The Sheep

When a wolf gets loose among a flock of domesticated sheep, it will kill or maim as many of its prey as possible, as quickly as possible. Known as “surplus killing,” this behavior, which is unusual and aberrant in nature, is largely responsible for the wolf’s reputation as a bloodthirsty killing machine. I have written about this subject before, but after researching John B. Calhoun’s “Mouse Utopia,” I was struck by some disturbing parallels.

In the wild, prey animals rely on their natural defense mechanisms against predators—great speed, heightened awareness, and sometimes a strong set of horns, spines, or other natural defensive tools. They will band together to protect their young and infirm. All of this makes the process of taking prey a risky endeavor, even for apex predators.

But if you present a predator with a flock of utterly defenseless prey—prey who have been systematically conditioned to be functionally helpless—that predator will often enter into a killing frenzy.  This frenzy is what is so aberrant, as the killing seems driven by pleasure, or sport, rather than sustenance. And it is that helpless nature that explains the behavior of the roving gangs of male mice from Calhoun’s experiment. The bulk of Mouse Utopia’s population had become similarly conditioned to be as passive and helpless as domesticated sheep. Just like wolves, when presented with an unchecked opportunity for aggression, the violence perpetrated by the gangs of mice often went far beyond natural behavior.

The parallel to human society is clear as well. There have always been, and always will be, predatory people who choose to prey on their fellow humans, whether for power, profit, or pleasure.  And in many ways, their behaviors only seem to grow more extreme with each passing year. Just like with the mice and the wolves, the issue is not with the predators themselves, but rather, with the helpless nature of their prey.

The Ultimate Entitlement

Of course logic would suggest that sheep are always going to be helpless in the face of wolves. This is why shepherds have sheepdogs to serve as the protectors of their flock. Similarly, human society has constructed a series of protections and protectors that are supposedly designed to keep us safe. Law enforcement, the government, the military, private security, and even security technology—one side of the logic is that if we have enough of these elements in place, then every individual can rest easy knowing that they are always safe from harm.

We see evidence of the flaws in this logic every day. Even with all these protections and protectors everywhere we turn, violence—sometimes unspeakable violence akin to surplus killing—still occurs. So those in favor of safety as an entitlement, those most vocal about the call to place personal security exclusively into the hands of the professionals or the lifeguards of society, begin to behave like those schools who teach children that all violence is abhorrent. In their view, predatory violence isn’t the problem; all violence, even in self-defense, is the problem.

Have you ever noticed how often the people who advocate the loudest for, say, eliminating private gun ownership are the least likely to be capable of protecting themselves from harm? You don’t often see those who train in self-defense or firearms suggesting that society’s problems with criminal violence could be solved if we just enacted a few more “common sense” laws. To them, the simple fact that laws only impact the law-abiding, and are therefore useless in curbing violence, is the very definition of common sense. So, what is really going on? To me, it is that—at least with the most extreme anti-gun advocates—they’re not really anti-gun; they’re anti-self-defense. The difference is vital. The notion is that since they themselves are helpless, everyone else ought to be equally helpless.

Much as the highest treason a crab can make is to leap for the edge of the bucket, instead of advocating for balance, where collective responsibility for security serves only as a supplement to individual responsibility, the underlying notion is that if I can’t (or won’t) protect myself, then why should you have the right to do so? To them, the ultimate entitlement is safety, and the new mantra of the myth of helplessness is “for public safety.”

As Mouse Utopia teaches us, no one can guarantee safety, or prosperity, or health, or happiness.  All these things, and virtually everything else worth pursuing, ensue as a direct result of the thoughts and actions of the individual. If the individual abdicates too much responsibility to a collective, then that individual not only becomes helpless; life itself becomes meaningless. While law enforcement, private security, and security technology will always be necessarily supplements, you simply can’t find safety (or for that matter, happiness) from placing your inalienable responsibilities into the hands of others. To succeed as a society—and to achieve fulfillment as an individual—safety has to result from your own responsibility.

Your Are Fundamentally Not Helpless

In the end, the thing to remember about elephants, mice, and sheep is that none of them behave in these self-destructively helpless ways by nature. Even the wolf, that bloodthirsty killing machine, does not kill indiscriminately when presented with prey willing and able to defend itself. In human society, our problems with violence are not caused by a lack of gun control laws or anti-violence messaging; it’s a function of ever more people being systematically conditioned into the erroneous notion that they are helpless, and as a result, becoming dependent on others for their protection.  

Herein lies the paradox of the myth of helplessness. Security is not about being protected, but in knowing that we have the ability to protect ourselves; not in the illusion of security that others will be there to save us, but in our own responsibility; not in the notion that we will never be in danger, but in the confidence that comes from knowing we have the ability to respond.

Advocating for a person’s natural right and responsibility to defend themselves is not about being in favor of violence; it is about remembering that a good society requires individual responsibility. The debate is not about guns, laws, or even criminals. The debate is about whether we are willing to leave our individual safety in the hands of others. I want a society that is peaceful but not helpless—one that better mirrors the natural order of things. I want a society that remembers that nothing worth doing is absent of risk. I want a society where we all reclaim that key part of what makes an elephant an elephant, a mouse a mouse, a sheep a sheep, a wolf a wolf, and yes, a human a human: our responsibilities and our abilities to respond.