This is being added to the course curriculum ;):
Throughout history man has been surrounded by close and personal death and killing. When family members died of disease, lingering injury, or old age, they died in the home., their corpses were brought to he house– or cave, or hut, or hovel–and prepared for burial by the family….each family did its own cleaning and killing of domestic animals. Death was a part of life. Killing was undeniably essential to living. Cruelty was seldom, if ever, a part of this killing. Mankind understood it’s place in life and respected the lives of the creatures whose deaths were required to perpetuate existence.The Native American asked forgiveness of the spirit of the deer he killed and the American farmer respected the dignity of the hogs he slaughtered.
…Despite the rise of the city, by the opening of the twentieth century, the majority of the population, even in the most advanced industrial societies, remained rural. The housewife who wanted a chicken dinner went out and wrung the chickens neck herself,or had her children do it. The children watched the daily and seasonal killings, and to them killing was a serious, messy , and slightly boring, thing that everyone did as a part of life.
In this environment there was no refrigeration. and few slaughterhouses, mortuaries, or hospitals. And in this age old arrangement, throughout the life cycle, from birth to death, death and killing were always before you.– ether as a participant or a bored spectator.–and no one could deny that it was a vital, essential , and common aspect of daily human existence.
And then, in just the last few generations, everything began to change. Slaughterhouses and refrigeration insulated us from the necessity of killing our own food animals. Modern Medicine began to cure diseases, and it became increasingly rare for us to die in the youth and prime of our lives, and nursing homes, hospitals and mortuaries insulated us from the death of the elderly. Children began growing up having never truly understood where their food came from and suddenly Western Civilization seemed to have decided that killing, killing anything at all, was increasingly hidden, private, mysterious, frightening, and dirty.
