A Bears Tale.....

The roll model of my life in my earlier years, my step-father, was a hard man not known for his tender kindness. I learned a lot from him, in spite of his obvious 'dislike' for me. A venture into earlier pieces would explain that a bit, here I'll move forward. Suffice it to say, he was a large part of my 'tactical defense training' as a young man. It wasn't so much that he taught me to fight, rather, he taught me to duck. I learned to bob and weave, to avoid conflicts I saw coming. I learned to keep my eyes open, and my head low.

After 'becoming a man', and being shown the door, I rekindled my relationship with my born father. From a bit different perspective, he taught me some additional 'tactical offensive training'. As a martial artist, his take on engaging the enemy was the frontal assault. In real life there is no such thing as a 'fair fight'. As soon as the engagement is eminent, you attack. He once told me, "son, don't wait for someone to bloody your nose before your engage. Because from there you fight from a point of disadvantage. You can't see clearly, you are in pain, so therefore you can't think clearly, and lastly, your opponent enjoys all these as advantages of the first punch. When you see it's bound to come, strike. And when you do strike, strike to disable."

As a Marine, I learned concepts like peace through superior fire-power, advance and attack, adapt, improvise, and overcome, and shoot to kill. Granted, not a passive perspective on life, but then again, not everyone is cut out to be a warrior.

In my humble opinion, people fall into three basic categories. Those that produce (nurturers), those that defend (warriors), and those that depend (as benefactors of the first two).

Let me take some shots at these three sects of life. The first, those that nurture.

These are really the backbone of a society. They are the ones that tend the fields, build the huts, teach the children, and see to the sick or the wounded of body or soul. In general, they see to the day to day needs of the society's survival from a provider perspective. All those aspects of life that make it possible to subsist.

The second of those three groups, the warriors, are a necessary evil, if one wanted to put it that way. 'Thou shalt not kill', of the famed Ten Commandments, for all it being a basic law of God for His people, more often than not gets occluded by the nasty side of human nature, those that want to break it. As long as there are 'fields white with harvest', there are going to be low-life's that want to take them from us. We need the barn, and we need to protect it. This group is going to be comprised of all those involved with protection. Those that build the quivers, and arrows, and those that fire them. Those that tend the steeds and chariots, and those that bind the beasts. Necessity being the mother of all invention, if we didn't have bad-guys, we wouldn't need police.

These first two groups are easy enough to understand and account for. It's the third group that tends to blur if focused on too hard. Those that depend on others for survival.

A baby depends. In it's innocence, it has no concept, beyond the basic instinct of crying, on how to provide for or protect itself. If it's hungry, it cries, someone that nurtures will feed it. If it's hurt, again it cries, and a warrior will protect it. To take nothing away from motherhood, this often comes in the form of the same person. I've never met a mother who wouldn't feed her child with one arm, and defend it with the other.

Both the old, or the infirm, fall within this group as well. More often than not, they will have come from one of the former two groups, and thereby done their share of providing, or protecting to have paved the way for their dependence.

Our old need to be fed, and they need to be protected. The wisdom they have acquired over a lifetime must be tapped, if we as a society are to grow. We must constantly be learning from the generations behind to better contemplate the future ahead. Whether they were former nurturers, or warriors, their usefulness continues, and we must provide. A society that casts off it's old are a society of fools doomed to fall.

The infirm are our responsibility as well. They may be wounded warriors fallen in the service of protecting. Or, they may be the victims of sickness. If we expect forthcoming generations of warriors, we must have a history of caring for those who fall in battle. If we expect to be taken care of should we succumb to illness, we must reciprocate by tending those who have.

An unfortunate sub-group of this last, those that depend unnecessarily, are the dregs of society.

I don't have a problem with taking care of those who can't care for themselves. If ever I reach that point in my life, I would hope that someone would 'take care' of me. (Personally, I've made a pact with my brother should that event occur. We won't go into any great detail there.) Unfortunately, there is a vast margin between those that 'can't', and those that 'won't'. We have absolutely no control over the lot in life we are born to. But, given a sound mind and body, if we stay, should there be a way out, we become one who 'won't'. These are the people who take comfort in knowing that someone will always take care of them, even if they are fully capable of taking care of themselves. They make no effort to change the circumstances they dwell in, and they make no effort to contribute to the state that provides for them.

Another class of people, those who also dwell within this margin of those who 'won't', are those that propose that they exist outside of the requirements of providing for themselves. Those that adopt a position of privilege. Those that feel that because of something they've done, are doing, or intend to do, this puts them in a place where they don't 'have' to take care of themselves.

Nurturers and warriors can govern, for a reasonable period of time, then go back to nurturing, or protecting. Our constitution provided for leadership from 'within the people'. Farmers, defenders, craftsmen, clergy, doctors, merchants and mothers who take a break from those all so necessary aspects of life, serve to lead, and then go back to being productive.

Then there are those who don't. Those that like a bad rash, just won't go away. Like the rash, they've found a nice warm crack that rubs them just right, and be damned if they're gonna leave.

These are the real criminals of society. For a person who takes without giving, in whatever capacity, is nothing more than a thief.

Our original government officials served with little or no pay, by design. To lead was an obligation if the traits were present. It was an honor to serve for the bottom dollar, as our military still does, not for the dollar itself, but rather the honor. To make a wage that is enough to survive for the duration is acceptable. But to use a position of power to secure a profit outside of a reasonable pay is despicable, as well as criminal. And not to overlook the issue, those nurturers and warriors, who subvert any position of prominence within that field to profit unreasonably, and at the expense of someone else's pain, fall into that last despicable category as well.

As a civilized nation we should've been around long enough to have learned to pick our shots, if not our battles. If we're smart, we use the information of why we've missed to influence our choice of future targets. If not, well....we don't, and the generations to come end up wasting a lot of lead. That cycle keeps repeating itself long enough and one has to question the under lying purpose of why we're hunting in the first place.

Speaking of hunting. There's this hunter in the woods with a rifle. He sees a big ugly bear, takes aim, shoots, and misses. The bear walks over and says "Mister, I don't take kindly to being hunted. I reckon I'm gonna have to teach you a lesson". So he cuffs the guy, roughs him up and has his way with him.

A little later the hunter is still prowling around, sees the bear again and takes another shot. He misses again. The bear comes up and says "Damn boy, you sure are a slow learner. Guess we'll just have to repeat the lesson." And he abuses him a second time.

Well, sure enough, an hour later the hunter sees the bear again. And he tries to shoot him again, and he misses again. This time the bear comes over looking especially grave and sober. And he says, "Mister, I want you to be honest with me. This isn't really about hunting, is it?"

We Americans, as a republic operated by a majority, are like the hunter. Oh, we squawk and go about taking potshots at the unrighteous takers that are out there bleeding us dry as a society. But in the end, there must be more that like it this way than don't. If not, we'd hit more than we missed, and it really would be about the hunt.