09/10/2023
STALLIONS – EQUALITY – AND HOW WE MAKE SENSE OF WHAT WE SEE
This is a picture from Popielno and our Rewild your Heart workshop last week. 3 young stallions. 1 having his own small band, 2 still living in their small bachelor band of 2, together. All 3 meet and "banter" - but there might come more serious challenges ahead. It is a very natural thing for a stallion to want his own band (family). For now, they are very “friendly” with each other – “bickering like siblings” - is what it looks like if I humanize (anthropomorphize) what I see.
The oldest is 7, then there is a 4-year-old and a 1,5-year-old.
What can you learn about horses coming to a Rewild your Heart workshop? One thing you will most certainly learn is that their social life and dynamics within bands and between bands - is not what you most likely thought it was. There is soo much interaction and communication going on, we humans miss most of it (and it does not exist in the same way in our human-made bands). But it was obvious to all participants of the workshop that the feral-living Koniks here live very intense social lives.
I also think it is very easy for us to see a lot of aggression (agonistic) behaviors, as they tend to be “larger”. And we miss out on a lot of affiliative behaviors. We simply cannot see/read the nuances. We get the big stuff, but sometimes I think we also get that wrong. I think we project a lot on to them. And once we are doing that - we simply cannot see anymore.
When we look at them it is so easy to look for our human stories. Who loves or likes whom? Who is strong? Week? Boss? Underdog? Who is whose family? Who is the bad guy or the good guy? We feel sorry for the ones alone and love to see affectionate behaviors between dam and foal, or mare and stallion. We are so full of "empathy" that we want to intervene, save, safeguard, cure, etc., each and every one of them. It is so easy for most humans to go into either some kind of parental role towards them, or we objectify them, making the object for our studies, or the object for commercial, competitive, emotional values of different sorts. All human roles we take towards other beings – on some sort of unequal ground.
What interests me is how we can make the mind shift (as good as it gets - there is no escape from us actually being humans and seeing things from our human perspectives) - so we can see a bit clearer. To me it means seeing them as equals. As fully competent and complete beings – with very little need for us humans (or our stories).
I am afraid I am sounding very judgmental. Or provocative. What I am trying to do is to sort out why as I see it, there is a huge benefit in bringing people out to see feral-living horses at the same time as I am afraid, I am contributing to an equally anthropomorphic picture of them where they get so much to be subject to where we objectify them…
If we, by subjectifying them, are putting our own stories onto them, are we then not really objectifying them? And they are again filling a human need? As our “wild saviors”?
This is a process for me, and I am trying to find words to it. Rewilding to me, is not FOR me. It is not about fulfilling a need in me. It is about ridding myself of needing. Another. To me it is about me finding me. The rawer and wilder version of me, that beneath the social concepts and constructs we all live under, can act in the world in a more authentic and congruent way. To me feral-living horses are role models of some sort. They are rewilded. Live rewilded lives. I don’t want to live like them, I want to live like a rewilded human. And they inspire me, but they can only do that as long as I stay away from humanizing them, away from needing them, away from putting my stories onto them.
Not sure I make sense to anyone but myself (yet). But I am getting there. I hope. And no one needs to agree with me. This is how I see it; what rewilding means to me.
I think the rewilding concept can lead to better coexistence between species. This is my goal. And to do that, I think we need to practice seeing others clearer (as well as ourselves). When we put our humanness onto other species, we get in the way of our own seeing, and goals like coexistence on equal terms are not possible.
“We do not need more science. We need a new mind-set and social movement that is transformational and centers on empathy, compassion, and being proactive. By rewilding our hearts, we focus on building strong and intimate connections with nature, and these experiences are essential for effective social change. This is deep work.“
— Marc Bekoff (from his book Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence)
For me – to build strong and intimate connections – each being must be allowed to be them.
But maybe it does not matter? As long as our stories does not end up with us making reality of what we see, as long as we only look at does not put anything into action, then horses are not affected by our projections, only we ourselves are.
But still, I think coexistence is only possible between equals. I think it is true between humans (groups of different sorts) as well as between species. Equality is only possible between equals – a truism. But there it is – and as soon as we interpret or make up stories about another, they are not present in the same way anymore. And we humans tend to get very entangled in our stories.
