what does it mean to be domesticated?
do·mes·ti·cated
/dəˈmestəˌkādəd/
adjective
(of an animal) tame and kept as a pet or on a farm.
“domesticated dogs”
(of a plant) cultivated for food; naturalized.
“domesticated crops”
often humorous
fond of home life and housework.
“he is thoroughly domesticated”
that right there is what google says being domesticated is. i had an insightful conversation today, that took me down the rabbit hole of human domestication, what is means, and why we need to start to open our eyes.
this morning I woke up and had a dentist appointment. normally after my dentist appointments, I head to Fortino’s which is across my dental office for a quick snack or to peruse around the grocery store (one of my favourite things to do). as I was walking through the dairy aisle I got gravitated to this glass bottle of chocolate milk. it looked so creamy and delicious so I just had to pick it up, and was so excited to crack it open and have a drink when I got home. I got home, drank the milk, and yea it was pretty delicious. Creamier than normal milk and quite enjoyable to drink. There was a little part of me that thought it wasn’t THAT crazy but still a normally better experience than my usual chocolate milk endeavours.
around an hour or two later i had a riveting conversation that was the stepping stone for my writing today. the conversation was centred around humanity, what its become, and what now? i received an analogy from that conversation. “we are all cows in a dairy farm”. upon first hearing that, i didnt get it and I kind of laughed and remembered the milk i drank this morning. how the heck am i a cow and why am i being farmed? but its true.
reading that milk bottle when i was drinking, i saw and indicator that said that it was derived from A2 cows. i didnt really know what that meant but i knew it meant the milk was better in some way, i now know that its because theres in a influx of a particular protein that makes this type of milk easier for people with lactose sensitivities to digest, so basically A2 is better than A1. A1 is the normal milk because it observes normal function, and A2 is the better one because it passes tests and is accepted by more people.
us as human being are all naturally predisposed to do different things, we all naturally gravitate to a multitude of things. that’s precisely why we have so many varying career types. i often found it so interesting that us as humans are unique from each other in a multitude of ways, yet so many of the systems that surround us are so concrete and finite. lets take the school system for example, why are we all tested on the same subjects in the same way, with a universal curriculum that is fit to stimulate the “average” mind. that makes no sense in any way if we are all different. i truly believe we are all different because i have experienced it. ive experienced the different ways people speak, react, understand, love and rage. its almost without a doubt clear that we are all different to some extent. yes, there are similarities, we are the same species of course, but the systemic imbalance created in assessing the similarities and differences is the reason for pretty much all our problems today i think.
one natural predisposition of humans, especially human babies and children is to learn. if we need to learn, we need environments where learning is facilitated, but here the issue, learning isn’t facilitated in schools, its farmed. we’re tested in different ways sure, you’ll see on an exam there’ll be multiple choice, short answer and long answer and most people are normally proficient in one or maybe two of those sections, in our systems, that would equate to a B/C mark, societally these people would be our A1 cows. they’ll go on to live normal lives, and contribute to society in a normal way. then you’ll have the select few who are exceptional. these are the minds that come back with straight A’s, and proficient in multiple choice, short answer and long answer. these will be our A2 cows, they will probably go on to join our highly acceptable careers, such as doctors and engineers. just like the A2 cows, people like them more, they have better facilities and in general people just accept them more.
also i have been very lucky to have some amazing teachers who genuinely facilitated my learning and actually wanted me to learn, but the vast majority of teaching ive experienced surrounds “rata marna”, a concept in hindi and urdu which means learning and continuous memorization without really understanding meaning.
okay so heres the current system, now why is this wrong?
heres a preposterous statement, the schools are one of the reasons for our current mental health crisis.
We’ve created a mental and physical hierarchy for everything.
in the past, in some tribal civilizations, different people still existed and each of their roles would be equally beneficial and used. we had healers, warriors, hunters, teachers, cooks, etc that all were apart of the communities and were respected equally for what they had to offer. over time and throughout history people (men) decided there must be jobs that are “better”, (lawyers are better than cleaners, doctors better than mechanics, stem people better than art people) and thus the downfall of human existence began. lets ask the pivotal question and i ask anyone reading this to really think about it, why is a lawyer better than a cleaner?
when i answered I found myself coming to surface level answers like, more money, better reputation, nicer uniform, etc and thats where I want you to really think about the grand scheme of things that matter to you. if those things are genuinely reasons why you would choose one job over and another, by all means go ahead and do what you want. but heres what i think. what if you recognize and acknowledge all those things but something deep inside you really tells you you want to be a cleaner, like you have an innate passion for it. then what. well i think you should be a fricken cleaner, because no matter how great of a life you’ll have when you’re a lawyer, something will always be missing. because you didn’t listen to yourself. so thats the issue, the schools are conditioning us to fall into this scheme of hierarchical careers and trying to make us all want to attain a perfection that deep down we don’t really want, we just think we want it because of our conditioning.
and i think they also want to kill self-expression by reducing the importance of finding true meaning, but thats a conversation for another day.
anyways im tired now, its 3:39 am, dont be domesticated because youre not an dog, cats are better than dogs because theyre harder to domesticate and the love they gives you feels so much more fulfilling because cats actually choose who to give their affection to and dogs are cute and great but theyre kinda yes-men. be yourself and you might just feel better.
goodnight, toodles,
till we meet again.
asma
asma halai's blog 