Invisible Fences

Domestication is the ongoing domination of one organism by another in order to fulfill the dominating organism's agenda.

The two essential steps of the domestication process are:
(1) the domesticator taking away the freedom of the domesticated and
(2) the domesticator breaking the domesticated's wild spirit to prevent further attempts to regain this freedom.

If this process has been optimally achieved, no further action on the part of the domesticator is necessary to maintain this state of dominance.

When this occurs, the external forces that produced the state of surrender and submission are internalized by the domesticated.

As a result, the domesticated organism may appear to be free in its actions upon superficial assessment but this illusion of freedom is maintained only so long as the domesticated obediently stays within the limits that the domesticator has imposed upon it.

The domesticated will not voluntarily attempt to journey outside of these parameters and, if it is somehow pushed beyond them, it will become very uncomfortable and quickly retreat to get safely back inside of their margins.

A simple example of all of this is the 'Invisible Fence' system of pet control (http://www.invisiblefence.com/index.asp) whereby a pet is forced to wear a collar that produces an electrical shock if the animal wanders outside of the zone that its owner designates to be acceptable for it to roam within.

So long as it stays inside these boundaries it can run freely and, when properly trained, it learns not to respond to its own natural desire to roam beyond, for fear of being shocked again, eventually acting in this manner even if the system is non-operative.

Ten thousand years of domestication of human animals over the course of the regime of civilization has resulted in the development of a multitude of internal cages within civilized humans, cages whose bars are very real but are for the most part as invisible as the invisible fences now used on humans' pets (the domesticated animals of domesticated animals).

The bars of these cages, created anew within each generation of domesticated humans, remain unseen so long as they are not challenged, giving the appearance of free people living within free societies.

Every once in a while, however, an inadequately domesticated human animal slips through the indoctrination system and strays outside of the cages that the vast majority fearfully stay within.

When this occurs, the owners of civilization make the invisible cages much more painfully concrete for the individual who strayed in order to make up for the lesson that had not previously been adequately learned.

Even more importantly, this is done as an example, in order to insure that the rest of the domesticated herd don't start wandering outside of the cages as well, an occurrence that could lead to general 'disorder' (i.e. not following the agenda imposed by the domesticator).

I recently came upon the story of such an inadequately domesticated individual - Robert Latimer, a Canadian.

As is often so, it took a series of extreme and unusual circumstances to reveal his less than optimal degree of domestication.

In Mr. Latimer's particular case the issue was that he and his wife had a daughter, Tracy, born with severe cerebral palsy. Due to her condition, Tracy experienced a markedly limited level of function, endured ongoing suffering, and required repeated complicated medical interventions to maintain her in a pathetic state of existence.

After twelve years, Mr. Latimer finally decided to end the nightmare that Tracy, he, his wife, and their three other children had been enduring. He killed Tracy by means of carbon monoxide poisoning.

A police investigation ensued and he was charged with first degree murder. He was convicted of second degree murder but the conviction was dismissed on a technicality. A retrial took place and he was convicted a second time, but the empathetic jury recommended parole after one year. This was overruled by the Canadian Supreme Court and he was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence with no possibility of parole for ten years. Mr. Latimer was, however, released earlier this year on day parole after serving seven years in prison.

To this day, Mr. Latimer argues that he should not have gone to jail and that what he did was right.

This case triggered a great deal of debate within Canada. In 1999, 73% of Canadians polled felt that he acted out of compassion and should have received a lighter sentence. Furthermore, 41% of those polled believed that 'mercy killing' should not be illegal.

For more on this case please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Latimer and http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=9fcdcb52-030f-44e6-a295-2e41cb6d032b&k=46461 .

The unfortunate situation that Mr. Latimer and his family found themselves dealing with could have happened to anyone and has, in fact, been the painful reality for many - increasingly so as more technologically sophisticated medical measures allow people to exist despite having decreasingly functional states.

Canada has an extensive support system for the severely impaired and the Latimers could have quite easily unloaded their burden on the state if that had been their wish.

Based on the information that I have reviewed, I believe that Mr. Latimer's actions were those of a caring father taking responsibility for the well-being of his suffering child, himself and the rest of his family, a decision which he surely did not take lightly.

An adequately domesticated man would have been trained to function with the mindset that killing his child was illegal and thus simply out of the question. In the unlikely event that he would have even allowed himself to consider pursuing such an option, he would have asked for permission first - which, of course, would have been denied.

Obedience is the foundation of domestication. The concept of a domesticated human doing anything without getting permission first (or at least without doing an internal check to insure that permission would be granted if requested) is unacceptable.

This was the primary message that the court wanted to convey to Mr. Latimer and the Canadian people.

Mr. Latimer's case is particularly interesting in this respect because it involves the issue of who has the final say over one's own dependent offspring.

The invisible fence in Canada regarding this matter (as for all others) is that the state has dominance.

We are, of course, trained to believe that this is a good thing because of all of the abusive parents that the state must protect innocent children from.

The domesticators have done such an effective job of subjugating the domesticated that the sheep would now rather have the shepherd determine the fate of their lambs than the sheep themselves, even though the shepherd's clear intention is to steal their wool and send them to the slaughterhouse - abusing, imprisoning, and denaturing them along the way.

The harm that children receive from their parents is the direct result of the damage done to the parents due to the destructive and unnatural realities of domestication itself and the parents' complicity with that process. Untamed human parents did not display the harmful behaviors towards their offspring that the civilized do.

The solution to the war on children is the empowerment rather than the disempowerment of individuals. One can be certain that this empowerment, if it should occur, will not be driven by the domesticators but by the domesticated themselves.

Mr. Latimer, uncharacteristic of a domesticated human, just went ahead and determined the fate of his child himself without getting the permission of the state and against its dictates. Since that day he has made this invisible fence visible and has been receiving regular forceful unpleasant shocks from it as he struggles to break through it.

Notably, he has shown no remorse for his actions. One will assume that the discomfort of the punishment that he has experienced due to them has been outweighed by the feelings of pride and comfort that he has obtained by making what he knew to be a healthy and loving choice.

Furthermore, while it may appear that his decision caused him to lose his freedom, in fact the opposite is true.

He had already been living his whole life within the invisible fence, even if he did not previously realize it.

However, with his actions he successfully accomplished what he understood needed to be done and, in the process, rekindled his wild animal spirit.

He and his family would be far more imprisoned today, in every sense, if he had not challenged the fence than they actually are now because he did.


Peter Hercules

Welcome

... to Untamedlife.

I have had a website for the past six years (http://www.untamedlife.com), entitled 'Liberating the Caged Human Animal' .

Its perspective and objective....

As a medical doctor with a particular interest in human behavior and its dysfunction, I have come to understand that the central problem and reality of humans today is that we have become a domesticated species. We are caged animals. While we were once a wild species of animal like all of the others, over the course of civilization we have become enslaved. Our minds and bodies have been used to enable a small group of individuals to obtain the status and wealth that they crave. As a result, just like dogs, cattle, swine, sheep and the rest of the domesticated species, we have lost control of our lives and are deviated from our healthy genetically programmed internal agendas. The product of this deviation is disease and death-in-life existence. This website explains how to liberate yourself in order to optimize your quality of life and well being.

On my site I offer my book (which shares the site's title) free of charge. It explains both the philosophy and the methodology of self-liberation that I propose.

As well, I present there a collection of subsequent writings of mine and others, and an array of resources relating to the theme of untaming.

I decided to create this blog as an additional means to promulgate these ideas and in order to invite discussion about them.

I intend to make reasonably frequent postings here regarding a wide range of relevant issues.

For those of you unfamiliar with my site, what I have there should be enough to get you started, so please feel free to explore it.

As for the rest of you, I'll be blogging back here again soon. Meanwhile, your comments are welcome.

Thanks for the visit.

Peter Hercules