I’m the one on our farm who has primary responsibility for all the lives that exist on that farm. I’m the one who makes almost all of the life and death decisions on our small farm, even though I’m not the one who usually carries out the deed.
This is Wednesday, at the vet’s the day I had to decide to put her down. She had been the most adventurous kitty we’ve ever lived with, and, after 13 years, it finally caught up with her.
Still, it’s me who decides whether or not something on the farm lives or dies.
Mostly, it’s a tolerable decision:
the animal is not one we had planned to keep for breeding and it is ready (i.e. in prime condition) for butchering.
I *could* use the euphemism “processing”,
but let’s not.
I love all my critters far too much to try and gloss over their deaths with euphemisms.
I love all my critters – even the ones I kill.
The truth is that most of the critters who are born on our farm are destined to become someone’s dinner, and that dinner is both tastiest, and tenderest, when those critters are in their prime (i.e. still pretty young).
Let’s not beat around the bush – these animals are killed. The vast majority of the life on my farm ends (i.e. dies) when *I* say. Sometimes it is because I honestly believe I am ending their suffering, but most often, it is because they are the right size to be of value to us for meat. The reality of the world is that MOST life on the planet ends up being food for other life on the planet*. That’s how the planet survives. The Grim Sower.
MOST of the time, the remains of the critters we sacrifice here are used completely – they feed the human members of the farm as well as the dogs who protect both them and us. It’s a “circle of life” that makes sense, and seems appropriate –
- so long as those critters are well looked after while they are alive.
- so long as their lives are good (which also includes safe).
- so long as their deaths are respectful and humane.
- so long as their remains are not wasted.
Most of the time this works pretty well and while I do mourn the lives that are taken, I realize that the reality is that they were given life specifically for this purpose. They would never have been born if not for the fact that we want to eat them. They are “meat” animals, and with the exception of those very few who end up being kept as breeding stock, the majority of the lives born on this farm are destined to become meat on our table.
There are exceptions though.
On our farm, we have a number of animals who are NOT meat producers.
In some cases, I am the one who must decide when one of our partners (i.e. the critters who help us be successful in what we are trying to do) is at the end of their life.
THAT is always a heart-wrenching decision.
Arrow is one of those, and he is nearing the end of his life.
This is the second in a series of posts about Arrow, and about grief.
Stay tuned for more in the coming days.
If you are at all curious why I named this guy “Arrow”:
Listen:
The Grim Sower:
“Human beings, conscious of their personal mortality, are somewhat obsessed with the Grim Reaper, if only because they dimly see Him coming and they don’t like it. In consequence the Grim Reaper plays a central role in humanity’s usual story of evolution: ‘nature red in tooth and claw’, where creatures strive to out compete each other in a desperate no-holds-barred battle for survival. Only the winners of these battles, it is said, get to perpetuate their kind: the losers just die, and in this way organisms with ‘good genes’ proliferate at the expense of all the rest. It’s a simple, compelling picture, which seems to explain the general increase in the complexity of life-forms.” p.25
“In fact, in the evolution both of complex organisms and of mind, the central role is played not by the Grim Reaper, but by the Grim Sower, who starts things up by their billions so that nearly all of them have no option but to die before they have reached maturity. The popular view of ‘natural’ animal lives has been romanticized to such an extent that they are universally seen as idyllic, whereas actually the reverse is the case. Nearly all wild animals die without breeding. For example, from the 10,000 eggs that a female frog lays during her lifetime, on average, 9,998 die for each pair that survives to replace the parents and breed. A more extreme example case still is the cod: a single female lays forty million eggs, of which about 3,999,998 die for each pair that survive to breed. This is what food chains are all about, and it’s the system that started with eukaroytes, who made death a necessary part of life.”
p 25-26
“… there is a huge advantage to making vast numbers of potential offspring and throwing most away. The advantage is that you can be selective cheaply, and sift through them for the occasional accidental good one. Indeed you can produce a few high-quality items even if the ‘technology’ needed to make thousands of them reliably doesn’t exist at all.” p2
Stewart, I., & Cohen, J. (1997). Figments of reality : the evolution of the curious mind. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
I’m sorry. The rest of this post is pretty much a rant, so if you don’t want that, skip to 
Problem THREE: This pair simply distinguishes between learner centered and teacher centered instruction, and really has nothing to do with games or gamification. Good instruction, regardless of the medium used, could be described as “striving to present the right level of challenge to the learner”, and BAD instruction could be described as not doing that. This is one the 
I would hasten to add that most educators are NOT game designers. In fact, a great many teachers (and this goes double for higher ed) aren’t even very good instructional designers. One of the huge differences between entertainment games and educational games is that people play entertainment games voluntarily. It’d be wonderful if we could ignore that pesky little fact, but we can’t. Popular games are popular with the kind of people that like that kind of game AND for whom the particular levels of challenge offered by the game are just right. Those that find the game too hard will not play it. Similarly, those who find the game too easy will also not play it. We don’t have that luxury in the classroom. When we present a game or gamified lesson to our class, we are (usually) presenting it to our WHOLE class. Our students don’t really have a choice. The bright kids will often find it boring, and the struggling kids will often find it too hard. What the kids will likely tell their teacher though, is: “It beats doing another worksheet”. I’d hardly call that success.
Problem FOUR: C’mon! This is clearly written in such a way as to lead the reader to the conclusion that games are better than gamification. Otherwise, why add the negative descriptor “weak” to one and NO descriptor at all to the other. Perhaps the addition of “awesome” in column one was too obvious? Got news for you; it’s still pretty obvious.
Problem SEVEN: Um, that is true of ALL learning, whether it is a game, a lecture, an assignment, gamification, or anything else you can think of. This does NOT distinguish games from gamification. Rather, like the others, it distinguishes between good and bad education.
Some educational games do this, to be sure, but this excludes a whole bunch of games, such as drill games. Now, many drill games are pretty bad – little more than interactive worksheets, really – but there are also some really GOOD drill games. I’m not sure what kind of “new understanding” 
Problem NINE: To this, all I can say is,
Problem ELEVEN: Now, this really is kind of insulting. It implies that *I* won’t provide scaffolding, since after all, I am the one who designed my gamified course. I’ve come across more than my share of educational games that lacked scaffolding altogether. Providing the appropriate amount of scaffolding is important in ANY kind of instruction.
Yup.
NO, the bird did NOT make symmetrical eggs so there’d be more room! Those eggs that had more room tended to hatch better, and maybe even produce stronger babies. THOSE babies survive and then THEIR eggs are more likely to be the same shape as theirs were.
Just imagine what the oceans would look like if even HALF of those millions and millions of eggs survived to adulthood. They DON’T. They were NEVER designed to. In order to keep the population stable, ONLY TWO of those eggs need to survive long enough to reproduce.
In addition to that, the egg needs to survive its own life as an egg …. meaning it needs to come out without injuring mom, stay in the nest, survive mom (or dad) sitting on it, and do that long enough for the baby to develop and hatch. This easily explains the difference between ostrich and kiwi eggs: ostriches are BIG birds and lay their eggs in a sandy nest – round is fine, and kiwis lay gigantic eggs in relation to their body size – their eggs HAVE to be body shaped or they’ll never make it out without injuring mom.
