Wiped out west

I was very intrigued and disturbed while in the Raymond James museum when I noticed the painting ______

It depicts some cowboys on top of a train shooting at buffalo. I learned that as these men ventured out to the wild wild west they noticed an abundance of buffalo. They felt it would be of fun and leisure to ride through and shoot them for sport.

For sport? As we all know, hunting is a widely fucked up thing to even consider as a sport in the first place. I guess the definiton of a sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another for entertainment. 

I guess there is some physical activity involved (pulling the trigger with your finger….?) 

And who are you competing against? God?  (I clearly cant justify murder as a sport.)

This was all done without any consequences in mind, and the result turned out to be the extinction of buffalo. The population of American bison was decimated from an estimated 30 to 60 million at the beginning of the 19th century to fewer than 1,000 by 1890.

What interests me most is why people felt compelled to dominate something so beautiful and abundant. There’s a deeper pattern here: could it be when we feel disconnected from ourselves, we try to control everything outside of us?

You can still see this instinct today.

We mow lawns obsessively—cutting down every blade of grass before it grows “too wild,” wiping out the insects that depend on it.

We bulldoze land to build yet another “unique” house that is identical to a dozen others, because what houses already exist are never “mine” enough.

Here in Florida, neighbors complain about mangroves blocking their view—yet I never see them outside enjoying that view. Everyone stays indoors, but still wants absolute control over the outdoors.

This belief that land, and beauty, are limitless and endlessly developable is the same thinking that once treated bison herds as infinite. Until suddenly—they weren’t.

If our instinct to dominate continues unchecked, we will eventually find ourselves with nothing left to control. And then nature will control us in a way?

No trees? We suffer the heat with no shade.

Perfect lawns? We drink water laced with fertilizer. 

Constant construction? The Florida mangroves will give way for the next hurricane to decimate everything. 

But at least along the way people got the gratification of having control over something . Of being dominate for once in their life.

Destruction disguised as entitlement.

I hope you choose not to be like the men on that train. When something is abundant, that is not an invitation to destroy it. It’s an invitation to protect it. Creation over destruction—always.