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Why do you keep banging on and on about this? I'm sure we are all happy for you because you enjoy your hobby, but don't the bull enthusiasts have a forum of their own, somewhere?
"The Running Of The Bulls" is nothing compared to America's own "Running Of The Zimmerman" in which hordes of angry Black men are released into the streets in pursuit of a lone Hispanic while the Police stand by and watch.
That's hilarious! Except for the wronged man, who really should consider moving to Toronto.
Why Toronto, particularly?
It's a pretty civil place to live - I expect he wouldn't have to look over his shoulder quite so often as in a US city. Of course, since it's my hometown, I'm biased in its favour.
Who's forcing anybody to take on the bulls? Why do the bulls in the ring have to be denatured if the bull 'fighters' are so talented and so brave? I like to know the truth about things even if they gore my very own ox. Is this lies or not?
It is complete lies. This is the reality http://fiskeharrison.wordpress...
Okay. Assuming there's no "preparation" of the animal, etc., I would ask why you have to use animals to prove yourselves. As others here have suggested, there's other ways. Why tease and torment any animal to "prove" something, just because thousands love watching it, and you get paid for it? Did Nik Wallenda have to torment animals to prove himself?
Doesn't the bull, pre-tormented or not, always end up dead? That the bullfighter may be injured or killed in the process still doesn't justify using animals in this manner. Yes, bulls are unattractive to most folks, but their lives are as important to them as your life is to you.
Many years ago, when men actually had to do real things like slaughter animals instead of playing with their iphones, traditions were devised to clothe these naked realities in forms of grace and mystery. In some way, flirting with the savage power of the beast becomes a dance of all the life of Man, facing death in a thousand forms, but doing so with courage and sublime beauty, the risk itself being a momentary triumph over the inevitable death. It is hard for modern people to understand these things because there is not enough reality in their lives, so they become animal rights activists instead.
This strikes me as a better (because more profound) defense of bullfighting than Mr. Fiske-Harrison has managed in vastly more words. But I agree with YouLittleSwine that this is one case where a reinterpretation of tradition is in order.
Every reinterpretation of tradition takes us one step further from reality!
That is the danger, admittedly; yet traditions do develop, and if they develop in a direction that saves the needless suffering of animals in 'sport', well, I'm willing to take the risk.
But see, this is a characteristically modern, artificial way of looking at the thing. It used to be that people lived their lives among animals, because they needed them. Now we are removed from them; except for a few chosen pets, there is essentially no relationship. It is this sort of hyper-sanitized social environment which has bred the contemporary animal-rights hysteria, the more virile environment where people knew and worked with animals knew nothing of it. It is easy to idealize something when you are almost wholly removed from the reality of it. Of course, people of goodwill have always been against wantonly cruel treatment of animals, but where life among animals is the reality, there does seem to be a matter-of-factness about the thing, in which death is almost an everyday occurrence, filth and stench are ever-present, and pain the dark undercurrent of quotidian existence. The flip side of this sterile concern over "animal cruelty" is that the lives of many animals has currently sunk to a level that can barely be called living. If you are really concerned about improving the lives of animals, you should turn your attention to conditions in the meat industry instead of picking on local cultures which have developed picturesque ways of dealing with animal slaughter; there is the real horror! There was a short video being distributed over the internet a few years ago called, I believe, "The Meatrix". It really is a most appropriate name, for the animals being raised for meat in these farm-factories are almost literally in the same condition as the human subjects in the movie; raised from birth in enclosed boxes, never to leave them until the time they are slaughtered, their lives are literally regarded as nothing more than grist for the mill. The life of an old-fashioned bovine who spends the bulk of its time in a meadow and at the end is brought to either the slaughterhouse or bull-ring is most enviable by comparison.
Another issue entirely is the contemporary attitude toward suffering in general, but I believe this is also relevant. It's like the current brouhaha over brain trauma in football. It used to be realized fairly generally that life was short, but was to be lived gloriously, with a fine disdain for the possibility of death and injury; now I wonder how long it will be before the government mandates that every citizen walk out of their door wrapped in foam padding. Those who have ceased to believe in life eternal become obsessed with trying to guarantee everyone their threescore years and ten. I feel I have expressed these things rather badly, but I do think there is a real dichotomy in world-views here, two different visions of what it means to be a human being, and so necessarily different ideas of how we properly relate to the world we live in.
Hey, I'm not opposed to flirting with the savage power of the beast. Just saying - make it an equal match, like the paleolithic folk who hunted for their food with no high tech weapons. Today, "hunting" & self defense (from man eating beasts) is like using drones on Pakis.
And bullfighting? A coward's game. Now, might you be suggesting that some commenters here (heh heh) don't have enough reality in their lives?
About "tradition". I'm all for going back to tradition, but doing so has never meant going back 100%. Some folks respect the reasons for old traditions and try to re-express them in the modern world in possibly less violent ways, ways that don't involve sacrifice of either people or animals.
Agreed except that I would never call bullfighters cowards -- that would take away from their standing as psychos. Now, the folks in the audience paying to see an animal stabbed or a matador gored--THEY'RE cowards. :)
I think those who torment animals in environments of their selection and control are deluded or sick. When they falsely romanticise it, well, its worse.
Thousands of people, screaming, vastly outnumbered bulls, controlled, sanitised urban enviromnent, perplexed, terrorised bulls being beaten by sticks. Can't see the 'spiritual romance'. Sorry. And I don't care what the drunk, suicidal Hemingway said.
And we finally arrive at it. You don't like Hemingway. As it happens, I don't either. But so what? If it's so offensive don't read. You come off as a tad whiny and pompous. I'm always suspicious of those who feel strongly about criticizing the life of others.
That's a healthy suspicion in general, but you have to admit that cruelty to animals brings out strong responses from a lot of people. That strikes me as more good than bad.
The original, uncut version of this article, with images, can be found here http://thepamplonapost.wordpre...
Another phoney piece of nonsense on bull-running and bull-fighting!
This bullshit is the male version of 'feminism'!! Fake machismo, pretend spirituality - that should sum it up. Sorry for the harsh feedback.
Want to test yourself?
-Go face real hostility, in inhospitable nature (not in urban environments with a zillion people shouting and perplexed, terrorized, tired bulls)
-Go challenge the Taliban, go challenge the mullahs in Saudi Arabia and see if you are able to stare death or de-limbing in the face and survive it.
But please stop the phoney nonsense!!!
Navarre has more true grit than someone like you could possibly understand.
In 1936 they rose up, with berets on their heads and guns in their hands, and crushed the communists and anarchists who were destroying Spain.
Navarre also had more brains than you, you bonehead.
I am not discussing Navarre over here and I don't care how much grit he/she/they had. You don't know me nor I you. So either comment on the subject or take a hike.
Navarre is the province in which Pamplona is located. You are attacking the customs of the people of Navarre.
I am telling you that they are the salt of the earth, and your failure to respect these people tells me all I need to know about you.
As for bullfighting, I leave you with the image of Julio Aparicio but with the words of Hemingway for the full picture: "Any man can face death but to be committed to bring it as close as possible while performing certain classic movements and do this again and again and again and then deal it out yourself with a sword to an animal weighing half a ton which you love is more complicated than facing death. It is facing your performance as a creative artist each day and your necessity to function as a skillful killer."
I guess the famous Hemingway "bullsh-t detector" lacked a self-cleaning feature.
This author is desperate. Really desperate. So Hemingway expressed some garbage opinion. I ask him - why wasn't he dealing that kind of 'love' to his family, if that is his measure of 'love'?
No, you said the risk was "phoney". The images prove you wrong for both the corrida and the encierro. The quote, expressing a view common among the matadors I know but more succinctly and in English, is there to show that there is more to toreo than risk alone. Nothing desperate here; merely setting you straight about certain facts.
They tried scripting bullfights like wrestling matches, but bulls are terrible at following a script.
Mr. Fiske-Harrison,
I called your expressions in the article, and indeed your article, a ''phoney piece''.
There are risks in many mundane things that ordinary humans do on a daily basis, sometimes just to earn their daily bread. And they spare us the romanticisation, never mind Hemingway.
Two instances:
1. Cycling to work over several miles during peak traffic hour twice a day / 5 times a week in big cities like London. Many of my colleagues do that. I marvel at their courage and their madness. Every now and then there are news inserts about a horrid accident.
2. In the Indian sub-continent, there are soldiers on the Siachen glacier military posts, a few at almost 18,000 feet. Hard to breathe, freezing, barren, hostile circumstance, machine-guns cocked. Occasionally, the Indians and the Pakistanis exchange fire and someone dies at minus 40 degrees celcius.
I think the risks in (1) above are not smaller than your bull running risks and, in (2) they are far greater, more isolating and maddening and real than your bull-running - unromanticiseable too.
If you love 'risk' then you should take real ones like in (2). But let us say you are not a trained soldier then you should risk it in Saudi Arabia by saying something against the orthodoxy that prevails over there. Be sure your freedom, life or limbs would be at risk, grave risk. Or contest your will against prevailing Taliban orthodoxy in Kandahar (ancient Gandhar). Your risk the touch of a blunt blade against your soft neck.
That's all.
If you think (1) is that risky - which I did for years - then you're simply not very good at mathematics.
No, I am quite good at Math as it happens. Counting is my profession and am paid well.
I am also not going to waste my time researching trivia on death per capita. Because its not that great for Pamplona bull running either.
But risking death / de-limbing at the hands of monotheistic, literalist, theocratic, cruel, fanatical thugs is a real prospect with a high probability if you get in their territory and claim certain things. It's also an open prospect - as in anyone can try it. You are a writer and a self-proclaimed romantic risk-taker so you can. But will you? No, you won't.
If you not gonna waste the time researching, don't waste everyone else's writing. And no, I proclaim nothing of the sort.
That is a strange comment from you.
In writing here I am only 'wasting' my time. That is a choice I have exercised. You are free not to read my comments as is anyone else, and thereby save your time.It is simple.
Or this pile up which sent 23 to the hospital on the penultimate run this year. http://uk.reuters.com/article/...
And this young American who lost his spleen also thus year... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
This is how you make the case FOR bull-running? :)
This was one of the sights we faced in the streets of Pamplona this year. http://blogs.reuters.com/photo...
(And the spirituality, fake or not,is 40,000 years old, as the Altamira caves two hours drive away show...)
Or, you know, just go running across the highway in traffic - I'll bet the adrenaline rush is much the same, and we can skip all the Hemingway bullsh-t.
Well said.
Interesting; I didn't know there even was a technique to it, other than run like hell and don't just stand there in front of the bulls like the animal rights lady a couple of years back who got mangled while protesting the event.
I'm still rooting for the bull.
You ever see the bull go after one of the ponies? It's not a pretty sight.
Don't even want to think about that one.
Have always rooted for the bull, join the gang lady
Many a long year ago I worked in a slaughterhouse. At least the Pamplona bulls have a chance to score a little human flesh before dying.
It's not an either/or matter.
Of course it is. Where are the cattle nature reserves? No? Right. Slaughterhouse or plaza de toros. Those are the options.
Option 3. Don't eat 'em. Let them die out and stay in India, where they came from and belong.
I'm not sure I understand your either/or point relative to my comment. My remark was for those who side with the bulls and against human cruelty. These beasts can at least go down fighting, unlike the hapless beef cattle I helped slaughter.
Yes, I see your point. However, the bull has just as little choice in his death as slaughterhouse-killed animals. I'd say that the meat cow dies quicker. Except for kosherized/moslemized ones, which method of killing is actually illegal in some places, I'm told.
The only meat animal killing that's pretty much acceptable in my eyes is going after it with a knife or old fashioned Robin Hood type of bow & arrow. No rifles, no scopes, no high tech bows and arrows. Just sit in a tree for 3 days waiting for the beast to pass underneath, jump on it, and feel the life drain [heh, heh] as you struggle with it.
Sorry for the lecture, truly sorry. I like animals and think that even snakes are nicer than many humans.