SO LONG STEVO
Stevo is gone. The crocodile hunter with the heart of a lion, who thrilled us by confronting some of nature's most deadly creatures, met his end on the tip of a sting ray's tail. His accidental death shocked many. As a television personality he had appeared eminently masterful in the ways of the natural order. He couldn’t have felt more at ease snorkeling the calm waters of the Australian reef -- it was common knowledge that sting rays weren't dangerous.
Everyone loved Stevo for his courage; a courage born of an intimate understanding of the animals with whom we share the planet. Steve Irwin befriended the natural world, gloried in its treacherous beauty, and helped us to understand our place within it. Overcoming the instinct to run from danger, Stevo encountered it personally and deliberately. In cozying up to poisonous snakes, toxic lizards, hungry crocs and other fearsome creatures, he helped us to visualize our own animal nature and ponder the evolving mystery of our humanity.
Befitting our animal ancestors, we in the human kingdom still identify strongly with the sense of territory and ownership. We are in most ways a unique species. Our intelligence is unsurpassed. Yet, we are willing not only to kill others, but kill ourselves and even sacrifice our young to keep those we consider to be strangers out of what we consider to be our territory. Then we find ways of justifying these acts intellectually. Too often we have seemed determined to prove that we are no better than any other animal and sometimes we act exceedingly worse. Most higher-order animals do not kill their own species, but will target others for food. Males will fight over territory or females, but rarely carry out the violence to a lethal conclusion. Beasts do not kill en mass and are incapable of hatred. Murder, torture, genocide seem to be the province of the human animal.
Robbing us of our claws, teeth and tough hides, evolution would leave us vulnerable, dependent on our wits, our weapons and each other. It endowed us, however, with a magical brain, a fantastic organ that soon perceived the world in ever greater depth and made us masters of the animal kingdom upon which our very existence would come to depend. Animals gave us meat, tilled the earth, and provided waste products that enriched the soil in which we grew our crops. They served us completely, providing food, clothing, transportation and even companionship to soothe our solitary souls.
Now, as lords of our own domain, we have made machines to serve us -- machines that provide us with light, machines that grow, preserve and cook our food. We have machines that can think, remember, and communicate with each other, and machines that can fly to distant stars. Yet, the very machines we made to replace the service of animals are now fouling the air we breathe, their waste products heating the planet to levels that could fundamentally alter the ecosystem upon which all living things depend.
Steve Irwin became dedicated to conservation after seeing how the destruction of habitat can mean the destruction of species. If we could truly understand the way animals grow from the earth as Stevo did, if we could understand ourselves as a single species of uniquely endowed apes, our need to confront each other as a collection of different races, cultures and nationalities, as holy believers and damned infidels, might diminish. Perhaps we might at last hear the message of our DNA, so difficult to perceive because it has been softly whispering in yhe background of our ears since the beginning. Perhaps we might consider its common source.
Steve Irwin was indeed an intriguing example of what is human. He was possessed by an excited fascination with the earth and its wonders - characteristic of both children and great scientists - and a deep desire to pass his learning on to others.
Ultimately, he fell prey to the natural order's most dangerous characteristic - it's randomness, its disorder. The crocodile hunter was an intruder in the sting ray's territory and as a land-based creature, was clearly out of his element. He was at last just another human being whose unlikely death reminds us all of what we all have in common - our all too human vulnerability.
Stevo is gone. The crocodile hunter with the heart of a lion, who thrilled us by confronting some of nature's most deadly creatures, met his end on the tip of a sting ray's tail. His accidental death shocked many. As a television personality he had appeared eminently masterful in the ways of the natural order. He couldn’t have felt more at ease snorkeling the calm waters of the Australian reef -- it was common knowledge that sting rays weren't dangerous.
Everyone loved Stevo for his courage; a courage born of an intimate understanding of the animals with whom we share the planet. Steve Irwin befriended the natural world, gloried in its treacherous beauty, and helped us to understand our place within it. Overcoming the instinct to run from danger, Stevo encountered it personally and deliberately. In cozying up to poisonous snakes, toxic lizards, hungry crocs and other fearsome creatures, he helped us to visualize our own animal nature and ponder the evolving mystery of our humanity.
Befitting our animal ancestors, we in the human kingdom still identify strongly with the sense of territory and ownership. We are in most ways a unique species. Our intelligence is unsurpassed. Yet, we are willing not only to kill others, but kill ourselves and even sacrifice our young to keep those we consider to be strangers out of what we consider to be our territory. Then we find ways of justifying these acts intellectually. Too often we have seemed determined to prove that we are no better than any other animal and sometimes we act exceedingly worse. Most higher-order animals do not kill their own species, but will target others for food. Males will fight over territory or females, but rarely carry out the violence to a lethal conclusion. Beasts do not kill en mass and are incapable of hatred. Murder, torture, genocide seem to be the province of the human animal.
Robbing us of our claws, teeth and tough hides, evolution would leave us vulnerable, dependent on our wits, our weapons and each other. It endowed us, however, with a magical brain, a fantastic organ that soon perceived the world in ever greater depth and made us masters of the animal kingdom upon which our very existence would come to depend. Animals gave us meat, tilled the earth, and provided waste products that enriched the soil in which we grew our crops. They served us completely, providing food, clothing, transportation and even companionship to soothe our solitary souls.
Now, as lords of our own domain, we have made machines to serve us -- machines that provide us with light, machines that grow, preserve and cook our food. We have machines that can think, remember, and communicate with each other, and machines that can fly to distant stars. Yet, the very machines we made to replace the service of animals are now fouling the air we breathe, their waste products heating the planet to levels that could fundamentally alter the ecosystem upon which all living things depend.
Steve Irwin became dedicated to conservation after seeing how the destruction of habitat can mean the destruction of species. If we could truly understand the way animals grow from the earth as Stevo did, if we could understand ourselves as a single species of uniquely endowed apes, our need to confront each other as a collection of different races, cultures and nationalities, as holy believers and damned infidels, might diminish. Perhaps we might at last hear the message of our DNA, so difficult to perceive because it has been softly whispering in yhe background of our ears since the beginning. Perhaps we might consider its common source.
Steve Irwin was indeed an intriguing example of what is human. He was possessed by an excited fascination with the earth and its wonders - characteristic of both children and great scientists - and a deep desire to pass his learning on to others.
Ultimately, he fell prey to the natural order's most dangerous characteristic - it's randomness, its disorder. The crocodile hunter was an intruder in the sting ray's territory and as a land-based creature, was clearly out of his element. He was at last just another human being whose unlikely death reminds us all of what we all have in common - our all too human vulnerability.
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