(OT) or is it off-topic ?
When I was in high school (during the Jurassic epoch), I had a Biology teacher by the name of McKinley. Over the years, I have come to realize how wise Mr. McKinley was. Unlike the typical Biology teacher who has you dissecting fish and frogs and spends most of his time simply trying to maintain discipline in the classroom, he (in subtle ways) tried to introduce his students to the idea that we humans in some situations throughout our lives will inevitably react as an animal would. That is, even though we have higher reasoning power, we cannot always override our animal nature.
One example of this was a film (shown on one of those old whirring jumpy projectors) of an experiment. Picture a pen with just a few rabbits in it. Docile, cute little bunnies. Now, over a period of days or weeks, more and more rabbits are introduced into the pen. Slowly and then startlingly suddenly, the rabbits transformed into killers. Too many rabbits, not enough space. Today, they'd give it some tidy tag, like Rabbit Rage or Bunny Rage. You get the idea. Here's a link to an article I ran across. Maybe some of you (us) could benefit from reflecting on the concept of "self as animal" (especially with the NASDAQ, our "pen", seeming to tighten itself around us)?
cnn.com |
