Thursday, December 9, 2010

Stepping out of the box

      Human nature dictates that we resist information from outside our immediate experience. If we have been operating a ranch for decades, or have recently graduated from college, that we close our minds to those ideas which don't fit our immediate experience, or what we have been taught to believe. This also holds true from those who have purchased ranches to use for hunting, or to preserve the environment.

    With this in mind, does it not make sense to explore all avenues of knowledge rather than only those we are familiar with? Yet human reaction it so dismiss information which does not fit neatly into, or contradicts our own "box" of knowledge. Most "environmentalists" are rabid in their belief that cattle are bad for the environment.

However, as often happens, if we get all of our information from a source with the same mindset, all we learn is more of the same thing. By stepping out of our "Box", we may learn about things which contradict what is in our knowledge box that are true. As an example of this I am going to use the example of Dan Dagget.

     Mr. Dagget was once a charter member of the Sierra Club, as well as one of the first one hundred members of the radical Earth First organization. He was also instrumental in having at least one area designated as "wilderness" and go back to "nature." In the following three videos, he tells not only has he changed his mind about cattle and the environment, but in just how much he believes that cattle are the best way to improve the land. This is an interesting three video series that shows just how how far off the "facts" we have in our knowledge box can be!