The Unfinished Parable of the Shepherd and the Starving Wolf Cubs
In the wilderness, far from anyone else, a shepherd and his flock come across a den of starving wolf cubs. A couple of days earlier, the shepherd found the body of an adult female wolf. The female wolf was probably the cubs’ mama, and it looked like it had gotten killed by a bear.
The small orphans look pitiful, and they will surely die within the day if they have no food. The only food the shepherd has that the wolves will eat are his sheep, all of which he has raised from birth.
You are merciful. You are also the shepherd. Which act of social eugenics do you perform?
Interesting, but silly premise. People do not raise sheep only for wool, but for meat also. Feed the wolves, and raise them to guard your flocks. That’s probably how we domesticated the wolf in the first place.
Just when you think the site could not get worse, it gets worse.
A Trojan Horse sighting!
Who’d thunk it?
Trojan Horse sighting? Bingo.
Two legs good; four legs bad. (pure self-interest decides)
Two legs aren’t necessarily always good. Kimel has two legs. Presumably.
“After WWI the rapid changes to society and culture of the Weimar period brought a change to the fairy tale as well. If the Grimm’s tales had “helped children to develop full personalities” through stories of good and evil, post-war fairy tales were anti-social and anti-family, in such collections as Hermann Hesse’s “Marchen”, in modern settings that were a world away from a fairy tale wood. Where traditional fairy tales often saw children endangered by parents due to hunger, adversity, envy or coercion, post-war and Weimar tales see family itself as the enemy, the bourgeois and conservative force that must be pushed against and escaped. Hesse’s tales continued to be romantic, with the all the idealism of the individual who triumphs against all odds due to curiosity and wit, while later Weimar tales were overtly pessimistic, dealing with the breakdown of society and family in a fast-moving world. Collections such as Zur Muhlen’s “Fairy Tales for Worker’s Children” pointed at injustice, discrimination, and exploitation among the modern world’s economies and races. With the rise of the Nazi party, both this romanticism and this pessimism would be crushed and the “innocent” folktale become an ideological weapon. As one party official declared, “The German folktale shall become a most valuable means for us in the racial and political education of the young.” For more information on Weimar fairy tales, read Jack Zipes’ marvellous “Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion.” In fact, read any Zipes you can get your hands on.
Nazi stories were folktales, not fairy tales; they removed the literary “fairy” to focus on the Volk, marching together in solidarity behind one Fuhrer. Dr. Albert Krebs wrote books for use in Nazi Germany’s schools. He wrote that folk tales had a “healthy and organic” view of the world, while fairy tales were “artificial and decadent”, a leftover from “early Romantic writers … the product of a baroque and distorted view of reality … and should be kept off the children’s bookshelves.” This didn’t stop the Nazis from appropriating classic fairy tales and rewriting them, however. Googling about, I find numerous references to a Nazi “Cinderella” where the prince rejects the wicked step-mother for racial impurity and chooses the Nordic Cinderella as his bride, but I cannot find the source itself. There are also numerous references to a swastika covered Little Red Riding Hood and the Nazi officer who knifes the wolf.”
that’s pretty simple for anyone who’s been there…since i’ve had my cats killed by coyotes, if i find coyote pups, they’re dead….
Can you use that skill to do something about this interminable, god-awful, alt-right series of posts on this blog? I don’t have a hunting rifle.
You are merciful. You are also a shepherd. And since this parable is being finished in 2016, you also have a cell phone with you.
You use it first to dial 911. And then to click the Angry Bear website, hack into its WordPress Dashboard as an administrator, and kill this interminable, god-awful series, finally and once-and-for-all.
You do this by redirecting the entire series, and this author’s sign-in access, to Breitbart.
You perform this act of social eugenics. You are merciful.
Kimel
if you are a shepherd you will kill the wolf pups and probably not in a kind way.
if you were me you would feed the wolf pups milk and dog food and take them to a place far from sheep.
where probably they would die, unless they were adopted by another wolf… i think not likely.
but their mom was not killed by a bear. wolves hunt in packs and can easily drive away a bear.
she was probably killed by sarah palin with a high powered rifle from a helicopter.
i don’t eat sheep. but in the present balance of things i think saving a few wolves is probably more important than saving a few sheep.
which a shepherd would kill and eat, not necessarily kindly.
does that answer your question, or did i miss your point?
Rjs
let’s be enemies forever.
my daughter has a cat who essentially raised her eight pups. i love that cat. i have dogs who would kill a cat if they could. i don’t let them. i love my dogs.
i see about one coyote every ten years. the last one i saw was very close… about ten yards. running not for his life, but at the speed of a fast bicycle. he was very beautiful. he looked at us as he went by. didn’t see anything worth stopping for. i loved that coyote.
have fun killing them.
I just conferred with Kiki the kitty about this, and she said the answer is for the cats to stay in the house and curl up on a window sill until dark, and then find some piece of furniture to scratch. She then curled up at my feet, since it’s already dark here and there’s nothing to see from the window sill. Tomorrow is another day, though.
Warren
alas, or perhaps fortunately, wolves cannot be domesticated. attempts always end in tragedy mostly for the wolf.
the most probable theory (to me) is that some wolfs who were genetically less “wild” than most took to hanging around people and some of the pups who were still less “wild” were adopted and made themselves useful.
not sure even that is entirely satisfactory explanation. but the point is there have been some genetic changes over the last twenty thousand years or more and a wolf will just not want to guard your sheep or sit in your lap and kiss your face
but, god, they are beautiful.
there was a wolf in alaska who took to hanging around a town and playing with the town dogs. i have no idea why, nor does anyone else. some brave person from pennsylvania heard about the town-loving wolf (he never became a pet, he lived in the woods on his own and “visited”). this brave man thought so much about the wolf the town loved that he thought it would be a real proof of his manhood if he went to the town in alaska and shot the wolf. he did. and of course the law can’t touch him.
God, is that sick.
Mike Kimel,
Why did you set up this parable with the condition that wolf pups can only survive on lamb or sheep flesh? If they are pups they would have been nursing from the mother’s teats. The mother having been killed, one must assume that a rescuing person would substitute some other form of milk.
So I guess I’m asking the purpose of the parable as you have structured it.
Yeah, I was wondering, too, how pups who still need their mother to survive would be eating meat rather than sucking milk.
A few months ago I helped a neighbor try to save a baby squirrel that had fallen out of a tree with the mother unable to rescue the baby, who was in immediate danger from … something; I can’t remember what my neighbor said, exactly. He asked me to feed milk to it while he was out-of-town for a couple of days for work. It didn’t survive, either because it had internal injuries from the fall or because we weren’t able to get enough milk into it using a dropper. But it sure couldn’t have eaten nuts or seeds.
I think we both know the purpose of this biologically inaccurate parable, Jack.
well, i think the answer is for the shepherd to finish his mutton stew and then throw up into the mouths of the pups. if they are old enough for that.
kiki
is a very wise cat.
my daughters cats have learned that my dogs are not their dogs. they play with their dogs. when my dogs come to visit, they hide under the bed in the locked bedroom unless they happen to be outside, in which case they climb a tree or into the rafters in the barn and wait for the bad dogs to go away.
Kiki is indeed a wise cat. As are your daughter’s.
That’s the problem, I don’t readily see the purpose, if there is one. It is not readily apparent to me, and I’m trying to keep an open mind since Dan allows Kimel posting privileges on the site. It was the series of posts that focused on cultural traits and the relationship to economic success that I found troubling. I’m still not quite sure I understand what Kimel was trying to prove.
of course we’ll have to wait for the final solution to know, and then everything will be all right.
my bet is this is something about protecting our own children and keeping foreign children out. at least non germanic anglo saxon children.
that’s because, as Kimmel already told you, germans and englishers are better at math. and god knows we need more better at math types to increase the GDP.
of course, the chinese are pretty good at math too, and there are more of them. many more, so there will be more chinese geniuses than even german geniuses. so maybe the answer is to open our doors to the chinese so we can get more of those geniuses for our own use.
probably they would be willing to become sperm donors. and leave the organ doning to us.
My take on this: The shepherd kills the cubs. He is compassionate and they are pathetic and innocent and guilty of no sin, but — They will grow up to be wolves and the enemy of his flock, for that is the very nature of their existence. So he smashes their skulls upon the rocks of the fields and grinds their bodies into the mud with his heel, for that is the task he assumed when he chose to be a shepherd. Honor the shepherd for so performing his duties and recognize that his ethics are superior to your weak-willed pity.
Now let’s think about cultural traits and economic success. Think of human groups as analogous to animal types. Who might the Sheeple be? Who might be the piteous and even appealing supplicant cubs? And what might they be when adult? And who in our society assumes the role of Shepherd and acts with True Virtue while those who only prate of the people refuse to guard them? Think real hard.
Mr Kimel has discovered the heady brew of Human BioDiversity — Nazi genetics posing as 21st science — and mistakes his intoxication as enlightenment. There’s a fifty fifty chance he’ll come sober before he dies. so I suggest some patience.
I, and many here, understand that Mike is positing a false dichotomy by pretending it as an ‘unfinished parable’. Should we eradicate all wolves is the question he seemingly avoids asking;-)
My only point with this is that sometimes there are no good answers. The saddest thing I ever did was about ten years ago. Before work there were a few groups of feral cats I would feed since they were close to my apartment. One morning a feral mom did something I never saw before. She walked up to me holding her weakened kitten in her mouth and put it at my feet. I took the kitten to the vet but the vet said it probably wasn’t going to make it. He recommended I have it euthanized and said it had a small chance of making it. I took the kitten home. I wanted to give it a chance. It died in the middle of the night. I still hear thesound of its tortured breathing sometimes. I should have had the cat euthanized.
But if, as Beverly seems to want to do, you want to tie this to immigration…. well I did write a post about Emperor Valens’ act of mercy toward the Visigoths and how those Visigoths went on to kill Valens and some years later to sack Rome. I am sure some approve.
Finally, as a public service I would remind folks of the existence of google. You can use it to learn all kinds of things. Google could even tell you that wolves start eating meat st three weeks of age.
Can google tell us why wolf pups who eat meat would starve without their mother? Do wolf mothers kill the animals for meat for the pups? And if the pups could eat meat, why didn’t they try when there were sheep in front of them?
Google doesn’t seem to cover this, best as I can tell. Bing, maybe?
“I would remind folks of the existence of google.”
Is that what you use to create the data that you post in here that, when anyone takes an interest and checks(probably on google) that you are full of shit?
This ain’t hard to figure out.
Life is full of hard choices. So it is better, though a hard choice) to deny immigration to unqualified (culturally or educationally to be kind) for the good of the world, or country, or your country.
You might just be too far left for Breitbart.
A parable focusing on decision making? OK, I’ll accept that, but wouldn’t the old story of Solomon deciding to cut a baby in two parts so that the two women claiming to be the mother could each be rewarded their claim have done just as well? And be more readily understood?
Jack,
Only if the two women were of different countries of origin.
Bev
Neither does Google tell us what a shepherd who doesn’t kill sheep eats.
Jack,
The wolf pups, if they grow up, make this a repeated game. They will have to eat again. The baby in the Solomon story by definition does not grow up.
Beverly,
Google can point you to sources showing wolves can eat meat at 3 weeks of age. It can show you what a pup looks like and tell you what it’s capabilities are. It can give you info but not think for you. However, an awful lot of kids in elementary school can noodle out whether a group of starving pups that haven’t eaten for days can simultaneously hold off a shepherd and take down a sheep. I Know you can too. Whether you choose to or not is up to you.
Mike
i felt a little bad about making fun of you. but the problem is the shabbiness of your parable… if that’s what it is.
you have no call to be condescending to Beverly.
If you think you have a worthwhile point to make, you need to try, try again. But by this time I don’t think you have, or can.