The Cage

by Terry Morgan

or excuses for the difficult questions that are posed. Some people do not like my perspective on life or my opinions but it is their right to disagree."

  "They disagreed with your opinions very strongly, grandfather."

  The old man shrugged. "It is their right to disagree but I think I have already been proved right. It is forty years now since I entered politics. Back then, around 2014, indisputable facts were as they always are - undeniable. The trends were very clear.

  "Politicians talked a great deal about globalisation and, yes, the world was becoming a very small place with easy communications and travel, but globalisation was not just about trade or movement of manufactured goods and services. It was about movement of people. It was about mass migration. It was the start of the mass movement of people seeking more wealth, better opportunities, an escape from tyranny, persecution, discrimination and religious fanaticism. Radical militancy, funded by hidden wealth, run by unelected but far cleverer politicians than the west had ever known and manned by masses of disaffected, unemployed youth was becoming the way to change the world.

  Western politicians had fought against rulers who held their countries together with an iron fist, but by 2014 it was already clear that the breakdown of those systems was what started the huge movement of people, of refugees. We saw a mass exodus of far, far greater numbers of people than world politicians could ever have imagined. We were seeing it in Syria, Iraq, West Africa, East Africa, Central Asia. It was clear then that the mass movement of economic migrants and refugees was only just starting. Countries like Turkey, inundated with hundreds of thousands refugees started to see political unrest. And where, besides Turkey, were they heading? Like all animals, they were migrating to where the grass looked greener, of course, but in doing so the social and economic pressures they would force on the countries they moved to would be enormous."

  The older man stopped talking, looked at his grandson. "Do you understand what I'm saying? From what you see now, does what I said forty years ago now make sense?

  "Yes, grandfather. It all makes sense. But very few people can see into the future."

  "And neither can I. What I can do, just as anyone can, is to look at the data, the information, the trends. I can study the world and the nature of human beings and be sensitive to the changes you see. God knows, even in 2014, we were inundated with information. Why could we not make better use of it?"

  The two men were quiet for a while. They walked slowly, the clouds above becoming thicker, darker. A fresh wind was blowing from the west. 'The Professor' glanced at his grandson sensing another question coming as if the younger man was ticking off a list. If so, then, most likely, the next question would be connected to his last - the subject of fulfilment, satisfaction or otherwise with the life that was being lived. The two men walked on, slowly, side by side. Then:

  "Do animals know fulfilment, grandfather? Did the deer and wild boar who were killed for meat know fulfilment? Do chickens that make eggs have rights?"

  The older man looked at his grandson, unsure how to take the question. He had expected the subject but the question had been made to sound sarcastic. Was it just a sign of modern attitudes, perhaps ignorance about the original sources of meat and processed foods that were available - to those with money - in the vast and anonymous hypermarkets that now sold everything. He had always predicted a gradual, ultimately complete, disconnect between consumers and producers. He kept his answer short: "Animals do not ask such questions of themselves. They just get on with trying to stay alive."

  "So what is fulfilment?"

  The old man sighed, frustrated. "Do you really need to ask me that question? Why is your generation so fixated on analysing human feeling and emotion? Is it because you fear you may have lost some feelings? Are you intrigued because they seem to be a thing of the past and you wish you felt them? Long ago people had begun to assume that the meat and chicken they ate and the eggs they laid were manufactured so asking whether fulfilment forms part of an animal's needs is odd to say the least. A cow that lives in a meadow of long fresh grass has an air of contentment about it and a butterfly left to flutter amongst the flowers seems content enough, so animals probably experience unconscious contentment. But I doubt if they ask themselves in a self critical way whether they feel fulfilled. No, assessing fulfilment is a very human thing and it takes on many forms. Regrettably, many forms of fulfilment have now been lost.

  "Like what, grandfather?"

  'The Professor' thought about it for a moment and decided to focus on something he knew his grandson could relate to.

  "Mm, like tending a garden. Fulfilment from tending a garden has been lost by those living in the towns and cities because spaces once designated as gardens are generally the only places left to park a vehicle or store rubbish"

  "That is true, grandfather. The gravel area that is outside our front door is now used by the people carriers and buses to pick up and drop passengers because there is no space in the street. Is the tree that grows from a crack by the gate post a garden?"

  The old man smiled at last: "I do not think you can call that a garden. What I think you have is a car park. As such I suppose it can be said to fulfil a need and so it is a fulfilment of sorts. But it is not something you are likely to think about when you consider whether your life has been one of fulfilment on your death bed."

  The young man walked on ahead but then turned. "Grandfather. I asked you just now if you thought we should not care for others. You did not reply. Why? You also once wrote that we should deliberately allow suffering."

  The old man caught him up.

  "No. You must read what I actually wrote not what others said I wrote. What I wrote was that to try to eliminate suffering by only giving people what they want without demanding an equal balance of individual responsibility will only lead to greater distress and suffering. But I can see, like the others, you struggle to understand that reasoning.

  "So, think about that deer in the forest, long ago. She is shot in the chest by hunters with an arrow. She is seriously wounded but she manages to crawl away. Perhaps she will die. But who helps her? Who intervenes? No-one. In your words she is now suffering. In your opinion and if she were human she would be deserving of intervention to save her life. But deer do not help each other except as herds. Nevertheless, she is suffering, she is struggling, she cannot walk, she cannot feed. You and I know that the injury threatens her life. But does she experience pain as you would if your body was pierced by an arrow and you were bleeding. Probably, but we don't know for sure. Discomfort and stress? Certainly. Does she consciously understand she may die? If you think she does then you are assuming she has the same ability that you have to rationally consider imminent death. That cannot be right. So does she, instead, rely on her instincts - conscious but unthinking awareness of her predicament forced on her by pain, physical discomfort and stress?

  "Might it be her natural instinct that first made her crawl away to hide until the hunters passed by? If so, there is still only one instinct at play here - the one that all deer have - to run away from perceived danger. That she could crawl into a thick bush out of sight was luck. And did she recover? We will never know. But, if she dragged herself away to lick her own wounds and lived, then her pain, her suffering, was not in vain. The pain, the discomfort, the suffering, prompted her to deal with it in the only way her instincts told her to - and she survived."

  "That is complicated. I still do not understand."

  "It is not complicated. It is basic, common sense. But you are programmed by modern human thinking. Animal instincts are not understood by the most highly evolved animal there is - a human. Your brain, despite its advanced evolution, is struggling to understand something quite alien. So listen to your hurting brain and, like the deer, lick its wound and perhaps you will find you are better equipped to understand what is to come."

  The young man nodded. "I suppose you are right. But I like the deer. I would want to help it."


  "No, no. Leave it alone," the older man replied urgently. "Do not interfere. The deer will become stronger if you do not intervene. Leave it alone to lick its own wounds. Leave it alone to add to its survival instincts and so pass on what it has learned to its offspring."

  "But what if it dies? How can it then pass on what it has learned?"

  "It cannot. But it must die some day. Its death is inevitable. Deer are a good example of natural population control. Given too many and too little food, they die out. With too few and plenty of food, they increase in numbers. It's a natural balance. Humans interfere in this natural balance that affect their own numbers - although the unstoppable, painful but quite natural rebalances are now happening all around us.

  "So examine now your own apparent instinct to intervene out of so-called compassion - human caring - the desire to put an end to some visible suffering.

  "Do you only want to save the deer you see, the one you find injured? And why? Might it be because you feel sorry for it? Might it be because you loved its eyes that looked at you in fear when you were close to it. Might you, quite wrongly, have interpreted the fear you saw in its big brown eyes as a plea for help? Because that is foolish ignorance. You are now comparing its eyes, its