USELESS EATERS? Stray cats? Humans not needed by Predators? The term, USELESS EATERS, vs a term like LIFE LOVERS

Useless eaters. I was walking the dog, mulling on that term. How the Predators have no use for “useless eaters.”

If you have a cat only because you have mice, and you want to get rid of the mice, then the cat may become, for you, a useless eater as soon as it has gotten rid of the mice.

But when I watch my cats, hunting the rare fly, grooming, sleeping, curled up to each other, fake battling each other, seriously swatting another, curious, I can see that they don’t experience themselves as useless eaters. Nor do I experience them that way.

A few weeks ago, a neighbor brought a wild cat to me, trapped in a catch-release trap. He thought it could be one of mine. It wasn’t. It was released in my sunroom, where it tried to escape through the windows, hurling himself against them time after time. It had evidently never been indoors before, had no idea about these transparent invisible things. It’s slowly taming.

It was a nuisance to my neighbor.

Is it a useless eater? My neighbor had no use for it, but wanted to be sure it wasn’t one of my cats before he took it miles away and dropped it off in a distant field . As for the cat, I’m sure it never occurred to him to wonder if he was a useless eater. Nor is his usefulness of relevance to me.

I think of us. Humans. What is a useless eater? And from whose perspective is someone useless?

If the Predators need ever fewer humans for however they find us useful, and if they don’t care about us more than most of us care about bugs, it follows that from their perspective ever more of us are useless eaters. If AI or something robotic can do the work, or if they need less of our emotional energy or our blood or whatever, more of us become useless for them.

As for us - here is something ever so important - I know that many people feel useless. They know something is missing in their lives. So many online program promise that, just take this 6-week or 12-week course and you will find your purpose, your meaning, you will live with passion. In other words, many people are feeling like useless eaters.

THAT IS A HUGE HORROR, MAYBE EVEN A BIGGER HORROR THAN HOW THE PREDATORS VIEW US.

Yes, the Predators need to be stopped.

Also yes, people need to naturally feel right in their lives.

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I’m coming back to animals. A bunch of thoughts.

Animal rescue. People rescuing
- stray cats in the city,
- feral cats in barns,
- dogs slated for slaughtering for eat-dog festivals in various countries in the Far East,
- lions in the States bought as exotic pets by people who now have no use for them.
- sick piglets and chickens with festering sores from factory farms.

The rescue efforts have nothing to do with the usefulness, or lack thereof, of the animals. They have to do with the sense of the animals having intrinsic value just because they are alive, and having the intrinsic right to not just food and water but caring.

The same goes for us.

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I think also of my one visit to a zoo in childhood. What a horror. What stayed in my mind most is all kinds of monkeys in cages. One cage after another. Row after row. Room after room. The color I remember is grey. I believe the walls were concrete, or cement blocks.

Those animals had a use. They were needed to fill the cages, because people would not pay to see empty cages.

But they did not have what they needed to live lives adequate for members of their species.

I have since been to a couple of zoos defined as good zoos - animals roaming in large enclosures. I don’t know if more people go to these zoos. I know they are better for the animals. And I enjoyed being there.

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Another thing. I’ve read, more than once, that people who live with an animal, even a small bird, live an average of 6 years longer than people who live without an animal. I have not looked into the studies. But let’s say the figures are accurate. What use do these animals have? My experience: the animals provide companionship, affection, pleasure (and sometimes displeasure), amusement, fun, and most of all the exchange of feelings (our feelings for them, their feelings for us).

We humans need those things. Often animals are a major source - sometimes the only source - of the give and take of warm loving feelings.

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So how do some people get defined as useless eaters?

Someone or some group categorizes some people that way, meaning someone or some group has no use for these people.

Further, unlike people who care to rescue stray cats, with no thought to the usefulness of the cats, this someone or some group has people’s being useful to them or not useful to them as the only thing that matters.

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From here, I see 2 directions.

DIRECTION ONE. PEOPLE WHO FEEL THEY ARE USELESS EATERS.

DIRECTION TWO. PEOPLE WHO FEEL AN INTENSE SENSE OF ALIVENESS, OF LIFE BEING VERY WORTH LIVING

I’ll start with Direction One.

That the Predators view many of us as useless eaters is one thing. Something quite different is that so many people experience their lives as useless, empty, boring, meaningless.

My experience is that many people feel useless because society is set up to make huge numbers of us feel useless - living lives where most jobs don’t encourage flourishing, where most conversations are on repeat, where so few people can listen to other people or to information, where most relationships are pretty boring or anyway not life-giving. Many people go on holidays where, for a week or two weeks, they are at a beach and they drink. Not something that encourages flourishing.

But that’s far from it. I see so many people with things within themselves that stop them from flourishing.

I think of many people staying in lives that lessen aliveness, where things don’t feel right. Some make no or very little effort to change the situation. “I guess these are the cards I was dealt.” “That’s the way things are.” “There’s nothing anyone can do.” Others keep seeking, often for decades.

I think of those monkeys in their bare cages. People have lots more choices and lots more distractions - shopping, chatting online, addictions of various sorts, getting caught in trivial quarrels. Some drink “just a bit” just enough so that the evenings pass quickly instead of slowly.

In Canada the 5th highest cause of death is euthanasia. Some of these people are terminally ill, and feel their life is no longer worth living - too much pain. They ask for, and receive, increasing doses of morphine on demand. But euthanasia is pushed on more and more people in difficult situations - having difficulty finding affordable housing, for instance.

Now, Direction Two.

How do we experience life as worth living?

Beyond that is the question that has long been hugely important to me: How do we flourish - which is much more than feeling “useful”? That is, how do live in a way that we have deep pleasure in being alive, and perhaps also that we have the sense of our lives having what some people call “meaning,” “purpose.”

My experience is that we flourish when we’re doing what feels right to us, when we don’t have the feeling of being on a treadmill, when we feel eagerness, joy, delight, as well as horror, shock, grief, disbelief. Often we’re doing something that engrosses us - loving, liking, enjoying, teaching, learning, building, puzzling something out, going for a walk, enjoying sunset or (more rarely) sunrise, being close with someone.

As I’ve already said, in “our” modern society, many people feel aimless, frustrated, powerless - that is USELESS and UNUSED - like a meal in a container in the fridge, going bad because it’s not eaten, or a seed going rotten because it has no chance to sprout.

No flourishing, or far too flourishing.

Maybe there are glimpses of flourishing, periods of flourishing, here and there.

I don’t see useless eaters. I see people who usually don’t have much of an idea how to live flourishing lives.

I’ve spent a huge amount of time and thought, of reading and learning, exploring how we could best flourish. I’ve even created my own model of development.

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I certainly know what it’s like to feel stuck and have no idea how to get unstuck.

I especially think of my twenties. Everything was “good.” Nothing felt right.

I knew what I was missing. There felt no place to give my gifts. I remember a turning point, when I got my first 2 classes to teach, at the end of my MA. A gift to me. I could not believe I was actually being paid (a pittance, an an MA student) for doing something that was such a pleasure.

Teaching the same courses would not stay right for me. In fact I ended up teaching in six disciplines.

What I am doing here is right for me now. And even here I can feel the hunger for more - to get to what is right for me.

Anyway I know about living for years feeling that so much was missing.

I also know about taking roads untravelled - exploring and coming upon so much I had not idea about. Also meeting people, connecting more with people. Plus creative adventures.

Along with other adventurings, as I’ve said I’ve created a model of self-development, because none of the models I found felt adequate to me - Full Flourishing.

So much in my life is about going further - which is what many of us need to flourish.

My wish is for the full flourishing of all of us.

I see this is one of the biggest quests. Many are exploring various paths toward this.

Right now there are the urgent quests, to rid the planet of the Predators most of all, and to wake people up.

Forever, there is the quest to live lives of full flourishing.

Elsa

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Elsa Schieder, PhD
truthsummit.substack.com
https://elsathoughtcreativitypassionlife.com
https://fullflourishing.com
The drive to flourish fully is as natural 
as the everyday hunger for food.
But many of us aren’t flourishing. 
The Full Flourishing Formula: 
To get to life as you’d love it to be.

Posted September 5, 2024