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Leaving for work each morning, still foggy from too little sleep, I neglect to look over toward the compact patio set laid out near the front door. I don’t leave from the front in the morning, so I rarely take note of the black and white cat curled on one of the seat cushions. I know he’s there; know that he’s watching me as I slide into my car. He’s always there … always watching.
He’s not our cat. He doesn’t belong to anyone. Cats are that way generally, in that you only get to lease them until they find a better arrangement or commit cat suicide. This cat isn’t one of those. The Black and White is roughly the tenth generation of feral cats that have made some sort of home on our property over the years. I used to chase them off when I was a young pup, but I’ve grown both wizened and wise with age. Chasing them off doesn’t work and, honestly, we haven’t seen a live mouse in these parts in ages. So, we put up with the periodic soundtrack of cat sex in the middle of the night in exchange for a vermin-free existence.
Our eventual acceptance of his presence represents adaptive symbiosis, where nature plays matchmaker, connecting the erstwhile disconnectedness to create an overall benefit. The mice might not see it that way, but they have numbers on their side. This adjustment doesn’t occur overnight. Our resistance to change of any kind elicits an automatic negative response to anything outside of our accepted norm. We are rocks and we live in hard places. This is where new ideas come to get crushed. And most do. However, if a thing so seemingly foreign lingers around long enough from being made of a stone stronger than ours, it is we who wear down over time, yielding to this natural order grudgingly, but inevitably.
Attached to each new idea is the being from whom that idea emerged. When we attempt to crush the idea, we often fail to take into account the collateral damage we inflict on the person. Only persons with a strong will to survive and thrive can withstand the brutish behavior that we are capable of exhibiting as a group on the one. Only persons with a superior sense of righteousness continue to pursue the path without regard to ridicule and punishment. All others surrender their informed imaginings to the trampling mob. The few survivors retreat into the dark, working under the cover of anonymity and poverty to form a message that seeps unnoticed into the daily regimen until, one day, its truth finds itself inscribed upon the hard place. These misunderstood (and mostly unrewarded) people are responsible for every great leap taken in our history. We could call this group Feral Man.
From Jesus to Galileo, from Kepler to Gandhi, we have seen Feral Man at work. Many seem as high-profile and respected as anyone now, but each in their time was branded as malcontent, oddball or dangerous. Each suffered for a firmly-held belief. And for every name we know, there are hundreds that we don’t whose own private work affects us more with each passing day. There is no way to measure the impact of these people who nurtured their strange ideas to the point where the idea continued to ascend long after the death of its originator. Just as a weathered mountainside shows no evidence of any particular gust of wind, we are so eroded in form that we have trouble recognizing the combination of forces that shaped us.
And what do we say about the dust of failure? Some ideas may have no merit at all. Others may have suffered demise only because of weak parentage. Many of us are easily intimidated by the potential loss of position and respect. We suppress our inspirations, or leave them orphaned on a shadowed doorstep, with note attached asking God’s forgiveness. It is in this result where our greatest sin shows, an arrogance of knowledge that too easily denies conflicting information. The only cure for the arrogance of knowledge is the knowledge of arrogance. It is not an easy lesson to learn, and impossible to teach. We don’t normally look for our own blind spots, and this is one of our worst.
There is a threat looming beyond the damage to the individual. The entire machinery that allows ideas to germinate and spread beneath the surface, to find nourishment and protection from the harsh light, is breaking down. More and more, society increases in its capability to uproot Feral Man and expose him prematurely. There are few places left to operate unnoticed, in order to fully develop substance without interference or criticism. If we simultaneously continue to crush new ideas while driving Feral Man into extinction, civilization will die.
Winter is upon us and the patio furniture is due to be stored away until spring. I promised myself to make a box with a cushion in it for the black and white cat. It was a good idea all along to have him and his ancestors standing guard. The failure to recognize it until now is evidence of a defect within me. Maybe I’ll attach a note to the cushion, asking God’s forgiveness.
