The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game Book

Shepard here presents an analysis of humanity's relationship to the other great apes, both in terms of origins, development and differentiation. Shepard certainly believes humanity's trajectory since the neolithic period is one that has put undo stress on human individuals and societies, as well as on the ecology as a whole. While this may seem like a no-brainer, Shepard focuses on the effect of domestication on previously wild organism, and the evolutionary consequences: traits beneficial for adaptation are weeded out in favor of traits that are harmful to the long-term survival of that species. As humans progress towards the domestication of the whole world, this certainly has wide-ranging consequences for the survival of the planet.

In terms of human beings, most of what we consider to be unique features of human life are share by other great apes, and in the chapter "On the Responsibility of Being an Ape" shows how the evolutionary development of our hominoid ancestors has bequeathed humans with such things as specialized (polychromatic, stereoscopic) vision, acute pain resistance, tool use, coordinated hunting, and sexual promiscuity. This is probably the best chapter in the book, which is followed by "Hunting as a Way of Life," the most questionable. Shepard looks at the role hunting plays in the social organization of cynegetic humans, both in terms of structuring activities, rituals, and ethos, and in terms of the relationship of the human "tender carnivore" to the rest of nature. Shepard utilizes Ortega y Gasset's Meditations on Hunting for his analysis, and his declarations would certainly put off vegans and the critical animal theory crowd. While I find the ethics of eating animals a complex one, Shepard does not separate the ramifications of hunting, killing, and eating in a world where human populations accurately reflected our position as the top predator and resource consumer, and one where humans are too populous, immobile, dependent on the transfer of resources across the globe, and with virtually no prospects of moving towards a social organization like cynegetic society. Given the current situation, the ethical dialectic of "should we stop eating animals?" or "should we stop our dependency on world-wide resource allocation?" should probably be synthesized into something like "should we stop our harmful levels of consumption?" How you answer that would determine whether vegan/vegetarianism or flexiterian/sustenance hunting is ethically appropriate. While critical animal studies aficionados might disagree, claiming that such utilitarian claims misses the whole moral question of killing, Shepard himself reminds the reader that the vegan is still killing. If we are going to challenge the distinction between the human and the animal, it doesn't help that the human animal, like the rest of the great apes, is a carnivore. The more purposeful (if not more meaningful) question is what kind of comportment should we have towards the organisms we kill, especially in the context of what we choose not to kill? Or to put it in more succinctly: how are we going to relinquish our domination over the Earth such that it does not entail relinquishing our lives?

The following chapter on "the Karma of Adolescence" deals with human development in hunter/gatherer cultures versus agrarian and industrial cultures, and the last, "Industrial Agriculture or Techno-Cynegetics" envisions a restructuring of our current society to one that is more in harmony with our evolutionary roots. While the current thinking among primitivists (who theoretically have much in common with Shepard) is in opposition to technology, throughout the book Shepard argues that cynegetic societies thrive on technological development and refinement. Shepard believes that the continuation of this process is in humanity's best interest, and believes future survival depends on a move away from complex industrial farming towards chemical food-synthesis.

The biggest gripe I have with the book is that not only lacks internal citations, but Shepard tends towards the dogmatic. A simple statement replaces the consideration of opposing views which could potentially grant the reader a deeper understanding the issues at hand. Still, the book is a brief one (at under 300 pages) and geared towards the layman.