Beatrix Potter, the famous author of small picture books for children, was born in England in the second half of the nineteenth century. All her books were about animals, many of whom she personally experienced in her life. She cared about the lives of animals, as well as the natural landscape. In her adult life she bought over 4,000 acres in order to protect them from development.
Though she was a woman way ahead of her time, and a woman to be admired, she was also a woman who was a product of her time….I should say, a product of the larger consciousness of her time. How so? If you go back and read all her delightful stories of the bunnies and the mice and the piggies, she portrays them as she has said in her own words as the well-behaved ones.
But…. she wrote one book titled The Tale of Mr. Todd. This story is about a fox and a badger. She introduces this one book by writing “I have made many books about well-behaved people. Now, for a change, I am going to make a story about two disagreeable people.” And it just so happens that these “two disagreeable people” are both carnivores.
The consciousness toward carnivores that we hold within ourselves as a society today has been in in our societal consciousness for a long time.
AND WE JUST KEEP PASSING IT ON FROM ONE GENERATION TO THE NEXT.
Until …. we make a shift…a leap…. and re-create our consciousness toward wild carnivores. As long as we see them as the DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE, we will continue to act toward them accordingly.
