As a parent you sometimes have to decide how much information to give your kids. I’m never dishonest; I always tell them the truth, but the goal is to help them understand the world around them. Even if it’s factual; information at the wrong time, or presented improperly, can have an undesirable effect. If a four year old asks where babies come from you shouldn’t pop in a VHS of “Shaving Ryan’s Privates,” and when a 6 year old asks you what’s going to happen to his deceased Grandma’s body after the undertaker finishes shoveling dirt over her casket that’s not the time for a slide show on the role of bacteria, planaria and small rodents in breaking down human flesh. If he’s 7 maybe, but at 6 you tell him Grandma’s body is just fine and try to change the subject.
The Littlest Firefly is an eight year old girl. She is currently reading the Disney Fairies series of books. Most of these books are written from an overly childish, environmental view. I have noticed that a lot of the “little girl” canon of literature centers on this theme; evil humans are doing something bad to the environment and kids or magical creatures save the day with pixie dust and rainbows. Now I don’t agree with that philosophy, and I find these books somewhat absurd, but “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is absurd and so is “If I Ran the Circus,” but I enjoyed those books immensely as a young boy. So I bite my tongue, help her with the vocabulary and console myself with the knowledge that she is reading, and reading is a good thing. A lecture on the negative return on investment and downstream environmental impact of Tinker Bell’s latest project isn’t appropriate at this stage of the game. I say to myself, “Self, she’s just a little girl and this is exactly how a little girl should look at the world.”
So that’s fine. She is right where she should be at that age and as she gets older she’ll get more information about positive and negative impacts, the benefits of culling plants and even animals, sustainability, predation, animal borne disease, etc… But it wasn’t until I spent time reading books aimed at 8 year old girls that I realized that many, many people never learn those lessons. There are many adults in our world functioning with an 8 year old girl’s view of nature.
It makes Ashley Judd sad to see a dead wolf. Has Ashley ever lived…
anywhere where there were real, wild wolves? Wolves that kill livestock? Does she know they kill humans? Does Ashley Judd get sad when she sees a dead lamb? A dead baby? Does she know wolves kill and eat lambs and babies?
Many Australians recently died in an immense wild fire. If that region had managed its brush better the fire would have likely been less severe, or perhaps not even begun. But it makes some people sad to see trees and bushes “harmed” so those who wanted to keep their land clear were prohibited from doing so. I wonder how much carbon the wildfires released into the air?
Many choices adults have to make regarding the environment, health, business… don’t have a pretty option. Sometimes the right thing to do is ugly. It took me a lot of years to understand that hunters are the best friend wildlife in the U.S. have. I grew up in the city. I’ve never hunted. My immature, 8 year old girl understanding of hunting led me to think it harmed animals. It wasn’t until I started looking at statistics and data that I learned that if a species wants to ensure its survival the single, best thing it can do is make sure it tastes good to humans, or they are fun for humans to stalk and kill.
I’m not surprised by Ashley Judd. She has never had to grow up and has the mind of an 8 year old girl. That’s her prerogative. The problem arises when the people in charge, the people responsible for doing the right thing, listen to 8 year old girls. Sarah Palin grew up on the frontier; the fringe of the wilderness. Sarah Palin hunts. She governs people who literally need to hunt to survive and she knows the harm wolves can do to civilization when allowed to grow beyond a number that the local environment can sustain. Sarah Palin is an adult and she makes adult decisions. Bo Bendtsen, the Mayor of Arthur’s Creek where the Australian wild fires killed several of his constituents… Bo thinks like an 8 year old girl. That’s O.K. That’s Bo’s right. However, when people like Bo and Ashley overestimate their understading of nature and the environment and work to inflict their immature views on the rest of us, that’s when people and animals really get hurt.
Rufus you are awesome. Nature is good and evil. The goodness even comes from what could be construed by a dogooder as evil, like a Wolf pulling down a Bull Elk, or a Moose calf. Or a hunter putting cross hairs on a fat doe culling the herd and getting his venison for the year. My Dad, the hunter always said look the Wolves gotta eat, so do we. He was right. Humans have to be humans. We are aware of ourselves. We understand our limitations and we know what has to be done. You have to accept life as it is in order to be a grown up. Right?
“Humans have to be humans.” Very true. I find whenever someone avoids their role, even when they believe they are doing it out of compassion, the results are almost always worse than if they had been true to their nature. When a boss fails to fire someone who is unable to do their job satisfactorily, when a parent fails to scold and punish a child who is misbehaving, when a teacher fails to give an unsatisfactory grade to a student who is underachieving, when a coach fails to be frank with an athlete about his or her abilities… These are all roles that require maturity and maturity requires doing what’s best and right, regardless of the short term pain. Believe me, that old joke about the parent about to spank the child and saying, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you” is true. It is one of the hardest things for a parent to do, but true love is hard. If you love the environment you take a responsible role in managing it. If you love animals you take a responsible role in managing them.
Sarah Palin cares more about wolves than Ashley Judd will ever understand. My guess is Ashley Judd cares an awful lot about Ashley Judd.
Very well done Rufus. Like you, I’m a city boy who has never been hunting – although I have fired quite a few firearms through my life, and enjoy shooting (badly) when I can. I honestly don’t think I could hunt. Hell, I’ll come slamming to a halt if a squirrel darts in front of my car. But I’m also a proud carnivore, so I have no moral objection to hunting. Hell, some of the best, salt-of-the-earth people that I’ve ever met are hunters.
We need to get the word “conservationist” back into vogue. That’s what TR envisioned, not the teary guilt-fest that is modern environmentalism, but a love and appreciation for natural wonder and the preservation of it in unison with mankind’s achievements.
Rufus, don’t worry about those books having any lasting effect on your daughter. While they may be entertaining to her, second graders still respond to parental feedback and influence more than they do to what they read. On a daily basis, my students start off every other sentence with, “My Mom said …” or, “My Dad says ..” and then of course, they stutter for 30 seconds before they can form a coherent sentence. Besides, with all the Disney cookie cutter stuff out there in past, present, and future, it’ll all just fade away when she comes across something more visually and mentally stimulating. One book that stuck with me since kindergarten or first grade is Where the Wild Things Are. As a book illustrator, it’s still a favorite. But it stuck because it sparked my imagination and wasn’t cookie cutter fodder. The book’s message (a good one BTW) didn’t dawn on me until much later, I just the book was cool.
Michael Crichton wrote a great speech about how they screwed up the whole ecosystem of Yellowstone years ago, because they thought if they got rid of the predators (wolves), there would be more pretty deer and elk, to park and stare at. Whatever way you look at it, the dogooders do bad when they don’t know what they’re doing.
+JMJ+
The picture is perfect! Little girls might as well be Little Ponies living in Happy Valley and using the Rainbow of Light to keep evil at bay. (The cartoons of the 80s got so much right, even though they were really glorified toy commercials.) You’re correct, Rufus, that the trouble comes when they’re no longer eight years old and they still think that way.