Derek's Blog on everything and everything else...

By Derek Hendrikz

Unlike my regular posts on strategic leadership and strategy formulation this one is about whether or whether not humans should be allowed to hunt. Of course this blog is highly fuelled and motivated by the recent international outcry for Cecil the lion killed in Zimbabwe by the American Dr. Walter Palmer.

Shortly after reading about the killing of Cecil, I saw an article about how chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda, are currently hunting the red colobus monkey to extinction. This immediately triggered the thought that hunting is a natural phenomenon. It is our instinct to hunt and kill! This is how we have been obtaining energy for thousands of years and its how natural selection separates strong from the weak…

Now, this brings another question to mind, which is whether there is a difference between hunting for power and hunting for food… Many arguments can be put forth in this regard. We for instance know that chimpanzees kill in order to gain territory, thus humans are not the only specie that kills for power. Also, most hunting groups would claim that they eat the animals that they hunt, and that this justifies their killing. Thus, one would be able argue favourably on a number of reasons to kill.

I do not intent to argue for or against the moral or practical justifications to kill living beings. Reality is that our material world is one where death brings life. Energy needs to consume energy to evolve and manifest. This is the story of life…

There, however, is another view here. For a moment, let go of the argument for or against hunting and entertain the hypothesis of a direct correlation between why you kill and your level of consciousness. During the early stages of human evolution we had to kill to survive. Our superior intellectual evolution enabled us to work in teams and kill with speed. This evolved to a stage where our ability to kill led to an ability to conquer. We were very much where chimpanzees are today. The reason why chimpanzees are able to hunt the red colobus monkey to extinction is because of their superior intellectual ability. Should we stop these chimp tribes to do that? Of course not, since doing this would directly interfere with their evolutionary process. As the superior specie on this planet we should allow other species to evolve and to consciously awaken. If this results in the extinction of the red colobus monkey then so be it!

Now before becoming hunting happy, ask yourself whether you are still where the chimps are? Humans have evolved. We do not have to obtain our food in the way we have done before. We now have identified and domesticated animals specifically to serve as food. We regulate the killing of such animals and we have created an organised system where we divide roles and responsibilities to serve a variety of purposes….

Are we fully evolved? Now this is not much of a question since the world is riddled with poverty, pollution and extinction. Our need for killing has not disappeared. Nope, we simply sifted it out of awareness to abattoirs and corporations… Human beings are facing the same evolutionary threshold that chimps face. As chimpanzees are evolving to a place of conquer and kill, humans are now on the threshold of evolving to a place of compassion and responsibility. If we do not succeed on this evolutionary step, we, without the slightest doubt in my mind, will orchestrate our own extension.

As humans we need to move to place where we take responsibility on how we populate this planet, how we consume its resources and how we show compassion to those and that which have not reached our level of intelligence. This will require discipline in what we kill, how we kill, how much we kill, how many we allow to populate, how we teach our children, how we respect the elderly, how we reorganise ourselves, etc…

The outcry against hunting as a sport and protection of species is more than animal benevolence. It is an unconscious battle of conscious awakening. Our narcissistic self-importance and indulgent self-righteous behaviour has to end otherwise we are doomed as a specie. I truly hope that humans will evolve to place where the need to eat meat will disappear, where we show respect to the energy that we consume and where we realise that we are just a small part of a big system – a system that will get along perfectly well without our existence!!! Having not (even remotely) been able to reach such a state myself, I fully realise that his will take time. Time which we do not have much of… Thus I fully support the current outcry and rebellion against hunting, pollution, animal cruelty, protection of our oceans or any other endeavour where disrespect to our host is challenged…

Now, I’m not directly saying that where you hunt as a sport you have missed out on thousands of years of mental evolution or that you are on the level of a current day chimpanzee, but I do pre-suppose a strong possibility that this indeed might be the case…

© 01 June 2015

1. Why would any normal person want warm milk with their coffee?
2. 'Majority knows best' - how does one prove this mathematically?
3. What happened to the other sock?
4. Why do none of the environmental or sustainable development conferences ever directly deal with the issue that 90% of the sustainability, environmental and economic problems on this planet stem from the fact that humans are allowed to breed uncontrollably and without apology???
5. Why, in most communities, is ganja (marijuana) seen as evil and alcohol socially acceptable?
6. Woman?
7. Where did it all begin and what exists beyond the universe?

As we enter the last few years of the 21st century’s first decade; I often pause in amazement on how things have changed!! Isn’t it amazing that I can open and lock my car @ a 20-metre distance by just pressing a button; or hook up with dozens of people on FB whom I wouldn’t even recognise on the street; or being out of the country and talking to family on Skype, without paying a cent to any phone network; and having a cell phone that is also a DVD player, HI-Fi; video recorder and camera!!! WoW, must tell you being a 70’s / 80’s child – things have certainly changed, especially when your kids have no idea who the Rolling Stones are or that Michael Jackson is actually black. Now – my grandfather was born in 1918 – can you imagine how this new world must seem to him. When he was a kid, there weren’t even cars, running toilets or electricity!!

Yet, with all changing so fast, the thing that stands out most is how replaceable everything has become. From cars, cell phones to relationships – it seems that everything (things and people) has a life span. On average a new car is driven for three to four years, a cell phone and computer has an average life span of two-years, and the average marriage last’s for about five years!!!

Now, the question (to my mind) is whether this is a collective mind-set, a psychological phenomenon, or is it just about money??? If more people had more money, would there for instance be a higher divorce rate? It seems that we have entered a world where money has to be spent on a daily basis – or else we face economic collapse. It is to the interest of law firms that we get divorced, it is to the interest of pharmaceutical companies that we have to stay sick and to the interest of religious organisations that the world stay loaded with sin… On a deeper level, could this be our inability to evolve spiritually – there seems plenty of evidence that great spiritual leaders (not religious leaders) had very little need for material possession or constant renewal of possession and relationships! Is our paradigm of ‘everything has to be renewed and replaced’ a manifestation of unconscious anxiety to ‘kill time’ in absence of higher purpose???

I've been involved with South African diversity training & consultation for more than a decade now. In most diversity workshops we deal with many aspects such as race, gender, social class, disability, etc, etc.

Yet, the hottest issue within South Africa still seems to be the tension between black and white! It just seems impossible to cool down this hot potato. What needs to happen for Black and White to co-exist peacefully? White people are leaving South Africa by their thousands - their reason being 'high crime'. Yet, I've interviewed many of these ‘leaving’ citizens, and it seems (to me at least) that their real motivation is resistance towards affirmative action and black empowerment.

Black people on the other hand are struggling to move beyond the apartheid era and after 19-years of democracy still blames white people for poor living conditions within the country. Our whole economic development seems to be based on 'how white I am or how black you are!'

What needs to happen here?