blog assignment number 14

The most important notion that one cannot infer from the film is the notion that nature has this perfect, Godly, moral way of running. One cannot picture Saint Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of animals) with the birds joyously singing and all the other animals happily walking alongside the saint. NO. Nature does not observe this idea of morality. The film portrayed actions that would appear “sinful” and “evil” if they were done by human beings: the female hyena killed her own sister and appeared to be eating he carcass, the lions from one pride killed the lions from another pride, the young hyenas engaged in mock sex. The film depicted a constant war, whereas some religious persons make the assumption that war is a curse on human beings alone, and that the animals are a model for how humans should strive to live.
Another inference that I had to make dealt with how the film was made. The observers of the lions and hyenas filmed them, and they said that they were really upset when a lion or hyena that they come to know died. BUT, they did not do anything to save the lives of any of the animals shown in the film. The filmmakers just wanted nature to take its course; they did not want to disturb natural selection. If the filmmakers had a more religious (maybe Franciscan) view of the world, they would nurture the poor snake bitten lion back to health; they would save that one older female lion from being killed.
The last inference I have to make is that although the film stressed that we humans are similar to the animals in many respects, we do have many differences too. The animals in the film behaved out of instinct, out of the drive for survival. Human beings are noted to be able to override this tendency. Human beings do not find some of the behaviors of the animals acceptable to our species. We would not encourage killing our own siblings, or killing our own species with little reason. Human beings have this concept of a right and wrong. The animals did not have any conflict in choosing to do what they did, because it was instinctive.