Big cats and stuff

There is an extract in today’s Guardian taken from an upcoming book by George Monbiot, called Feral. Judging by the Amazon review, it seems to cover a similar area to Mike Davis’s essay Maneaters of the Sierra Madre, from his Ecology of Fear (civilisation-nature, environment-consciousness etc). The extract is about big cat sightings in Britain.

There is no big cat population in Britain. Though there may be feral big cats loose in the countryside at any point in time they will be individuals. Big cats are elusive. The most commonly described cat resembles the black leopard – a very shy creature. They also are creatures of habit. There are no signs, nothing out there, carcasses, dung, urine, footprints and so on, that suggest big cats exist in any number. But there are still 2,000 sightings a year. Many communities have a legendary cat. The majority of sightings though are almost certainly of slightly larger than normal domestic cats. 

Humanity of course arose in East Africa. Monbiot suggests there would be an evolutionary advantage to quickly recognising the feline form. Perhaps there is a Cat Exaggeration Gene, but then Monbiot also suggests big cats represent a reaction against domesticity and an urge towards wildness. While he may be on to something I should think that urge is stronger in George Monbiot than Average Joe. I would think it’s more specifically to do with a process that has its basis in an alienated civilisation.

The ancients lived with a natural world that was far beyond their ken. Human cultures tend to personify phenomena beyond its human control, thunder is the wrath of god, comets and eclipses are ominous portents, the forest or the outback becomes a dreamland; these are just examples.

This has been complimented by human civilisation, which now musters forces not only far beyond individual reckoning but perhaps even eclipsing the combined forces of nature. Man-made phenomena are often naturalised. Examples: recessions are regarded almost as bad weather to be endured, there is a “natural” rate of unemployment, deracinated youth are “predators”.

In Ecology of Fear, when confronted by natural phenomena that are not supposed to happen, middle and upper class Southern Californians, having bestialised the working class, recapitulate ancient thought, transforming mountain lions into serial killers, coyotes into gang members, and living in dread of “Africanised” bees.

Where nature does undergo sudden transformation there is usually human agency behind it. Whether this is recognised depends on the degree and type of alienation (fellow Londoners – we live among parakeets). The modern city is uncanny in many ways. Not only does the city seem to have no basis in nature, the post-industrial city seems to have no basis in economics either. The energy that goes into daily sustaining human civilisation must surely tear the social relations it’s based upon apart – yet capitalism goes on.

No wonder strange creatures stalk our borders, nature lurking and repressed but ready to return.