NO MORE BULLFIGHTS!

I hate any form of cruelty. I hate hunting.
-- Arthur C. Clarke –

A number of years ago I read a fascinating science fiction novel called Childhood’s End.
It is written by the master of the genre, Arthur C. Clarke, and originally published in the pre-lunar-landing world of 1953.
It is still in print and some critics consider it to be the best science fiction novel of all time. Of course, stalwart devotees of Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, or Isaac Asimov will argue that such accolades are debatable.
Several of Clarke’s themes and/or motifs in Childhood’s End continue to resonate with me, and I want to focus on one of those today.
It concerns the idea of animal cruelty. Or, more correctly, human cruelty to animals.
In the novel (this will be nowhere near a detailed synopsis of the book) extraterrestrials come to earth and hover in their huge space ships over principal cities. They station themselves, suspended fifty kilometers above the world’s capital cities. Think of the movie Independence Day, only bigger, and even more determined! A nuclear missile, fired at one ship, simply disappears. These aliens mean business. They didn’t travel across the universe to learn how to play Yahtzee!
The pilots and inhabitants of these ships (called The Overlords) are heard, but not seen. In the initial decades of their hoverment (my word), they speak to the earth only once and that is to announce that they are now in charge. For the most part, the Overlords' dictates are expressed by their chosen human messenger, Stormgren, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. From their ominous position they begin to institute their ideals of earthly reform. All of mankind’s space exploration is to cease. Mankind is ordered to mend its ways, to become more cosmically hospitable. National rivalries are abolished, trade barriers dissolved. One World is made a reality under the jurisdiction of a truly powerful United Nations.
They present the world with a device to see events in the past, proving every religion wrong. They offer a cure for all diseases. All in all, the alien intentions seem quite beneficial to mankind as a whole, that is, until their desire to posess all of the children is revealed.
But I will leave that part of the story for you to discover, should you desire to read the book. It is a wild ride.
Now, in the midst of these planetary changes (and this is what I wanted to focus on) the aliens introduce one really interesting new policy.
The all too human sport of cruelty to animals is universally outlawed.
This is illustrated in the novel when Spain is asked to stop the sport of bull-fighting. Cruelty to animals is to be ipso-facto abolished.
Spain does not want to comply. And so what happens (you are not supposed to ask HOW it happens)... what happens is that when Spain ignores the ultimatum, well, it makes the next bull-fight very interesting indeed.
What happens is that whenever the bull is stabbed, the people in the stadium, as well as those watching on television, experience the same pain as is being experienced by the animal.
When the bull is stabbed, the whole stadium cries out in pain!
Hmmm.... how long do you think it takes for mankind to catch on to that little tidbit of revolutionary change huh?
Exactly.
Not long at all.
I remember reading this section of the story and being incredibly fascinated with its concept. Remember now, we are talking about cruelty induced upon the animal world for SPORT!
I am as voraciously carnivorous as any other non-vegan dude.
I want steak, hamburger, pepperoni, and chicken as much as the next guy! But killing chicken in a humane fashion so that we can have McNuggets is (in my opinion) quite different than kicking a chicken for fun or throwing it against the wall of the barn!
Here is my declaration: I am supremely against all manner of cruelty inflicted upon the animal world in the guise of it being “fun” or “good sport.”
In fact, I am all for the alien program to be introduced.
Whatever pain you inflict upon an animal (including another human being).... you feel it yourself!
Admittedly, I have not always been quite so adamant about this idea.
In my ridiculous youthful years, I killed many animals for the sake of fun. Especially frogs and grasshoppers. Locusts were my specialty. I will not outline for you the sadistic tortures I devised for these creatures.
And spiders.
I even immortalized my propensity towards this form of mental illness in a poem, written years ago, after my reformation....

human

i looked up.
they had made their webs
in the rafters,
these two silent architects.
so i knocked them into a foil pan
where they lightly clattered.
exoskeletons, spinning
and disoriented.
so i sprayed aerosol on them
in great amounts, until
swimming to the center of the pan
they found each other,
grappled,
and broke their own necks.
i heard it.
two faint snaps.
i did not look up
at the empty webs, but
went my way.
and i am human.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005

Perhaps it is a cry for absolution.
Am I proud of this poem?
No, for it is based on a true event.
Even though I don’t know if spiders really have necks, I know that these ones killed each other in some Greco-Roman sort of way, and that I heard something when they did it.
Why did I do this thing?
Why are we like this, and especially so when we are young[er]?

The other day at work we were having our morning coffee break out at the picnic table. I guess we were sort of regaling each other with personal animal cruelty stories, you could say.
One of my co-workers described how he and some other kids used to hide out in this one churchyard and wait for the bats to fly out of this belfry sort of thing. When they did, these guys would bat them out of the air with tennis rackets. The bats would then go spinning to the ground all over the place, all bent up and wretched and dead or near-dead.
I used to dangle frogs over the red hot flywheel of a smoking hot lawnmower motor, and then drop them in there so they would spin and fry at about ten million RPM’s!
I once picked up a jagged stone and loaded it into a slingshot and promptly sent a rather innocent-ish robin into a slow, agonizing experience of death.
What the hell is wrong with someone who feels inclined to do such a thing?
And the one emphasized premise in Childhood’s End really begs a subsequent question, and it is this:
How long would we continue to do such things if we ourselves (even one time) experienced the pain that we are inflicting upon creatures of whom it is equally in our power to treat kindly?
Hmmm.... I am all for the alien policy. I really am.
Is it that we think animals do not experience pain?
Or is it that we feel (as if we are their Overlords, hovering over them) we have a right to torture them, from time to time?
Why do we possess such innate fascination with the pain experienced by a fellow creature that we will stoop to the position of being the perpetrator of this pain?

It is one of the few regrettable mysteries of being human.
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