After reading Sean's great piece about reasons for eating meat, it occurred to me that in many places, hunting isn't just an environmentally sound way to get meat, it's a social and environmental responsibility.

In many places certain species are so over-populated that they are an environmental blight themselves. In some parts of Connecticut, for example, I've heard that there are around 65 white tail deer per square mile. That's immense. Without moderate predation, species like deer can explode in population, and an animal as large as deer can defoliate quite a bit of brush and forest. The massive population, when faced with the effects of the defoliation, tends to develop diseases and experience mass starvation. The only responsible thing to do is respectful and conscious hunting of deer.

There are also the considerations of feeding hungry mouths. Not only does wild meat prove to be a highly nutritious way to feed people of all socio-economic backgrounds, and one that can be procured with minimal cost (as most rural poor have known for a long time), but eating from one's landbase means less dependence on and contribution to multinational corporations. It means less demand for monocropping, and more resources being preserved for those living in the Third World.

Now, this doesn't address the root cause of the overpopulation, at least not entirely. I wouldn't claim that it does. Issues of natural balance and environmental degradation also need to be addressed. But it still needs to be done to preserve the forests now, just as much as wild and feral polycrops need to be cultivated. Indeed, one can simply see this hunting as an extension of polycrops.

It would probably be more accurate to say that environmentalists need to be involved in hunting somehow. We can be involved in other ways than killing, encouraging respectful hunting culture in our communities. We don't all need to actually hunt, but can help in the preparation, butchering, etc.

The same goes for fishing. How about those invasive carp everyone is worried will make it to the Great Lakes? I hear they're not very good eating, but when the health of your entire ecosystem depends on killing them, kill them you will (I hope). I'd say we also need to catch as many rainbow trout as possible to help the brook trout, but the damned DEM people keep putting more in (idiots).

As always, observation and keeping of balance is what is needed, not dogmatic consumer lifestylism or purist moralities. Listen to what your landbase needs. Mine needs me to go hunting.

With election day coming up tomorrow, and me being unable to vote (going camping for work, yay!), I got to thinking about voting. It really astounds me how much seemingly intelligent people can continually put faith in a system that has proven itself to be exploitative and destructive to life in general. So I say Fuck Voting.

So many 'progressives' talk about reform through voting, but no real reform was every made that way. The only meaningful reform is that made by the people, by independent communities. Voting for parasitic politicians every four years isn't working for reform, it's enacting a failed social ritual in order to abrogate responsibility.

The whole idea hinges on the premise that the system can be fixed. But it's not that the system is broken or is in the control of the wrong people. It's functioning exactly as it's supposed to; civilization is by necessity exploitative, violent, and imperialistic. It doesn't matter who runs it. Ultimately all the candidates, even the third party ones who tend to be less annoying, are part of the corporatocratic system, and following the quote famously mis-attributed to Mussolini, the fascist system. Without also working to decolonize/decivilize in parallel, it's a useless action.

That's not to say that there aren't some fascists who are better than others. I'd rather have friendly fascists than outright murderous ones. Voting has weight within the industrial economic/political system. Let's just not delude ourselves into thinking we're doing more than we are: we're shifting pieces within a bad system. If you really want "progress" (whatever that means, but usually it means more genocide) work on it yourself and with your community. Even the slow progress I make building sustainable community is a hel of a lot better than fooling myself by voting. Most of the time I vote anyway, but I'm not disappointed that I didn't look into absentee voting. It's not the most important part of my political life, in fact it's a very small part indeed.

So go ahead and vote. Just be real about what it accomplishes.

P.S. For the last presidential election, I wrote in Jack Lalanne and Ron Popeil. I figured they would at least be honest about selling products, and that healthcare reform would look great (rotisserie chicken and fresh juice for everyone!).