Hunting

(For the next few weeks, I will be writing only in English. A professor I had told me - about a zillion years ago- that writing was the second skill you lose more easily if you don't practice: she was right. So hey, if you are going to read the whole entry, feel free to comment AND correct any mistake you find - I will be grateful. And sore).

Nowadays our identities are incredibly complex: we are defined by our gender, our work, our sexual option(s), the place we were born, the political party we support, the authors we read, the TV series we follow... The list could go on and on ad infinitum. And many of these items change from (little) time to (little) time. In the Neolithic Age, your options were much fewer: you were male or female, young or old, a hunter or a gatherer. Generally, you were an experienced old/ promising young male hunter, or a young female gatherer/ wise old female gatherer. Life was so simple back then (also brutally short, of course). Hunting must have been an often frustrating, life-threatening task. Imagine facing a mammooth/sabre-tooth tiger with a six-feet wooden spear with a sharp stone attached to it, while your mates nod encouragingly behind the rocks. But something of what has reached us tells us about the beauty, the seriousness and the spirituality which surrounded the experience. You cannot have a look at the animals in the cave paintings without feeling there was respect and even some kind of link between the hunters and their prey.

In a family of hunters and specialized gatherers (committed gardeners), I belong to gatherers. I know it is hard to say (if I really had to, would I kill something to eat it?*), but in these modern and comfortable (and totally unfair to the question) circumstances, I am a gatherer. I will never be able to understand how someone can find killing another creature exhilarating and enjoyable. Sympathizers of hunters out there (should there be any), just three words: sublimation of instinct. Absolutely beaten by Oedipus's complex in popular knowledge terms, Freud's other theoretical construct is used to refer to the means culture offers to human beings in order to deal with instict. This instict, otherwise focused, could lead to potentially disruptive or dangerous behaviour. Competitiveness, will to win, "in-your-face"attitude could end in physical confrontation. When sublimated, it is called sport. Talking about potentially disruptive or dangerous behaviour, now think about who has kept on hunting, together with heavy drinking -and abusing more sophisticated substances-, and of course, having sex to non-reproductive ends. Hunting, drinking and sex have been the pastimes of the males of the higher classes since the very beginning. When sublimated, it is called "looking for porn while having a beer". Just a thought.


* Does earthworms and insects count? Not that I am a vegetarian, but I am really slow.