Before I start, a bit of housekeeping:
Yeah, sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I spent most of my energy trying to find new accommodations and moving from my dank, cramped, shared flat into a cool basement bachelor. Then I couldn’t remember where I packed my wit and indignation (or what little energy I had before).
But the Calgary Stampede has just thundered away in a cloud of dust and ignorance and all signs point to it returning again next year despite the well-publicized deaths of six horses.
A little background for my foreign readers who may be wondering what this madness I speak of is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_Stampede
Let’s break this down, shall we:
Stampede: a sudden, headlong running away of frightened animals, esp. horses or cattle.
That was from Websters New World Dictionary, not PETA or the Animal Liberation Front. An impartial, mainstream source used the word “frightened” to describe a stampede. And of course the horses running at distressingly high speeds in the chuck wagon races under the threat of whips are frightened. 50 horses have been killed in this event since 1986 from either cardiac arrest due to stress or by crashing. The baby cows dragged by ropes around their necks, often kicked and endured electrical prods, damn straight they’re frightened too.
And yet polls suggest that majority of Canadians (most of whom have never even attended) are in favor of the Calgary Stampede stamping back next year.
Why? Because “it’s tradition.”
Tradition is a funny thing. It has the power to cause otherwise rational humans to ignore or justify acts we would otherwise never abide. We see it happening when smart, modern young women recite sexist wedding vows because that’s the way her (or maybe his) church has always done it and we musn’t rock the boat. It makes things that should frighten and anger us (like female genital mutilation) seem quaint and seeped in something deep and meaningful and mysterious. And we use up a good deal of energy defending them or ignoring them.
Traditions are scared cows (unlike the poor Stampeded cows) and people will try and justify them any way they can, even if it makes no sense.
“Well that cowboy on the news said the animals are treated well and we didn’t grow up on a farm or a ranch so we musn’t be ignorant city folk and just let them prove their manhood by jumping on a steer from a moving horse, twisting its neck and wrestling the poor thing to the ground in front of a stadium full of hooting knuckle draggers.”
I don’t care if they sing those calves a freaking lullabye and kiss their foreheads before they put the ropes around their necks and let them writhe in terror while taking their victory laps. No living being should be subjected to fear and pain for any reason, especially not entertainment. Cruelty is cruelty, no matter how many decades or centuries it has been allowed to go on.
I’m not against tradition per se. Heck, I look forward to cake and presents on my birthday. They take the sting out of getting older and everyone gets to have cake. But too often it is used as an excuse for atrocities to keep perpetuating when we should damn well know better. And the Calgary Stampede is one of them.
I have long accepted that most people are not going to be revolutionaries and just want to go about living their lives with a minimum of conflict and aggrievation. I get that. But just blindly following traditions when you know in the back of your mind that they are cloaking pain and cruelty, they are a dead stupid substitute for thinking.
