Copper Chronicles

Lady decided the best thing to do was not fret and fuss about her circumstances. But, to do what she could about them. Northfield and the greater world at large seemed an inhospitable environment. Any wilderness seems inhospitable, I suppose, except this one is also cold half the time. She noticed other birds moving South last Fall. Now she understood why.

There’s a disadvantage of being a hen in this world she also noticed. She is a bird like other birds, but she can hardly fly. As if she’s been on a pro-longed weight increasing diet. And her wings don’t seem nimble and free to move about like other birds. Why does such a bird exist, one with wings but can not fly?

She also noticed she has a size disadvantage. She’s not wiry and well, cocky, like Rooster. It sure would come in handy to be a bit fiercer looking, and to have people think twice about messing with you. Seems like a hen is just a meal walking around with no source of protection. Perhaps that’s why pens are best?

In the absence of her safe pen, she decided not to go about too freely. She learned how to stealthily walk about in her garden at Mulberry Farm in Northfield. Go about a few paces, looking all around. Rest by a small shrub or shadow to avoid being exposed to danger unnecessarily. Rocky, her friend, was stealthy. She was a speckled Barred Rock hen that was so mysterious and stealthy, Lady wondered whether she’s with the CIA. “Conspiracy theory” humans say condescendingly.

Well, it’s possible there are theories abounding to explain the wilderness we are experiencing. But, why would a word exist if at least some of the theories were not true? Why be such a word “conspiracy” at all?

In our last Copper Chronicle, Lady the Hen left her “farm” to find her friend, Copper. She didn’t like the commercial food pellets they were not as fun as chasing bugs and digging fresh worms. She didn’t like her cubicle, where she was confined in the name of efficiency. Efficient for whom? She wondered. It doesn’t seem like any creature can be “efficient” in a cubicle, unless you give them lots of caffeine, sugary treats, and a looming mortgage to make them so.

The right to be free from boxes seems universal. Lady is just a hen, and she senses that to be true. It’s not clear why human beings are still living in cubicles. Perhaps they have no choice?

Lady followed the wide road that led to Holyoke. She was hungry and went to a Red Robin where she saw a few stray people wandering into. They seemed hungry, too. She slid up to the bar very casually and took a seat. It was fun to see what humans see and do what humans do. She hoped by acting casually she would fit in, and no one would notice she was a hen. The human being behind the bar was very friendly and happy. It’s not clear why.   

Maybe she had never seen a hen in a bar before? Hens are happy and lovable by nature when they are free to live and breathe and roam as hens should. Every person who knows a hen knows this. A hen is a friend if you believe them to be so and treat them so.

A friendly man on a stool aside Lady ventured to say hello. He seemed also a soul on a quest looking for refuge. He mentioned the empty buildings and homeless people, the drugs, and broken families. He reflected with great contentment about the well-being of his own family. But he was still sad for everyone else.

Lady understands this, too. Lady knows what a family is like from her happy days with Copper. Copper looked after her hens diligently. Hens were never alone- were happy and free to do what hens to best! Hunt and peck, scratch, and shuffle. Lady misses those days. Seems like missing happy days is also universal (for hens and humans.)

If Lady continues this train of thought, she may never make it out of Red Robin. Bold quests require bold courage. She wished the friendly neighbor and bartender well and continued out the door to see the world. The world beyond her happy pen- away from her friends- where everything made sense and every day was fine.

In our last episode of Copper Chronicles, Lady the hen escaped her new home to avoid being tagged by a well-meaning farmer. She is loose in western Massachusetts, and I am concerned for her well-being.

I don’t know about you but being “tagged” can be detrimental to a hen’s health. Whether a tag is a digital one for ‘safety’ or any kind of tag or label- not everyone who tags or labels a hen is qualified to do so. No chick dreams of being “Hen number A7B12” when she grows up.

Lady is much more than a number. Lady has heart!

The situation Lady is escaping is like Animal Farm and Brave New World combined AND on steroids. Perhaps this is the “Horror” the Joseph Conrad character speaks of in “The Heart of Darkness.” Human Imagination detached from any restraining influence of culture or moral law.

People posit that Lady’s ordeal is punishment because she is victim to the random will of some deity. Her ordeal has a purpose to be sure. She is looking for her friend Copper, who was taken away in the same box she arrived in at the Old Wendell Road Farm. Copper was her friend and fearless leader at her first pen.

Copper was bright and shiny like a copper tea kettle. Cheery and happy, too! Diligent and careful about her hen friends. She was the mother hen by nature, and she excelled at her duty. Everyday Lady and her three friends had adventures and challenges. Everyday Copper’s light and love lead the way.

Things made sense, she lived securely free from farmers’ conveyor belt lifestyle with commercially produced food. Compacted compounds in little capsules! How convenient is it to get processed food delivered to your box to be fattened up for slaughter. Maximizing profitability for the farmer and misery of the hens.

Who does the FDA work for anyway? Clearly not hens. When is maximizing profit the whole goal of our existence?  

Run, Lady, Run!!

Languages are “fluid” I discovered. The original English language of Henry Higgins is probably only found among English Lords or an ancient ruling class there. This is just as well, for hens and humans alive in the modern world don’t always have time to work out what “Wherefore” actually means if someone said it.

Archaic words are like a rare bird which flies into your uncelebrated existence and asks: “Do you know where I may find some Cognac?”

         Or maybe the experience of “The Shawshank Redemption” story serves well. The prisoners are muddling around in humiliation and defeat, when Tim Robbins (rare bird) plays an opera song which sounds like beautiful birds singing in glorious celebration. Sounds are strange and breathtaking and transports you to another world. The experience interrupts your morose meditation and you are glad it did!

Shakespeare used words like “Wherefore” but according to Miriam-Webster dictionary, “Wherefore” means more like “Why?” in our modern day.

Lady is pining for her friend, Copper, as Juliet pines for Romeo. “Wherefore art thou?” accordingly cries my little hen friend. Or: “Why are you separate from me?” “What is the cause of our great divide??”

Now that we know how modern hens have been treated by scientists, I wonder about scientists’ motivations. Discovery is good. Learning and sharing, yes. Proving the non-existence of God, well, that originates in scientists’ motivation to operate without any moral compass. Science cannot be its own moral compass. That is why we have pink snowballs the FDA calls “food.”

Addictive foods like Oreos, Cheez-its, I know, my mouth is watering just thinking about them. I am like Pavlov’s dog who salivates on cue when exposed to their bright packaging and promised deliciousness. Scientists’ lives are committed to formulating our food in labs! Yum lab food!

Carl Jung said about scientists- roughly speaking- that we know there is more to life than what we can measure with tools because people have consciences. That annoying sometimes officious little rooster-like voice that says: “Don’t do that!” Or “Something is wrong here!”

That ominous warning I received about hay one day. Remember? How does a conscience ‘know’ things? How does a conscience know about hay? Who is in there?

Viktor Frankl would be proud. I am laughing at myself. Feels good. If you can laugh about there being a voice inside our beings that tells us things we don’t know- but should- you are in good company!

At least I can be sure my conscience has a track record of helping avoid being stupid. And seems to laugh with me, when I laugh at myself!

Lady is yet to learn how awful human beings can be. She’s only been alive a year now, and not familiar with history. That is why first and foremost I need to identify a perennial human enemy- FEAR.

Viktor Frankl (video posted in Searching for Copper) suggests imagining the worst-case scenario before you ____________________(fill in your intended plan here). If I fear giving a speech, he posits: It’s not likely people who came to hear you speak are armed and going to shoot if you do a poor job. Right? It’s kind of funny, but it is true. Laughing at fear helps me see -perhaps- I am being ridiculous.

My husband asked me to today when I updated him on Lady’s progress: “Isn’t Copper…dead?”

“Yes,” I said, sadly. But Lady doesn’t know that. She’s just a hen. Copper left alive in a box. Who knows where hens go when they’re taken away in box?”

Four hens showed up at my house in a box. The box perhaps lends some mystery to the hen experience. A door, an exit, or passageway to a new place or experience. What world is beyond “the box”? a hen may ask.

Lady, I suspect is already working on these existential questions. Since, well, her time for exiting this world in a box may be coming up. Three hens have already gone through that passage. She knows this is not a safe world: Poor quality food, minimal to no healthcare, hawks, rats to name a few predators.

Either a hen is an engineered creature scientists breed to be plump, egg-laying, and flightless birds; in which case she cannot survive in this world. Or there is something completely wrong with the world- as it is. Or it could be both things happening simultaneously.

If that is the case, we should all be wondering what happens when we get put into that box. We may as well face the BIGGEST FEAR there is, the FEAR of dying.

Once we are free of that fear, all fears will pale by comparison. Hens just don’t emerge out of nowhere then vanish back to nowhere when they die. I am sorry, but the scientists of the twentieth century can’t claim that as a “scientific truth.” That sounds more like an excuse to justify any kind of bizarre experiment they so choose.

“Of course, we can fundamentally change hens into whatever serves our interests! Who says we can’t??”

Lady is looking for her friend, Copper. At least, I think that is why she escaped from her new pen with new friends where I re-homed her after Buffy’s death. Someone said once: “It is not good for man to be alone.” I think that must apply to hens, too. Everybody needs somebody.

Lady may have read my last post where my husband and I were mocking people whose social engineering was wearing off. Laughing is sometimes a coping mechanism for more serious concerns behind ‘social engineering.’ That is, combining twentieth century public education (Dewey planned) with AI technology, to create better human beings.

Let’s be honest about public education in the twentieth century. The world as we see it now is the result. Add AI to it, and well, that’s why Viktor Frankl says to laugh. At least the YouTube video in my cue claims that is one of his coping mechanisms. Add that book to my long list of things worth knowing.

When I grew up laughing meant you weren’t working hard enough. Or you were up to mischief. Old School values were necessary in the Great Depression when my parents grew up, when all your focus should be on surviving. I get it. They may yet be needed again. But I have learned from experience that if I don’t laugh and thereby relieve the pressure in my head- it may explode. Head explosions are a real thing. See my story on Nextdoor called “Exploding Heads.”

Lady, the hen, is looking for Copper. That happy time in life where we all friends enjoyed days of plenty and peace. Days very much like Early America before the wars came and world empires struggled to dominate, I imagine.

There were days when men, women, Indians, migrants, lived in peace. I think. But I am not too optimistic it lasted long without the ongoing power struggle that characterizes much of human history. Why are human beings always destroying things? Seems like the ones with the most power do the most destroying, too. No one remembers those people, either.

This is when I ask a question to continue the quest. What does Viktor Frankl say about power and human beings? And laughing?

Back soon…

Here’s a video that discusses human beings and fear. And power over fear and laughter. So, you may join me on my quest if you like.

I consider YouTube about one step below Wikipedia when it comes to credibility. However, the secret to internet searching is to get primary sources quoted in questionable ones. There was a man named Viktor Frankl, he did write a book called “Mans’ Search for Meaning.” Of that I can be certain.

Two plus two equals four!

This has been a harrowing 8 months. If I hadn’t mentioned it, my two clever hens urged on by their love of adventure managed to hover with helicopter-like vertical motion up onto their hutch and out into my yard. Hens don’t normally hover. The space was so narrow- something unusual is afoot! Anyhow, nature does not distinguish between birds for which I have great affection and birds that are just well, birds, if there is such a thing. Hawk did what Hawk does and Buffy’s days ended on the earth rather unceremoniously.

Lady called and called and called out when I finally found her after the event. She and I shared similar outrage. This is no country for hens, I said to myself. Lady agreed I could see in her hen indignation.

Unlike my experience with Copper, I did not feel overwhelmed by feelings of uncertainty and self-doubt. At the Vet Hospital in Deerfield when Copper died, I noticed people shared a similar experience of shame and regret. Somehow their animals’ suffering was their own fault, or was it?? “I should have done this, or this, or that. I did this and that and should not have done that other thing…” Same as I experienced.

The confusion is disorientating because, as I learned with Copper, you can try to do all the right things and sh** beyond your wildest imagining may occur. Copper may have been dehydrated in the hot weather which I did not prepare for (this effects egg laying). Was her suffering my fault? How do I know? How do I escape the feelings of regret and sorrow for things that are genuinely my fault?  

Buffy died because she wanted to run around freely, and she managed to escape. How a fat hen hovers up a narrow passage onto the hutch and flies away is beyond my imagination. I feel badly but I am not having a existential crises now. But that doesn’t mean the existential questions about guilt and shame do not exist and need answering. There’s a high risk of becoming a sociopath, I noticed, if I cease to care about these things.

Sociopathy means lacking empathy among other things according to social scientists. Although I am certain psychology is lots of theorizing and wishful thinking muddled in with genuine understanding of what motivates human behavior and how to ‘fix’ it. The human being is not a biological machine that needs “tweaking” or “medication” to make them operate correctly. Or “social conditioning.” Are they?

My husband and I are currently imitating what happens when Elon Musk’s ‘brain chip’ device (also touted by Yuval Harari at Davos Meetings) mixes with twentieth century social engineering concepts. My husband is an engineer, he is good at acting like a robot. We look like “Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots.” One is saying: “Biden is doing a great job!!” The other is trying to say: “No, no… he’s not…Really. He really IS NOT!” (That robots conditioning is wearing off).

No, actually that is what is happening NOW in homes across America- BEFORE AI chip implants. After AI chip implants we won’t have to argue anymore or articulate positions on possible solutions to complex conundrums that human beings experience. We just obey our conditioning and hopefully the AI engineers only want what is best for us. Sort us like how right now people think Washington D.C. only wants what is best for us. Of course, people in power only want what is best for us.  

“Good thing no one is planning AI conditioning for hens. They will be the only independent thinkers left on the planet,” my husband warns.

He is right. As is, this is no country for hens or human beings!

Words rhyme and fun sounds ring in your ears like a cheery tune. I wanted to say: Hens and friends and friends of hens but that may be confusing. However, that is quite what I wanted to say. That one may be a friend of a hen, and hens may be friends and better friends than human beings sometimes.

        Alas! As I have no hens remaining in my pen, who would like to be object in my journal? The subject of careful study and observation? When you do a thing, would you care for me to comment, and publicize my approval or disapproval of such a thing that you do and speak? That may be a quick way to lose friends. I don’t think I even want to be the subject of such observation. But it seems in a world where we do not escape the consequences of our own behavior (whether good or bad), observation of oneself and behavior may be the antidote to chaos.

This is a seed of hope. Honesty is required. But how does one know what is honest or true unless it has an objective standard to measure itself against? Plato plays a role in the pursuit of truth- because he believed there existed a higher realm of experience worth knowing. Like Forrest, Forrest Gump says, “That is all I have to say about that.” Perhaps objective trial and error experimentation will do?

So, what lesson can we glean from hen experience? The world can be scary and awful, adversarial to hens’ well-being. The hens can’t be responsible for the “world” so to speak because they have no authority in it. They are conveniently low on the scale of things that matter. Too low in my opinion. Hens have their own “natures” – habits, personalities, strengths, and weaknesses.

No hen can be the “uber- hen” without the cooperation and respect of the other hens (since qualities and characteristics of hens that are beneficial are distributed throughout the hen population.) Neitsche was wrong. Being an “Uberman” or “Uberhen” isn’t the goal of life. Power!!

Isn’t the hen at the top that is always pecking the others a dis-likable creature? How did this generation forget the adage, or -ism, or proverb: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”?

Moses had it correct when he prophesied the strong should serve the weak (Ten Commandments). In this world the weak are made to serve the strong. That does not make sense. Copper served the well-being of her friends, and she was happy, and all was well.

See what I mean about hens and friends and friends of hens? Anyone who doesn’t love hens is NO friend of mine.

The hen hutch is vacant. All that is left are remnants revealing a happy and harrowing ordeal that is life. Life is happy and harrowing for hens and human beings.

Human “being” is a peculiar word. It suggests a pre-existent condition- one that IS. An eternal reality of a kind that I may play a part in. Like Plato says. I prefer that view of human beings to the one we are currently experiencing.

Seems scientists see humans as biological matter- creatures only- on which to practice their scientific theories. Maybe the white-robed masters should call us human “blips” instead. Blip suggests a person as faceless and lifeless as a Target mannequin. No eternal being, no “divine spark” as Lincoln says all men possessed. Nobody cares what happens to mannequins.

When I say human “Being” it suggests all the inherited rights we possess that are necessary for our well-being and happiness. The idea upon our past civilization was built.  Blips, however, have no real significance or value. There’s millions of ’em. Blips are just agents of matter, fighting their way through the mud and slime towards some pinnacle of egoism called Progress. The “Uberman” Nietzsche speaks of perhaps.

If Truval Noah Harari is the Uberman in the “War” on Global Poverty for example, hasn’t he taken away everyone’s rights by giving himself unlimited power? All human beings are consigned to eating grasshoppers in poverty (although “equal” in status) so Mr. Harari can self-actuate?? That is the worst expression of equality I have ever seen.

Can’t we at least find a better Uberman to guide us? Someone whose ideals may prove a bit more beneficial to human kind? Surely poor people have been eating grasshoppers for centuries. John the Baptist!

I am glad hens have no such delusions of grandeur, otherwise there would be constant war in the hen pen. All hens can’t be Uberman can they? They all can’t be equally right, equally valuable in their contributions, equally entitled to respect and applause?

It’s like human beings have chosen a worldview that logically dictates we be in a perpetual state of derision, arguing, and discontent. Competition for the “Uber”-ist Uberman. A plague of grasshoppers may just be the thing that saves us at this rate!

Consider this, as proof of my claim that progress as currently defined is the worst worldview to possess and the enemy of equality: Does any human being ever say: “I want to be a number on a government roll! My deepest desire is to be a faceless cog in a never-ending experiment modernists call progress! This is what I freely choose to be,” says no one ever. That’s not a dream, that’s a nightmare, Noah!

Did Nietzsche plan to enslave the world? Or is he acting out his own enslaved status unknowingly and encouraging others to do the same? Is this the Turkish Delight of human beings’ demise? How is it possible hens have propensity to avoid such preposterous hubris and humans do not?