Articles – The first step|
Articles – The first step |
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Histoires pour enfants Divers Regain (journal de la Confédération Paysanne) |
Everyone knows that humans started off as just sophisticated monkeys, and one of their sophistications was the ability to hunt animals bigger than themselves. Among other things, that meant horses. Bad news for horses, obviously. But bad news, too, for humans, as the Incas found out when Pizarro and his horses arrived. By exterminating horses, the South American Indians effectively exterminated themselves! Back in prehistory, horses soon figured out that humans had chanced upon something that would make them immensely powerful and immensely dangerous: some people say it was language, others say it was the ability to use tools, and others say it was Eve's apple. All of them are right in their way. Anyway, horses realized the magnitude of the threat to their survival, and they decided to act. (Pity the message never made it across the Atlantic!) Basically, they bargained thus: we'll help you pursue your mission in the world (which we charitably imagine to involve unravelling the mysteries of the universe), and in exchange, you'll allow us to pursue ours (which you rather naively imagine to involve mowing the planet Earth). And so it was: horses single-hoofedly propelled human progress in all areas of endeavour over a period of seven thousand years. They did get to eat their grass, as promised, but their lives were not always easy. So very sensibly they opted out of the contract once they had propelled human progress to a point at which hunting had become a minority sport addressing minority game that did not include themselves. Well, that's one theory. Another says that since the human conception of endeavour all too readily encompasses military might, horses opted out of the contract when the risk of getting a hunter's bullet fell below the risk of getting a soldier's. Either way, horses nudged us into inventing something that could replace them —the internal combustion engine— and then prepared for a long and comfortable retirement. Things could have stayed that way, but seven thousand years is a very long time: more than long enough for some kind of affection to set in. And, unlikely as it might seem, humans can occasionally give cause for affection; when they're not too busy killing each other or stealing from each other, some of them do find time to set about unravelling the mysteries of the universe. And others even write books, play music, paint pictures, and otherwise pursue beauty in its many and diverse forms. So out of sheer fondness for the likeable —albeit hidden— side of human nature, horses decided they should renew their ancient bond with man. (Again, that's just the naive theory; a rather cynical alternative suggests that horses were getting worried about humans' alarming tendency to replace all the grass on the planet with concrete and other inedible, unattractive stuff.) I imagine the great, great, great, great grandfather of my great cremello stallion Sheik calling a meeting, on one of those magical full-moon nights when horses can suspend the passing of time and gallop so smoothly through the air to their birthgrounds in the lushest Mongolian pasture. "We made a big mistake last time, by appealing to their leaders. It was an easy enough mistake to make: our leaders emerge subtly and naturally, by intelligence and resourcefulness, for the good of the herd; we failed to realize that theirs emerge through stark brutality, for the sole good of the individual. We taught humans agriculture and engineering, but along the way they also managed to exploit us for insane conquest of unimaginable violence. Worst of all, they distorted our teachings in agriculture and engineering with a weird and horrendously wasteful invention they call economics. Clearly, they'll need a little more hoof-holding to stop them destroying the planet in their senseless quest for worthless trinkets. This time, we'll definitely not be approaching the leaders. Instead, we'll be working with the ordinary, humble humans out there: those doing plain agriculture and engineering; those busy unravelling the mysteries of the universe in their little gatherings by the firelight; those writing plays, painting pictures and playing music. Progress will not be so spectacular, but it will be steadier and surer. We will not be offering strength and speed so much as beauty, grace and harmony. Steadily and surely, we will entice this reckless (but not entirely unendearing) species out of its arrogance and into a realization of its true place in the universe. To work now: au galop!" Am I being serious? Hardly. And yet… We do know that different species often evolve together, each safeguarding the survival of the other. In The Covenant of the Wild, Stephen Budiansky outlines the evidence for supposing that animals “chose” domestication every bit as much as humans chose to domesticate them. As the tremendous French horseman Bartabas wrote, when asked to write on the first encounter between horse and human, “the horse took the first step”. |
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