He's a Strange Bird

I have often wondered why some people seem to place so much emphasis on continuity and conformity.

Autistic people are often ignored, excluded, and treated in the harshest ways because our behavior is misunderstood and doesn't fit "normal" expectations.

Some may already be aware of the unorthodox way that some (just some) use when hunting in the name of sport.

What I would consider "the good ole boy" approach to (what was once considered nothing more than) providing ones family with food sometimes includes dulling the senses with alcohol and spending more money on weapons, gear, and having the carcus stuffed to display in their home than they would ever have to spend on buying alternatives to this meat.

While I can't say that I understand any sport very well, this "sport" called hunting (as it done in this manner) is the most irrational one to me.

The attitude of these hunters is, however, is something I have been exposed to most of my life. While these behaviors are quite repulsive to me, I have studied their habits as an animal of prey would study their most common preditor.

While this example may seem extreme, one would need to have been the object of such preditory behavior to really understand.

My analysis of the motivation for this behavior is that while it is not the same as the fear of starving, or exactly the same as the fear of being attacked, it still stems from fear.

Most people who display reckless aggression (based on what I've learned from those whom I've observed) have also been targets of reckless aggression.

It seems that instead of learning from their experience of being the target of reckless preditors, some twisted pathological thinking drives them to believe that their self preservation is dependent on blending in with other preditors, even after they have witnessed the price these preditors pay for their behavior.

There is a big price to be paid by the individual as well as by the entire human race when someone tries to selfishly obtain the fulfillment of their needs at the expense of someone else's needs. Sometimes the individual doesn't even seem to learn from the consequences of their mistakes after paying the price for them again and again. Sometimes nothing seems to deter them from trying to preserve this way of life that was taught to them as a means to survival.

One of my favorite scenes from any movie came from the movie "Powder". The scene shows the main character, (whose power was derived from his sensitive and empathetic nature) providing a hunter with the ability to sense the emotion of a deer that the hunter had just shot.

The hunter had become so unempathetic and calous, that sensing this emotion was over whelming beyond his wildest imagination.

This lack of sophistication is also often shown by by U.S. leaders. While their reckless aggression is usually carried out on other humans, the U.S. vice president was recently involved in a hunting accident where he mistakingly shot another man in the face while attempting to aim at a bird. It should of course be noted that the vice president said, " I'm sorry."

My analysis is that the fear involved in this "good ole boy" attitude seems to include the of breaking of tradition. Of course, the preservation of these traditions also turns this into a cycle that is difficult to break.

Isn't it interesting that it was also a cycle that described the life of the main character in the movie "Powder"?

It was the characters sensitive nature that made him different in the first place, and instead of working to be more like him (which would have saved them a great deal of fear, anxiety, and the punishment that comes from acting on these negative emotions in reckless ways) they instead chose to exclude him which perpetuated the very cycle that imprisoned them in the first place.