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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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All of nature listens to gut instinct, but humans often ignore that voice

By David McElroy · October 7, 2018

I’ve been watching this squirrel outside my bedroom window Sunday afternoon as he gathers food to prepare for the coming winter months.

He scurries around on the ground, looking for nuts worth collecting. Once he finds another prize, he rushes back to a tree and climbs to another larger tree nearby. He disappears into the thick branches and leaves — so I can’t see exactly where his hiding place is — but I can picture it filling up with nuts like the one you see here.

He’s cautious. When he hears a noise, he freezes until he’s sure the danger’s gone. Then he goes back to work.

Watching this squirrel gather food for the winter — something I’ve seen squirrels do ever since I was old enough to pay attention to them — leaves me thinking again about how every part of nature has instincts about what it ought to do and be. But how do they know what to do?

How does the squirrel know that winter is coming? How does he know that the plentiful food available now will become scarce? How does he know to collect food to be prepared for those months?

Squirrels don’t go to school to be educated in life skills. They don’t have libraries with the collected knowledge of the squirrel world from which to learn. They don’t get lectures from parents who who made mistakes. It’s far simpler for them.

They just listen to a gut instinct — a voice in Nature which allows them to live as they were intended to live.

Every animal does this. Every plant does it, too. They’re not conscious of us, but they wouldn’t question it if they could. They just do what they were created to do.

This leaves me wondering — not for the first time — why humans are the only creatures on the planet who have learned to set aside that voice of instinct. And it makes me wonder what we’ve lost by learning to listen to friends and parents and teachers and media instead. What have we lost as we’ve stopped listening to our instincts?

We’re so sophisticated that we have narratives to explain why the squirrels and birds and trees do what they’re programmed to do. We pat ourselves on the back for understanding that evolution has rewarded the plants and animals which happen to do the right things. We’re so proud for understanding that this instinct is just the result of pure dumb luck of descending from creatures who happened to do the right thing.

We think we’re so sophisticated that our reason and our culture override that voice. We ignore the inner voice that tells us what we need. We eventually forget it’s even there. In time, we’re pretty much deaf to it.

We listen to media tell us what we need. Advertising tells us what’s wrong with us and what we need to fix about our looks. It tells us what products we need to buy to signal to others what sort of people we are. We listen to our friends and family about what we ought to value.

But for some reason, society is getting sicker. Individuals are more unhappy and more disconnected, despite attaining more and more of what the media tells us to attain. People kill themselves at alarming rates, because they no longer want to live in this culture of plenty. They have money and possessions, but they feel empty inside — and they don’t know why.

What if this squirrel is smarter than you and I are? What if he’s happy and satisfied listening to what his instinct tells him to be — when you and I are so concerned about everything else that we’ve forgotten to listen to our own inner voice?

You do the things you do every day because your culture has trained you, not because it serves your real needs. We all do things we don’t want to do — and ignore our real needs — because we’re listening to culture instead of our inner voice.

Your inner voice knows what you need. It tells you who you need, what love you need, what really matters. Same for me. On some level, we know what we ought to be and what we ought to be doing and who we ought to be with.

I’m glad I’m not a squirrel. I appreciate the ability to think abstractly and question everything. I’m thankful we’re smart enough to build homes and provide ourselves with heat and air conditioning. There’s a lot that our ability to think has brought us.

But I fear we’ve lost a lot, too. I fear we’ve lost the ability to follow what matters most to our ultimate success. I know that inner voice is still there, though. We can learn to hear it again if we’ll open our hearts and really listen.

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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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