If you read the goose story - you know what I mean. I wonder - is it bad parenting, in the genes, social cues, violent movies and games? Any ideas?

-- Catherine (catherine@cmjcom.com), September 29, 1999

Answers

It's a matter of cruel stupidity, Catherine. Too much analysis of stupidity leaves one feeling stupid for the waste of energy.

The kid was a cruel, stupid fuck. Is there hope for him? I don't care. I care more about the fate of graceful geese than about the rehabilitation of stupid fucks.

There are parallel lines that the human mind might draw where geese and people are concer

-- Anthony V. Toscano (atoscano@mindspring.com), September 29, 1999.

Catherine,

I was going to say something about this yesterday, but ...

When I was going to college, we all hated the geese that populated the lagoon area and then spread all over campus in large gaggles. They shat everywhere, and they were mean! Spitting and hissing, nipping at clothes and tearing them ... we had to take lengthy alternate routes to get to class.

At my mom's house, in the suburbs of Chicago, on a river, there are many geese. The next door neighbor likes to shoot at them with a bb gun, since they leave slimy green shit all over his yard and destroy the shrubbery by crashing through it to get to the road in front of the houses.

My mom feeds these geese, and they've multiplied. No, even further than that, they've reduced their migration so that they never leave the area. They come in groups of sixty to seventy, waiting for the chunks of wholesale bread my mom tosses to them. She has names for several, and actually lifted one up to save its webbed foot from a constriction of old fishing line it had gotten tangled up in.

We call her the Goose Whisperer, for fun, but damn, she really loves those geese. She would have been horrified at the behavior of that boy, she would have wept for days. Man, what a little fuckhead that kid was. I can't even imagine the simple cruelty.

I'm shaking my head.

-- krystyn (eisllew@msn.com), September 30, 1999.

well, to be honest, i think it's poor parenting. the child has grown up with little or no respect for the living creatures around him. who teaches that respect? gee..in one so young...only one option applies, the parents. the fact that the mother said "it's only a goose" or something very similar demonstrates that respect wasn't only not taught but isn't even a part of a parent's life.

'tis a sad thing and it grieves me, because to respect one life is to respect all. many may disagree, but that's how i feel.

thanks catherine tribble

-- tribble (tribble@asarina-host.org), September 30, 1999.

it is _definately_ the parents.

children come into this world pure and full of love. that child was _taught_ to hate.

its obvious his mother has no respect for herself, her child, other humans or animals and has passed that on to her son.

-- emma (goddess@worldnet.fr), September 30, 1999.

I am reminded of something Albert Schweitzer once said -

"whoever would harm an animal, would also harm a person"

Schweitzer is famous for his "reverence for life" philosophy. If we disrespect any kind of life, then it really is improbable that we could respect anything at all. The Mother's attitude is probably not from a wilful hatred of things, but rather she probably never came across the right kind of ideas to inspire respect for other things other than her immediate family; i.e., too much television and movie propaganda which control the mind, and not enough reading of classical books which enlighten the mind.

-- jww (jwebb66@yahoo.com), September 30, 1999.