Gauthier: Dangerous games
On my drive to work earlier this week, I slowed, then stopped to watch a small rabbit frolicking, seemingly without a care in the world, in the middle of the road.
Seconds later, the rabbit was joined by a gorgeous, black river otter. They came together like young teens at their first junior high dance, not quite sure of their sexuality; not even sure they wanted to dance.
They do-si-doed around one another, coming together and pulling apart.
"The otter was hungry,'' said my husband when I described what I saw. "No,'' I said, "the rabbit didn't seem threatened at all. They were playing.''
"Then they must have been young,'' said my husband.
They did seem young. They made me think that it's too bad the animal species, humans specifically, can't hold on to that childhood innocence.
It's doubtful that river otter will eat its friend the rabbit one day. Mammals the size of mice are the more likely prey. That rabbit will probably meet its end under the wheels of a car. Unlike the otter, the rabbit wouldn't move, even after I blew my horn a few times.
Silly rabbit.
The otter has to eat, of course, and small terrestrial mammals are part of its diet. In order to survive, otters are designed to be predators.
But what explains the way humans treat other humans? After a certain age, prejudice and hate replace the natural urge to like one another.
And we do that with no reason as logical as survival. We certainly don't need hate to survive. In fact, hate will be the death of us if we don't change our ways, and soon. That nuclear cloud creeps closer every day.
Yet over the eons it was decided by someone (do we even know who?) that white skin was "better'' than black, or red, or brown, that one god was "better'' than another, that one country was "better'' than another.
Children don't have those prejudices. Playgrounds and school yards are free of all biases. So what happens? Does a hate gene turn on when we reach a certain age, or is hate a learned activity?
The hard truth is we teach our children to hate. We, the adults charged with teaching survival tactics, teach hate instead.
Some of the lessons are careless words.
What's a young child to think when a white/black/Asian parent angrily shouts a racial slur when someone with a Asian/black/white face cuts them off in traffic? What are children to think when it's insinuated, even by those in leadership positions, that all Muslims are suspect in the 9/11 attack?
Some of the lessons are by example.
How do children reconcile the call for world peace when the president of the United States wages war on a country under false pretenses, and continues that war knowing hundreds of thousands of innocent people - American and Iraqi - are dying because of his actions?
Children read about, or see on television, that blacks are killing blacks in Africa simply because they belong to different tribes. Until recently, they heard of whites killing whites in Ireland - a far more ``civilized'' country than Africa - over religion and politics.
The United States fights a war to bring "democracy'' to a country that doesn't want it. That war is complicated by Muslims of one sect killing Muslims of another simply because they have different interpretations of the god they all worship.
Religion and politics are central themes as hate is nurtured. In the end, I suppose, it all boils down to power.
Last week, Russia, China and four Asian countries showed their power with war "games.'' Officials of those countries wanted to show the United States that they have nuclear bombs and planes capable of getting those bombs within reach of the United States.
That "game'' was in reaction to war "games'' planned by the United States, Japan, Australia and Singapore in the Bay of Bengal Sept. 4-9.
What are any of us to think as world powers take sides in these so-called games.
Our children in the schoolyard invite to their birthday parties and play dates children of all colors, religions and nationalities. But by word and example we'll teach them to someday become like the otter and the rabbit - predator and prey.
How much longer can this world survive under those circumstances?
Deb Gauthier of The MetroWest Daily News (Framingham, Mass.) can be reached by e-mail at dgauthie@cnc.com.