Election Season is upon us, and everywhere are the markers of the two major political parties in the U.S. Everywhere, you will see the blue and the red. Everywhere, you will see the donkey and the elephant.
The elephant.
I would like to propose a change to the Republican Party visuals. I would like to replace the elephant with the wolf.
Now that sounds like a strange decision and not one that would immediately play well. After all, aren't wolves evil creatures who prey on the sick and weak? Well... that's the view of them from a herd mentality, and that's what I want to talk about today - herds and packs.
This morning, I mentioned something about a political group with a Cause and various Arguments, and my husband said, "Yeah, this reminds me of my Social Problems class in college. The professor kept saying that a Social Problem arises because the society as a whole comes to the conclusion that there is a problem. I kept saying that a Social Problem arises because a few leaders decide that it is a problem and go about convincing enough of the other people that it is a problem, whether it is or not."
I came fully awake. "You're right and your teacher was wrong, and I know why," I said.
A while ago, I came to the startling realization that human beings are pack animals by nature. I'd been following the research of one of my friends into wolves and wolf behavior, and doing some of my own research into the similarity of genetics in social behavior between humans and prairie voles. Our interests intersected, and I found a whole world of fascinating information. Humans and wolves have very similar social-behavior genetics, and naturally tend to form very similar social structures. After a while of saturating my brain with information about alphas, family packs (the naturally-formed wolf pack resembles a family tribe of an alpha, his daughters, and his daughters' mates, who include formerly-lone wolves from other packs), roles, and tactics, I made the inescapable conclusion: Humans are also pack animals, endurance hunters, and family units, just like wolves.
(And, as the part of the research that led me in this direction, humans are by nature sexually monogamous in bonded pairs. But that, and the liberal Democrat view on it, is another discussion entirely!)
Why was this such a startling conclusion? Just like my husband's Social Problems teacher, the education system is saturated with teachers and administrators teaching and reinforcing the idea that humans are herd animals. Children in school are treated like herd animals, and expected to act like herd animals. Examples of human behavior are often likened to herd behavior, even when the full story of any given incident indicates differently. We even use terms like "sheeple" to refer to "The Masses"... Wait, I've heard that term before. Yes, I have, and so have you. It came out of early socialist philosophy. The very idea of a Communist Paradise requires a type of herd mentality and, since humans do not naturally work together in herds the way that herd animals do, all actual implementations of Communism have required a "shepherd", a member treated as if he is of a different species (some animals are more equal than others), who is determined to be qualified to shove the herd when it isn't 'naturally congregating' in the right direction.
This goes all the way down to government-run healthcare, in which Former President Obama's famous line to Jane Strum about her elderly mother, vital and strong-hearted, would be better off with the pill than the pacemaker. "Devil take the hindmost". Well, to be more accurate, in my part of the country, the hindmost is generally taken by the wolves. The exception is The Children, who are protected not because they are weak, but because they are the future of the herd.
Now herd mentality actually works for herd animals. They will stampede together when the decision is made. They will line up together to protect the young when that decision is made. If a herd did not actually come to a herd decision through their herd behavior, they would flee wildly in all directions, trampling even their young, or refuse to stand up against an enemy that the entire herd can drive off together... kind of like humans in cities, being pushed into herd behavior and not being able to synthesize it. For this reason people are trained, in an emergency, to point at someone and say, "You call 911" instead of hollering, "Someone call 911!" which, in a herd, may result in many people calling, but, in a group of bystanders, all too often leads to everyone leaving the job to someone else. When you tell a specific person to call 911, a specific other person to direct traffic, etc., you may not wind up with a fully elegant solution, as you don't know which of the strangers are better or worse at the roles you are giving them. You will, however, always wind up with a better situation by organizing them into an impromptu pack (that is what you are doing) than leaving them as a disorganized non-herd.
Pack mentality among wolves incorporates a sense of what we would call 'natural rights', in which each member of the pack has a certain level of autonomy and a structure of authority to handle matters that cannot be handled individually. They put up with this because they can get more, more meat, better homes, more security than they can alone.
Now unlike Democrats, Republicans favor a governmental structure in which the top parts of the government are limited in power, because human beings work better in a series of packs, the leaders of those packs coming together to form structures that only handle what can't be done within the packs themselves, just as the individual only yields what authority he must to do in within the pack what he cannot do as a lone wolf. They tend to be willing to put up with a little more structure and authority than the Libertarians do. But they do not have the mentality that human beings are a very large herd which must be pushed about by a shepherd, as the Democrats do.
So when the Democrats like to say, "Wolves, eh? Wolves take the hindmost," what can we point out? In a wolf pack, the 'hindmost' is still a subordinate in the pack. Have you ever seen overindulgent people with their (often small-breed) dogs? The dogs are a holy terror and they give in to every little doggy whim, because they 'just want their darlings to be happy'. I am reminded of Democrats promising their "masses" every little bit of food, shelter, healthcare, bread, and circuses, delivered to them for free and to make them happy. A dog (by taxonomy merely a subordinate wolf in a human pack) who is treated this way will become fearful and aggressive. He develops anxiety issues and winds up a very unhappy, unhealthy pup. What a subordinate wolf needs desperately is to know that he has a place in the pack, to be given a role, a job, and to know that he has received a portion as large as it is because of the health of the pack. The "hindmost" in the pack needs what Republicans promise - workfare and an improved economy in which he can take up his place and feel secure in his pack.
Consider this in your own lives, taking it out of politics for a moment. Consider your place of employment, your gatherings for hobbies, your weekend activity groups, even your momentary inadvertent social structures, like the passengers of an airplane, the other people in a movie theater, the crowd at the scene of an accident. Are they acting as a pack or a herd? If they can be chivvied into an impromptu pack, will the experience be better for everyone?
And when you hear the grand speeches of the politicians, ask yourself: Are they treating us like herd animals or pack animals? What do their wordings and their programs imply?
