates it’s hard to know what level of activism is making any kind of worthwhile impact. I sign petitions, I have even written letters to various congress people and local authorities about the research bears, which a few years ago I might have thought only a "real" animal activist would do.

I do sometimes force myself to take a step back, I got in over my head last year trying to save dogs in NYC’s kill shelters, because it’s frankly disgusting what little shot they get at adoption. We’re talking days after intake and then they are put down. For a few months I pledged small sums of money to pull dogs, along with hundreds of others, and in many cases it works, because small charities need help coming up with the fees to pull them. It was a wonderful feeling to think I’d made a difference, to see them rescued, but so heart-breaking at how many were still lost. I would cry whenever one was put down that I had been rooting for. I commiserated with other women online who had been doing this for YEARS, and I somehow knew I just couldn’t keep it up. And I still feel awful about it.

What saddened me was how few people were willing to share a dog or pledge a few measly dollars. I felt like sharing costs nothing, and even if there is some tiny chance someone you’ve never met sees that animal and decides to save it, then surely it’s worth a shot? I really hoped that a trickle down effect could happen. I know that people must pick and choose their charities these days,that activism is not cool, it is often depressing and makes us think about sad things. I get why people don't get involved. It's easier to just get worked up over one incident and then forget about it entirely the next week I guess. 

At any rate, I do think it is important to use our voices and actions where things happen that are absolutely unjust, especially to the defenseless. In Cecil’s case, the fact that he was a powerful beast capable of mauling a person to death has perhaps led to the “Well, it’s sad but ya know…” feelings coming up more quickly than had he been an adorable fluffy creature. But Cecil was defenseless. He was not used to being preyed upon or hunted, he lived in a protected animal park. Not that any animal deserves or can adapt to hunting, but animals who are used to humans not shooting at them are the low hanging fruit of the hunting world. It is no different than if the dentist had gone to his local zoo and killed an example of “big game” to mount with the rest of his trophies. Being in a more exotic locale does not change this basic fact. So no, you won’t hear me making jokes about it or being quick to stress that other things matter more. Because if we stop caring about things like this, if we must weigh and measure injustice by merit of its general effect on the masses, we will quickly lose the thing that makes us human.