I'm probably most likely to side with your man Nick. Then again, the whole universe of personal experience being an outdoorsman lies beyond my ken--not to mention vast libraries of acquired human knowledge, as far as that goes. Also, I'm the type upon whom most poetry and even non-silly song lyrics are completely lost.
For me, being outdoors and doing the outdoors-y sorts of things on occasion nevertheless *does* slap me with an ungraspable sense of ... something? smallness? insignificance? gratitude? awe? I dunno. Something beyond the capacity of our word-buckets to contain...
Anyhoo. Before I get lost in the woods of my own ramble: Keep 'em coming. Even the stuff that's beyond my own narrow world gives me something to think about.
I catch and release the mighty Spotted Bay Bass (10 inches, typically) in San Diego Bay. When I fish from the riprap on shore, I leave the hook barbed. There is nothing like the sickening feeling of watching a fish slip the hook and land between the rocks above the tide line. Yes, the crabs will eat it. They are the same crabs the bass would happily eat in other circumstances. But I did it-and that makes the difference.
Enough with the fishing stuff already. I do not understand the obsession with participating in an activity that obviously causes pain, no matter how careful you are in removing the barb. There are many other activities you could engage in that would exercise your mind, your body and your reflexes. If you want to participate in fly fishing, well ... it's a free country, but I think this may be the last time I read one of your columns that is about fly fishing.
Otherwise, I really enjoy reading Slack Tide. JVL was right about that.
Peter! I love your aunt(?) Zsa Zsa's work. But if you don't understand the appeal of fly fishing, even if you don't do it, this might not be the site for you. Just putting that out there.......Though I always welcome all.
I used to fish quite a bit. Surf casting along the beaches of Cape Cod. Banging for Stripers past the 3rd breaker. Exhilarating to get a fatty and bring him all the way in.
I will say that usually during the longer fights I would become concerned for the fish. How much panic in him. His adrenaline rush the exact opposite of mine. Sometimes I would actually get a bit weepy.
We would eat him. A big Fatty on the Weber grill, 45 minutes out of the ocean absolutely delicious.
I'm not a hunter or fisherman, but I think Nick has a good point. (And not just because we share the best name. Okay, partly because we share the best name.) Cruelty to animals for the sake of being cruel is morally reprehensible, and we should likewise not be indifferent to any suffering we cause. But the joy one gets in successfully reeling in a catch can outweigh the temporary distress of an animal that will soon forget the experience.
This is a very thoughtful essay about a topic very, very close to my life. Although I'm not a fly fisherman, I am an avid Walleye/Bass fisherman. And I probably release over 90% of the fish I catch, even the fine eating Walleye and Perch. But, I didn't even know this was an issue, like at all, until a recent accident Twitter feud shed some light on it for me. I tagged a couple of great writer I follow with a picture of the giant Flathead Catfish I'd finally landed (my son and I had been chasing 40lb+ Flats for years). Some of them responded with typical encouragement, "Nice catch." But a couple of people attacked with vigor. I trolled them, hard. I just didn't (and frankly, still don't) see their point. It is laughable to me, to think we live in world that allows factory farmed animals to be treated they way we treat them, and the hunting of whales, and a million other crimes against the animal kingdom, and somebody has a hard time with me spending a few precious moments with a wild fish, 90% of the time released unharmed (and in this, Catfish are MUCH hardier than trout). Of course, I recognize those other crimes to absolve me of my "torture" of fish. But again, my conservation dollars make more fish!
I don't know, when I'm fishing, it is all about the hunt. Am I offering the right presentation at the right time to catch the species I'm targeting? It is purity of thought and mission. The rest of my life is very complicated, fishing is not (well, it is... but it singular).
Finally, I once had a Shortnose Redhorse (sucker) throw my hook directly into my thumb. I still don't understand how he did it. In the moment, I think I said just about the coolest thing I can imagine a person saying, "Hmpf, that's the BIGGEST one I'm gonna hook all day."
I wagered that I would see a Taj Mahal ditty after reading this fine essay, but no. The great Greg Brown instead! What a very pleasant surprise. Your musical tastes are surpassed only by your writing & fishing skills. Thank you, Matt.
I get it. It is just like how I feel if I finish the New York Times Mini-Crossword Puzzle in under a minute. An inexplicable sense of mastery. And no animals or fish are harmed in the production of this feeling. Well, except my husband who disapproves of the time wasted on all games.
So you don't have to engage in self-flagellation. From the look of the comments, you're getting plenty of it already.
I always find your essays thoughtful. , some less comfortable than others. I suppose there are lots of ifs, ands, or buts that are part of justifying fishing and hunting as sport (and not, as you distinguish, for survival). To me – I am not a hunter and never have been; I have enjoyed fishing at various times in my life but haven’t fished, now, for many years – if you derive pleasure from killing animals or causing them pain, there is an empty place in your soul.
In recent decades, scientists who study animal behavior have reached some fundamental conclusions. Animals experience pain. For whatever reason, we used to think that animals don’t feel pain, as humans do. As a dog lover, I never understood this rationalization. It seemed like nonsense. Now we know scientifically, it is.
Also important are studies of animal ethology, particularly communication and intelligence. It has become clear that man is no longer the only tool-using animal capable of language. Many animals – bees, whales, octopi, apes – have rich communicative lives and are capable of learning about and transforming their environments.
It seems to me that people who reflect on why they enjoy killing as sport – or require multiple experiences of causing animals pain, as Mr. Chatham did – and merely come to the conclusion that they’re “just happy when… (they are and) don’t need any reason other than that”, don’t have a consistent moral framework for evaluating their actions. Some killing, some level of causing pain, is acceptable regardless of the experience of the sensate being on the receiving end.
You wonder how animals, in their almost infinite worlds, see us. I suppose judging from anecdotal evidence of animals attacking humans, it must be that they see us generally as threats or sources of food for survival. However, animals are probably not killing us just for the fun of it. They also haven’t developed a whole industry of equipment for preying in us and have not become civilized enough, yet, to see the fun in it.
We should be focusing more on promoting an understanding of the value of life and respect for it, rather than honing skills and moral attitudes that find outlets for killing acceptable.
If animals could ever turn the tables, we'd be in a world of hurt. And who knows, maybe someday they will. But I also agree with what Michael said below, which was wonderfully stated. Won't even try to put a cherry on it.
My point wasn't really about animals turning the tables on us; more that life in any form should be valued. We shouldn't kid ourselves that our individual pleasures can be rationalized by arguing they contribute to the overall balance of nature.
I suspect we disagree on some level about what living a good life means. Gandhi thought Nietzsche was out to lunch. However, as I stated at the beginning of my comment, I find your essays provoke thought, and I enjoy them. Neither you nor I need to be 'right' in our opinions. Different thoughts and feelings help us understand one another and also cause us to analyze our own opinions. These days, expressing and listening to disagreements rationally and with respect is welcome relief from tribal noise. It's great you provide a forum for this.
You are correct that if one derives pleasure from killing animals and causing them pain that there is an empty place in one's soul. What I believe is incorrect is the unstated premise that this is all that hunting and fishing amount to for everyone who engages in these "sports." As to how they came to be known as sports as opposed to skills necessary for survival, I expect that is a result of the fact that in the modern world these "skills" are no longer necessary for the survival of more than a limited number of us. Consequently, they became seen as an activity akin to football or baseball or badminton...unnecessary for the survival of the human body, but a means of fulfilling a deep human need. And as to what we more commonly think of as sports, that need goes back to the first rock or skull wrapped in an animal skin and kicked or tossed about the tribal village square.
But there is a primordial need in some of us to be connected to the natural world in a way that modern living, particularly modern urban living, does not easily afford on anything resembling a regular or continuing basis. Some of us are just hardwired that way, some of us not so much, some not at all.
But for those of us that feel that need strongly, as do I, we seek to fill it in different ways. The list is long, and I'll not try to enumerate all the things people do to kindle and foster this connection, many of them without even realizing the basis of their desire to engage in such activities. I'll just say that hunting and fishing are on that list. And for folks with my perspective, which admittedly not all hunters or fishermen share, they aren't a "sport" as we commonly think of the word, though they do fill a very human need in the same way kicking a ball or tossing a horseshoe might do for others.
Rather, they are a very personal and immediate connection to the natural world from whence we all came. A world that in times past required our living in it in a very different way than we do now. A world in which our relationship to the land, waters and skies that surround us and provide us with our means of survival was direct and immediate, no middlemen involved.
Don't ask me to explain where this need comes from beyond my description of it being hardwired in. I feel it as instinctual. So, perhaps my soul is not as evolved as some. But I can tell you for sure and for certain that it is not a deficit in my soul that sends me into the fields or woods or streams. And there is no specific pleasure taken in the very narrow act of squeezing a trigger or setting a hook. There's a whole lot more to it than that. A whole lot more. Otherwise, I'd have filled my stringer much more often than I have. And my game bag would have been more heavily laden. And I would have slid open the back door four days ago and dropped the eight-point buck standing in the open not 300 feet away on the edge of the brush and woods beside my riding paddock, staring at my wife's mare as she stood staring back from her turnout. After all, deer season her opened last Monday, and it would have been one hell of an easy shot.
No, though pain and killing are a small part of making this connection, they are a very small part, and are not at all the point. And folks who hunt and fish as I do take no pleasure in those specific things.
When speaking about this, some do put forth the well worn rationalization that the pain of an animal or fish that they kill is no greater or less than the animal or fish that is killed for them by someone else, and hunters and fishermen who practice their skills responsibly take care not to cause undue pain. And I agree with this.
But it's much simpler than that for me. In order for me - and all of us - to live, something has to die. An immutable fact of the world in which we live. And I choose to live in it in a way that helps keep me cognizant of and connected to that fact - and that world - in a very personal and immediate way.
It might perhaps be better if you trimmed your brush just a bit and not try to paint voids into the souls of people who look at things of this nature differently than you do. I've agreed with you that those who derive pleasure from the killing of animals and only the killing do have a void that no amount of blood would probably fill. But for the rest of us it just might be a different story.
And we should indeed promote the understanding of the value of life and respect for it...all life, both animal and human. Just as we should promote respect for people who disagree with us in good faith about certain things.
I respect your position on this, since it is obviously one of conscience. And I respect you for having spoken your mind about it. I just don't happen to agree with all of what you said, and I hope you're not offended that I have spoken my mind about it as well.
Although I’ve never been deeply into fishing (although I’ve done some of the catch-and-keep type over the years), I am a bird hunter. For years before the kids were born, I was out every weekend during the season - pheasants, mostly, but occasionally ducks and geese as well. What I discovered over the years is that my frustrations over an empty game bag at the end of the day have diminished, and that I rarely feel as alive and in tune with my surroundings as I do when I am out in a field, watching a dog cast for scent, and hoping we see a pheasant flush. I also realized that I see landscapes differently now - I see them from the perspective of their feathered and furry inhabitants, which gives me a deeper appreciation of the land around me. That’s what keeps me going back out into the fields - not the prospect of a couple of pounds of meat that is tougher than store-bought chicken, and likely full of teeth-breaking steel pellets.
Thanks again for sharing, Matt. I love your thought-provoking writing.
This reminds me of the Peter Singer thought experiment: you are walking along a lake and see a child drowning, and further you are the only one who can help. However, to get there in time you’ll have to go straight into the water, ruining your $200 shoes. Are you morally obligated to save the child?
Everyone who isn’t a Donald Trump level sociopath (can’t you just see him here - “I like kids who aren’t drowning”) would say yes. This implies based on pure logic that we should be giving 100% of our discretionary income to charities that can save lives at around that cost. Our ethical machinery doesn’t see if this way - we value lives we can see right in front of us orders of magnitude higher than “statistical lives” for lack of a better term.
I think I’m rambling now - I’ll leave it to readers to draw the conclusions.
I'm not completely sure about the implication you impart about the use of the sum total of our discretionary income, but then I'm not well schooled in logic. ( If I were, I expect I'd have made a few more wise decisions in my life than is the actual count.) But I'm sure you're right about how we assign "value" to lives based on their proximity to us.
Not sure where this trait comes from, but suspect it has something to do with survival skills developed an awfully long time ago, when "tribal" had a slightly different meaning than it does today. And I'll stipulate to the fact that the difference in meaning is, by the evidence currently before us, apparently only a very slight one.
So, I suppose it should be no surprise that our "ethical machinery" doesn't always serve the greater - or in the example you cited - the greatest good. But it's good that we have at least developed the concept of "ethics" along the way to where we find ourselves now.
Your take on Trump was a hoot. Though I suspect he wouldn't be caught dead in a measly pair of $200 shoes. Nice ramble.
Thanks - I’m not actually sure about my implication either…. And Mr. Spock is not here to tell me if it holds if all emotion is removed from the equation.
Broader point - we just aren’t equipped with the operating system to evaluate everything in a purely rational way. I loved the way this article got at that angle of our humanity.
Yeah, there's always that humanity thing with all its sundry and varied angles popping up to complicate matters. If there were a few less of those angles, or if some of them were perhaps a little less sharp, we'd undoubtedly behave more rationally. Or at least maybe behave that way a bit more often.
But, human nature being filled with obtuse, acute and right angles pretty much beyond measure, no hope of that happening any time soon.
However, if absolutely every decision we made were made rationally, the world would probably be a much less interesting place, no?
I have no problem with people who hunt or fish. I had a friend who was an ornithologist at a university and spent the fall hunting birds. His Thanksgiving dinners were a melange of species.
For myself, I used to fish, but fishing after catching (and releasing) a decent sized northern pike in the BWCA and wondering why I was bothering him on such a beautiful day.
I understand Cutchin's comment about the thrill of stalking which is why I took up bird photography. I don't put a greater moral value on it than stalking with a lure or a shotgun. It's just something I enjoy.
But I'm not sure about Cutchin's comment that a fly fisher is just a person with a rod. Yes, we should always have some humility in face of our insignificance in the cosmos. Nonetheless, we still feel the thrill of a successful hunt (even with a camera), which is why most of us do it.
Great take. But one small nit to pick as to "our insignificance in the cosmos."
As to size / scale, our world and everything in it is, by comparison to the vastness of the universe, insignificant indeed. But considering that with all the scientific prowess at our disposal we have as yet been unable to find anything like our planet and the life that it sustains even here within our own little neighborhood of that vastness, which is of a pretty mind-bending size itself, I believe that argues somewhat for the fact that we may not be insignificant at all, if only by way of our uniqueness.
However, even if one grants that this proposition is true ( which I believe it is, but I certainly don't have the market cornered on truth ), we should always have the utmost humility when contemplating the power that created this world and the lives that we live in it, whatever one may imagine that to be...happy accident or divine design. For looking at our own "power" as compared to that, we are about as insignificant as it gets.
So, we may get deep here but I’m curious - if we ascribe that power to a divine design, why would such a powerful designer view us as anything more interesting or significant than the way we view an ant farm?
Oh, man. It's past 2:30 AM now, and I don't do "deep" too well even in broad daylight. But, what the hell...
Well, maybe he ( the designer ) wouldn't. Maybe our existence is actually just a stray thought in the guy's metaphysical head, and any moment now he'll forget about it due to lack of interest, and the party's over for us.
Or, maybe he's easily amused.
Or, maybe it's because he chooses to assign us significance, and chooses to be interested in us. If he's powerful enough to create the universe and everything in it - including us - the dude is most likely capable of thinking and acting in any way he pleases.
That's about all the "deep" I've got at the moment.
Other than to drop the divine designer metaphor in the interest of full disclosure and just say that I think God did it, He did it for His own reasons, I don't understand them, but I'm glad that He did.
Just don't ask me to wade in on my conception of the Who, What, or Where of God at the moment. Way too deep for my feeble brain cells at this hour. Just suffice it to say my idea doesn't involve golden thrones, flowing robes, a huge white beard and lightning bolt emitting staffs.
But then, I could be wrong.
Hope that satisfies your curiosity for now. Happy to discuss it further when I'm a bit more awake if you like. And if not, thanks for posing the question. I enjoy reading the stuff you put down here and elsewhere.
One of the things I love about substack is we can have these discussions in an environment where the trolls are kept at bay. I'm aware that all these questions have been asked and answered over and over through the centuries, but I find it really interesting to see how the are answered by people other than Voltaire and Aquinas!
To put my cards on the table, I take the Bertrand Russell view - speaking to a sophisticated crowd I'm agnostic. I can get all the way to a kind of vague deism in a way that makes sense to me. But as to the great religions, I'm an unbeliever all the way. I find no rational basis for them and the explanations even from the greatest minds seem very unconvincing to me.
Here's hoping this is just the start of a long and interesting conversation. I leave you with three quotes from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, one of my favorites:
“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
“The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.”
Well, good morning. Or, more likely by the time I deal with the inevitable interruptions that always occur when I attempt to do something like this, good afternoon. Perhaps I've downed enough caffeine to go on with this a bit without going down for the 3rd time in the depths of what we're swimming through here.
Since you noted yourself as an agnostic, a bit more in the way of full disclosure on my end...I would describe myself as a lukewarm Christian, a descriptor I believe I picked up from something our host here wrote not too long ago. Just seems to fit me pretty well. Not a church goer for a number of reasons, but rather than get into any of those I'll just say that when it comes to the practice of organized religion, my argument is with man, not God.
I too like Tyson. He's very good at "physics for dummies", especially dummies like me who understand just enough about that subject to have an appreciation for just how much I don't understand about it.
As to the 3 quotes above, the 1st I mostly agree with. The 2nd I completely agree with. And the 3rd I completely disagree with.
The nit I would pick with the 1st is the idea of "creating" love or "manufacturing" meaning. As to generating motivation, I'm down with that. If I didn't often generate my own motivation and instead depended on it to just occur naturally, I'd do far fewer things than I do, since I can be a terrible procrastinator and even downright lazy at times.
I don't believe we "create" love, nor do I think it's sitting behind a tree or under a rock. Love to me is a possibility waiting to come into existence. It isn't created, at least not genuine love. It just happens at various times and for various reasons. It is a human emotion, true. But the real thing is much more than that. It is a way of being, a way of existing.
I love my wife. But I didn't create that love. If anything, it created me, the person that I am now as opposed to the person I was before she came into my life. Those two people share certain similarities, but the one writing this is quite different from the one that existed more than a couple of decades ago. I didn't work at it. The possibility existed, and it happened.
As to "manufacturing" meaning, this idea escapes me a bit. Yeah, we all look for it at times in different places about different things. And sometimes we find it, and sometimes we don't. I don't believe that some things that happen in this world have a specific meaning, at least not one that we were meant to understand. What "is" sometimes is nothing more than just that.
But when it comes to the meaning that many of us would like to have regarding the Big Questions about our existence, the reasons for it, etc., again I see this as a possibility waiting to be made real.
I believe in God. I have faith. Those two things give my life meaning that it wouldn't have otherwise. But I did not create that belief or faith. I didn't go looking for it or work at it in any really significant way. The possibility for those things existed, and they became real for me due to the sum of my experiences in living my life. Had I needed to "manufacture" them, I think they would probably have turned out to be the malfunctioning lemons that sometimes roll off the end of the assembly line.
As to the 2nd quote, the universe indeed owes me no explanation. In fact, I don't think it owes me anything at all.
And as to the 3rd, the more I learn about the universe and the world in which we live, the more I'm convinced through this experience that God does indeed exist. I can offer no tangible proof of this any more than anyone else who holds this belief can. It is again the summation of my lived experiences in this world. I feel it in the very morrow of my bones. I have no other explanation for my belief than that. It is, in a way, a mystery as to why I feel as I do. But I can't deny that I feel it and believe it to be true.
I'll just leave you with this, which will perhaps go a ways toward explaining the outlook that produced what is written above.
I often envision science and religion as two mountain climbing expeditions, both attempting to scale the same immensely steep and craggy slopes of the same peak. Their paths of ascent often diverge and they loose sight of each other, often for long periods of time.
But I have no doubt that if and when the scientists crest the summit, they will run headlong into the theologians clambering up from the other side. And all of them will then find themselves to be looking at the same face of God, and wondering to themselves what all the fuss was about.
Traveling for turkey day so this will be abbreviated. I’ll cover just the latter part - I have a far different view of things. In my opinion most theologians have either given up climbing or are working there way back down the mountain. Reactionary movements are the strongest at the moment. Maybe they’ll start climbing again someday but right now I don’t see it.
On Tyson’s third quote, it is a little bleak. But I think if you take the traditional Christian view - all powerful, all knowing, and perfectly good God you are left with a really leaky boat. Free Will has always been the plug for those holes, allowing for the possibility that this is the best of all possible worlds because free will is important enough to make all this waste and suffering worth it. I don’t buy that even if there is free will, but with all we know now about the constraints on our freedom of choice I don’t see any way to rescue this leaky vessel before it sinks beneath the waves. For another day, perhaps we can get into evolutionary biology but we’ll have to put a pin in that for now…
I am glad that you are at least thinking about the morality of killing animals but, unless you are a vegetarian, it is hard to argue the the fish processed my Mrs. Paul met a better end than if you had killed and eaten the fish that you caught. Hunting, wounding, but not killing an animal is unconscionable but I would argue that a deer shot by a rifle in the wild probably feels a lot less stress than an animal waiting its turn outside of a slaughterhouse.
Nor is Thunberg "whiny." Angry? Very. Justifiably? Many would say yes. Here's to women expressing their justified anger in the same ways men do. Especially when the men aren't leading.
my guess, this guy wouldn't know a fishing rod from a dipstick.
I'm probably most likely to side with your man Nick. Then again, the whole universe of personal experience being an outdoorsman lies beyond my ken--not to mention vast libraries of acquired human knowledge, as far as that goes. Also, I'm the type upon whom most poetry and even non-silly song lyrics are completely lost.
For me, being outdoors and doing the outdoors-y sorts of things on occasion nevertheless *does* slap me with an ungraspable sense of ... something? smallness? insignificance? gratitude? awe? I dunno. Something beyond the capacity of our word-buckets to contain...
Anyhoo. Before I get lost in the woods of my own ramble: Keep 'em coming. Even the stuff that's beyond my own narrow world gives me something to think about.
I catch and release the mighty Spotted Bay Bass (10 inches, typically) in San Diego Bay. When I fish from the riprap on shore, I leave the hook barbed. There is nothing like the sickening feeling of watching a fish slip the hook and land between the rocks above the tide line. Yes, the crabs will eat it. They are the same crabs the bass would happily eat in other circumstances. But I did it-and that makes the difference.
I’m casting (sorry!) my vote for writing about whatever moves you.
That's what I'm talking about, Dennis.....
Enough with the fishing stuff already. I do not understand the obsession with participating in an activity that obviously causes pain, no matter how careful you are in removing the barb. There are many other activities you could engage in that would exercise your mind, your body and your reflexes. If you want to participate in fly fishing, well ... it's a free country, but I think this may be the last time I read one of your columns that is about fly fishing.
Otherwise, I really enjoy reading Slack Tide. JVL was right about that.
Peter! I love your aunt(?) Zsa Zsa's work. But if you don't understand the appeal of fly fishing, even if you don't do it, this might not be the site for you. Just putting that out there.......Though I always welcome all.
I used to fish quite a bit. Surf casting along the beaches of Cape Cod. Banging for Stripers past the 3rd breaker. Exhilarating to get a fatty and bring him all the way in.
I will say that usually during the longer fights I would become concerned for the fish. How much panic in him. His adrenaline rush the exact opposite of mine. Sometimes I would actually get a bit weepy.
We would eat him. A big Fatty on the Weber grill, 45 minutes out of the ocean absolutely delicious.
I'm not a hunter or fisherman, but I think Nick has a good point. (And not just because we share the best name. Okay, partly because we share the best name.) Cruelty to animals for the sake of being cruel is morally reprehensible, and we should likewise not be indifferent to any suffering we cause. But the joy one gets in successfully reeling in a catch can outweigh the temporary distress of an animal that will soon forget the experience.
This is a very thoughtful essay about a topic very, very close to my life. Although I'm not a fly fisherman, I am an avid Walleye/Bass fisherman. And I probably release over 90% of the fish I catch, even the fine eating Walleye and Perch. But, I didn't even know this was an issue, like at all, until a recent accident Twitter feud shed some light on it for me. I tagged a couple of great writer I follow with a picture of the giant Flathead Catfish I'd finally landed (my son and I had been chasing 40lb+ Flats for years). Some of them responded with typical encouragement, "Nice catch." But a couple of people attacked with vigor. I trolled them, hard. I just didn't (and frankly, still don't) see their point. It is laughable to me, to think we live in world that allows factory farmed animals to be treated they way we treat them, and the hunting of whales, and a million other crimes against the animal kingdom, and somebody has a hard time with me spending a few precious moments with a wild fish, 90% of the time released unharmed (and in this, Catfish are MUCH hardier than trout). Of course, I recognize those other crimes to absolve me of my "torture" of fish. But again, my conservation dollars make more fish!
I don't know, when I'm fishing, it is all about the hunt. Am I offering the right presentation at the right time to catch the species I'm targeting? It is purity of thought and mission. The rest of my life is very complicated, fishing is not (well, it is... but it singular).
Finally, I once had a Shortnose Redhorse (sucker) throw my hook directly into my thumb. I still don't understand how he did it. In the moment, I think I said just about the coolest thing I can imagine a person saying, "Hmpf, that's the BIGGEST one I'm gonna hook all day."
I wagered that I would see a Taj Mahal ditty after reading this fine essay, but no. The great Greg Brown instead! What a very pleasant surprise. Your musical tastes are surpassed only by your writing & fishing skills. Thank you, Matt.
Thanks, pal. I love me some Taj Mahal. So you probably will see some sooner or later.
I get it. It is just like how I feel if I finish the New York Times Mini-Crossword Puzzle in under a minute. An inexplicable sense of mastery. And no animals or fish are harmed in the production of this feeling. Well, except my husband who disapproves of the time wasted on all games.
So you don't have to engage in self-flagellation. From the look of the comments, you're getting plenty of it already.
I always find your essays thoughtful. , some less comfortable than others. I suppose there are lots of ifs, ands, or buts that are part of justifying fishing and hunting as sport (and not, as you distinguish, for survival). To me – I am not a hunter and never have been; I have enjoyed fishing at various times in my life but haven’t fished, now, for many years – if you derive pleasure from killing animals or causing them pain, there is an empty place in your soul.
In recent decades, scientists who study animal behavior have reached some fundamental conclusions. Animals experience pain. For whatever reason, we used to think that animals don’t feel pain, as humans do. As a dog lover, I never understood this rationalization. It seemed like nonsense. Now we know scientifically, it is.
Also important are studies of animal ethology, particularly communication and intelligence. It has become clear that man is no longer the only tool-using animal capable of language. Many animals – bees, whales, octopi, apes – have rich communicative lives and are capable of learning about and transforming their environments.
It seems to me that people who reflect on why they enjoy killing as sport – or require multiple experiences of causing animals pain, as Mr. Chatham did – and merely come to the conclusion that they’re “just happy when… (they are and) don’t need any reason other than that”, don’t have a consistent moral framework for evaluating their actions. Some killing, some level of causing pain, is acceptable regardless of the experience of the sensate being on the receiving end.
You wonder how animals, in their almost infinite worlds, see us. I suppose judging from anecdotal evidence of animals attacking humans, it must be that they see us generally as threats or sources of food for survival. However, animals are probably not killing us just for the fun of it. They also haven’t developed a whole industry of equipment for preying in us and have not become civilized enough, yet, to see the fun in it.
We should be focusing more on promoting an understanding of the value of life and respect for it, rather than honing skills and moral attitudes that find outlets for killing acceptable.
George Percy
I can't imagine how anyone ever would have thought that animals don't feel pain. If we, as mammals, do, it stands to reason other mammals would too.
If animals could ever turn the tables, we'd be in a world of hurt. And who knows, maybe someday they will. But I also agree with what Michael said below, which was wonderfully stated. Won't even try to put a cherry on it.
My point wasn't really about animals turning the tables on us; more that life in any form should be valued. We shouldn't kid ourselves that our individual pleasures can be rationalized by arguing they contribute to the overall balance of nature.
I suspect we disagree on some level about what living a good life means. Gandhi thought Nietzsche was out to lunch. However, as I stated at the beginning of my comment, I find your essays provoke thought, and I enjoy them. Neither you nor I need to be 'right' in our opinions. Different thoughts and feelings help us understand one another and also cause us to analyze our own opinions. These days, expressing and listening to disagreements rationally and with respect is welcome relief from tribal noise. It's great you provide a forum for this.
Seconded! All in favor? Motion passed!
Amen, brother.
You are correct that if one derives pleasure from killing animals and causing them pain that there is an empty place in one's soul. What I believe is incorrect is the unstated premise that this is all that hunting and fishing amount to for everyone who engages in these "sports." As to how they came to be known as sports as opposed to skills necessary for survival, I expect that is a result of the fact that in the modern world these "skills" are no longer necessary for the survival of more than a limited number of us. Consequently, they became seen as an activity akin to football or baseball or badminton...unnecessary for the survival of the human body, but a means of fulfilling a deep human need. And as to what we more commonly think of as sports, that need goes back to the first rock or skull wrapped in an animal skin and kicked or tossed about the tribal village square.
But there is a primordial need in some of us to be connected to the natural world in a way that modern living, particularly modern urban living, does not easily afford on anything resembling a regular or continuing basis. Some of us are just hardwired that way, some of us not so much, some not at all.
But for those of us that feel that need strongly, as do I, we seek to fill it in different ways. The list is long, and I'll not try to enumerate all the things people do to kindle and foster this connection, many of them without even realizing the basis of their desire to engage in such activities. I'll just say that hunting and fishing are on that list. And for folks with my perspective, which admittedly not all hunters or fishermen share, they aren't a "sport" as we commonly think of the word, though they do fill a very human need in the same way kicking a ball or tossing a horseshoe might do for others.
Rather, they are a very personal and immediate connection to the natural world from whence we all came. A world that in times past required our living in it in a very different way than we do now. A world in which our relationship to the land, waters and skies that surround us and provide us with our means of survival was direct and immediate, no middlemen involved.
Don't ask me to explain where this need comes from beyond my description of it being hardwired in. I feel it as instinctual. So, perhaps my soul is not as evolved as some. But I can tell you for sure and for certain that it is not a deficit in my soul that sends me into the fields or woods or streams. And there is no specific pleasure taken in the very narrow act of squeezing a trigger or setting a hook. There's a whole lot more to it than that. A whole lot more. Otherwise, I'd have filled my stringer much more often than I have. And my game bag would have been more heavily laden. And I would have slid open the back door four days ago and dropped the eight-point buck standing in the open not 300 feet away on the edge of the brush and woods beside my riding paddock, staring at my wife's mare as she stood staring back from her turnout. After all, deer season her opened last Monday, and it would have been one hell of an easy shot.
No, though pain and killing are a small part of making this connection, they are a very small part, and are not at all the point. And folks who hunt and fish as I do take no pleasure in those specific things.
When speaking about this, some do put forth the well worn rationalization that the pain of an animal or fish that they kill is no greater or less than the animal or fish that is killed for them by someone else, and hunters and fishermen who practice their skills responsibly take care not to cause undue pain. And I agree with this.
But it's much simpler than that for me. In order for me - and all of us - to live, something has to die. An immutable fact of the world in which we live. And I choose to live in it in a way that helps keep me cognizant of and connected to that fact - and that world - in a very personal and immediate way.
It might perhaps be better if you trimmed your brush just a bit and not try to paint voids into the souls of people who look at things of this nature differently than you do. I've agreed with you that those who derive pleasure from the killing of animals and only the killing do have a void that no amount of blood would probably fill. But for the rest of us it just might be a different story.
And we should indeed promote the understanding of the value of life and respect for it...all life, both animal and human. Just as we should promote respect for people who disagree with us in good faith about certain things.
I respect your position on this, since it is obviously one of conscience. And I respect you for having spoken your mind about it. I just don't happen to agree with all of what you said, and I hope you're not offended that I have spoken my mind about it as well.
Lovely....Thank you George
Although I’ve never been deeply into fishing (although I’ve done some of the catch-and-keep type over the years), I am a bird hunter. For years before the kids were born, I was out every weekend during the season - pheasants, mostly, but occasionally ducks and geese as well. What I discovered over the years is that my frustrations over an empty game bag at the end of the day have diminished, and that I rarely feel as alive and in tune with my surroundings as I do when I am out in a field, watching a dog cast for scent, and hoping we see a pheasant flush. I also realized that I see landscapes differently now - I see them from the perspective of their feathered and furry inhabitants, which gives me a deeper appreciation of the land around me. That’s what keeps me going back out into the fields - not the prospect of a couple of pounds of meat that is tougher than store-bought chicken, and likely full of teeth-breaking steel pellets.
Thanks again for sharing, Matt. I love your thought-provoking writing.
Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it. And one and only reason I've ever wanted to hunt, is to work over dogs. A magnificent thing watching them.
This reminds me of the Peter Singer thought experiment: you are walking along a lake and see a child drowning, and further you are the only one who can help. However, to get there in time you’ll have to go straight into the water, ruining your $200 shoes. Are you morally obligated to save the child?
Everyone who isn’t a Donald Trump level sociopath (can’t you just see him here - “I like kids who aren’t drowning”) would say yes. This implies based on pure logic that we should be giving 100% of our discretionary income to charities that can save lives at around that cost. Our ethical machinery doesn’t see if this way - we value lives we can see right in front of us orders of magnitude higher than “statistical lives” for lack of a better term.
I think I’m rambling now - I’ll leave it to readers to draw the conclusions.
I'm not completely sure about the implication you impart about the use of the sum total of our discretionary income, but then I'm not well schooled in logic. ( If I were, I expect I'd have made a few more wise decisions in my life than is the actual count.) But I'm sure you're right about how we assign "value" to lives based on their proximity to us.
Not sure where this trait comes from, but suspect it has something to do with survival skills developed an awfully long time ago, when "tribal" had a slightly different meaning than it does today. And I'll stipulate to the fact that the difference in meaning is, by the evidence currently before us, apparently only a very slight one.
So, I suppose it should be no surprise that our "ethical machinery" doesn't always serve the greater - or in the example you cited - the greatest good. But it's good that we have at least developed the concept of "ethics" along the way to where we find ourselves now.
Your take on Trump was a hoot. Though I suspect he wouldn't be caught dead in a measly pair of $200 shoes. Nice ramble.
Thanks - I’m not actually sure about my implication either…. And Mr. Spock is not here to tell me if it holds if all emotion is removed from the equation.
Broader point - we just aren’t equipped with the operating system to evaluate everything in a purely rational way. I loved the way this article got at that angle of our humanity.
Yeah, there's always that humanity thing with all its sundry and varied angles popping up to complicate matters. If there were a few less of those angles, or if some of them were perhaps a little less sharp, we'd undoubtedly behave more rationally. Or at least maybe behave that way a bit more often.
But, human nature being filled with obtuse, acute and right angles pretty much beyond measure, no hope of that happening any time soon.
However, if absolutely every decision we made were made rationally, the world would probably be a much less interesting place, no?
I have no problem with people who hunt or fish. I had a friend who was an ornithologist at a university and spent the fall hunting birds. His Thanksgiving dinners were a melange of species.
For myself, I used to fish, but fishing after catching (and releasing) a decent sized northern pike in the BWCA and wondering why I was bothering him on such a beautiful day.
I understand Cutchin's comment about the thrill of stalking which is why I took up bird photography. I don't put a greater moral value on it than stalking with a lure or a shotgun. It's just something I enjoy.
But I'm not sure about Cutchin's comment that a fly fisher is just a person with a rod. Yes, we should always have some humility in face of our insignificance in the cosmos. Nonetheless, we still feel the thrill of a successful hunt (even with a camera), which is why most of us do it.
Great take. But one small nit to pick as to "our insignificance in the cosmos."
As to size / scale, our world and everything in it is, by comparison to the vastness of the universe, insignificant indeed. But considering that with all the scientific prowess at our disposal we have as yet been unable to find anything like our planet and the life that it sustains even here within our own little neighborhood of that vastness, which is of a pretty mind-bending size itself, I believe that argues somewhat for the fact that we may not be insignificant at all, if only by way of our uniqueness.
However, even if one grants that this proposition is true ( which I believe it is, but I certainly don't have the market cornered on truth ), we should always have the utmost humility when contemplating the power that created this world and the lives that we live in it, whatever one may imagine that to be...happy accident or divine design. For looking at our own "power" as compared to that, we are about as insignificant as it gets.
So, we may get deep here but I’m curious - if we ascribe that power to a divine design, why would such a powerful designer view us as anything more interesting or significant than the way we view an ant farm?
Oh, man. It's past 2:30 AM now, and I don't do "deep" too well even in broad daylight. But, what the hell...
Well, maybe he ( the designer ) wouldn't. Maybe our existence is actually just a stray thought in the guy's metaphysical head, and any moment now he'll forget about it due to lack of interest, and the party's over for us.
Or, maybe he's easily amused.
Or, maybe it's because he chooses to assign us significance, and chooses to be interested in us. If he's powerful enough to create the universe and everything in it - including us - the dude is most likely capable of thinking and acting in any way he pleases.
That's about all the "deep" I've got at the moment.
Other than to drop the divine designer metaphor in the interest of full disclosure and just say that I think God did it, He did it for His own reasons, I don't understand them, but I'm glad that He did.
Just don't ask me to wade in on my conception of the Who, What, or Where of God at the moment. Way too deep for my feeble brain cells at this hour. Just suffice it to say my idea doesn't involve golden thrones, flowing robes, a huge white beard and lightning bolt emitting staffs.
But then, I could be wrong.
Hope that satisfies your curiosity for now. Happy to discuss it further when I'm a bit more awake if you like. And if not, thanks for posing the question. I enjoy reading the stuff you put down here and elsewhere.
One of the things I love about substack is we can have these discussions in an environment where the trolls are kept at bay. I'm aware that all these questions have been asked and answered over and over through the centuries, but I find it really interesting to see how the are answered by people other than Voltaire and Aquinas!
To put my cards on the table, I take the Bertrand Russell view - speaking to a sophisticated crowd I'm agnostic. I can get all the way to a kind of vague deism in a way that makes sense to me. But as to the great religions, I'm an unbeliever all the way. I find no rational basis for them and the explanations even from the greatest minds seem very unconvincing to me.
Here's hoping this is just the start of a long and interesting conversation. I leave you with three quotes from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, one of my favorites:
“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
“The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.”
Well, good morning. Or, more likely by the time I deal with the inevitable interruptions that always occur when I attempt to do something like this, good afternoon. Perhaps I've downed enough caffeine to go on with this a bit without going down for the 3rd time in the depths of what we're swimming through here.
Since you noted yourself as an agnostic, a bit more in the way of full disclosure on my end...I would describe myself as a lukewarm Christian, a descriptor I believe I picked up from something our host here wrote not too long ago. Just seems to fit me pretty well. Not a church goer for a number of reasons, but rather than get into any of those I'll just say that when it comes to the practice of organized religion, my argument is with man, not God.
I too like Tyson. He's very good at "physics for dummies", especially dummies like me who understand just enough about that subject to have an appreciation for just how much I don't understand about it.
As to the 3 quotes above, the 1st I mostly agree with. The 2nd I completely agree with. And the 3rd I completely disagree with.
The nit I would pick with the 1st is the idea of "creating" love or "manufacturing" meaning. As to generating motivation, I'm down with that. If I didn't often generate my own motivation and instead depended on it to just occur naturally, I'd do far fewer things than I do, since I can be a terrible procrastinator and even downright lazy at times.
I don't believe we "create" love, nor do I think it's sitting behind a tree or under a rock. Love to me is a possibility waiting to come into existence. It isn't created, at least not genuine love. It just happens at various times and for various reasons. It is a human emotion, true. But the real thing is much more than that. It is a way of being, a way of existing.
I love my wife. But I didn't create that love. If anything, it created me, the person that I am now as opposed to the person I was before she came into my life. Those two people share certain similarities, but the one writing this is quite different from the one that existed more than a couple of decades ago. I didn't work at it. The possibility existed, and it happened.
As to "manufacturing" meaning, this idea escapes me a bit. Yeah, we all look for it at times in different places about different things. And sometimes we find it, and sometimes we don't. I don't believe that some things that happen in this world have a specific meaning, at least not one that we were meant to understand. What "is" sometimes is nothing more than just that.
But when it comes to the meaning that many of us would like to have regarding the Big Questions about our existence, the reasons for it, etc., again I see this as a possibility waiting to be made real.
I believe in God. I have faith. Those two things give my life meaning that it wouldn't have otherwise. But I did not create that belief or faith. I didn't go looking for it or work at it in any really significant way. The possibility for those things existed, and they became real for me due to the sum of my experiences in living my life. Had I needed to "manufacture" them, I think they would probably have turned out to be the malfunctioning lemons that sometimes roll off the end of the assembly line.
As to the 2nd quote, the universe indeed owes me no explanation. In fact, I don't think it owes me anything at all.
And as to the 3rd, the more I learn about the universe and the world in which we live, the more I'm convinced through this experience that God does indeed exist. I can offer no tangible proof of this any more than anyone else who holds this belief can. It is again the summation of my lived experiences in this world. I feel it in the very morrow of my bones. I have no other explanation for my belief than that. It is, in a way, a mystery as to why I feel as I do. But I can't deny that I feel it and believe it to be true.
I'll just leave you with this, which will perhaps go a ways toward explaining the outlook that produced what is written above.
I often envision science and religion as two mountain climbing expeditions, both attempting to scale the same immensely steep and craggy slopes of the same peak. Their paths of ascent often diverge and they loose sight of each other, often for long periods of time.
But I have no doubt that if and when the scientists crest the summit, they will run headlong into the theologians clambering up from the other side. And all of them will then find themselves to be looking at the same face of God, and wondering to themselves what all the fuss was about.
Traveling for turkey day so this will be abbreviated. I’ll cover just the latter part - I have a far different view of things. In my opinion most theologians have either given up climbing or are working there way back down the mountain. Reactionary movements are the strongest at the moment. Maybe they’ll start climbing again someday but right now I don’t see it.
On Tyson’s third quote, it is a little bleak. But I think if you take the traditional Christian view - all powerful, all knowing, and perfectly good God you are left with a really leaky boat. Free Will has always been the plug for those holes, allowing for the possibility that this is the best of all possible worlds because free will is important enough to make all this waste and suffering worth it. I don’t buy that even if there is free will, but with all we know now about the constraints on our freedom of choice I don’t see any way to rescue this leaky vessel before it sinks beneath the waves. For another day, perhaps we can get into evolutionary biology but we’ll have to put a pin in that for now…
I am glad that you are at least thinking about the morality of killing animals but, unless you are a vegetarian, it is hard to argue the the fish processed my Mrs. Paul met a better end than if you had killed and eaten the fish that you caught. Hunting, wounding, but not killing an animal is unconscionable but I would argue that a deer shot by a rifle in the wild probably feels a lot less stress than an animal waiting its turn outside of a slaughterhouse.
I have no problem with fishermen that keep the fish or that throw them back. I grew up with the first, and became the second. Tempest, meet teapot.
Re Greta Thunberg, ridicule her all you want, but at least she gives a damn.
Nor is Thunberg "whiny." Angry? Very. Justifiably? Many would say yes. Here's to women expressing their justified anger in the same ways men do. Especially when the men aren't leading.