The Cage

by Terry Morgan

hardship and adversity through strength and adaptability, then the next generation will inherit that greater strength and adaptability."

  "But if the first generation suffers it is not fair," his grandson replied.

  The old man removed his arm from the younger man's shoulder and shook his head.

  "Fairness has absolutely no place in nature. And you must stop looking upon suffering or hardship as a negative thing. It is a very positive thing. Hardship is absolutely essential. Without hardship, life itself is diminished. To experience times of hardship leads to greater appreciation of the easier times. Quality of life can only be measured by balancing the good times and bad times. What's more, to eliminate the bad times - the causes of the stress and the discomfort - also removes the need for many essential human characteristics.

  "Trying to be kind and fair by granting humanitarian aid does nothing to improve self reliance. Trying to be kind and fair by handing out taxpayer funded benefits only succeeds in removing the desire for the natural, long-term, mutually beneficial relationships that are already there to provide that same support. Just look at divorce rates and the numbers of people now living alone. Are lonely people more happy, more content? If they are then there is now something fundamentally wrong with human nature. Social animals like humans cannot live alone in nature. They would never survive.

  "And from a biological perspective, to remove the experience of hardship so that everything is 'fair' is to do away with the need to adapt in order to survive and life would never have even started."

  "You mean there would be nothing?" the younger man asked, puzzled.

  "There would not be life as you know it. Life only began because the conditions on this planet were right. Units of living cells then evolved because only the best, the strongest, the most able and the most adaptable, survived and found an efficient way to reproduce, to replicate their own kind. But human reproduction has been interfered with more than anything else. Reducing infant mortality and increasing the survival rate of mothers during childbirth through intervention is, above all, what caused the explosion in population but people now survive cancer, strokes, heart attacks. Good, some might say. But at what cost? To experience the multiple, negative effects of overpopulation?"

  "So are you saying we should not care for others, grandfather? That we should deliberately allow suffering? I am beginning to understand why they put you in here."

  The boy strolled on and then turned his head. The old man was no longer following but standing, pointing at the ground.

  "Once upon a time," he said, "Where we stand now, there was a meadow of wild flowers and high grasses that, in the heat of summer, rippled like a lake in the wind. Children came here to play amongst yellow buttercups, cowslips, ox-eye daisies and red campion. They lay in the grass amongst butterflies and watched swallows that had flown from Africa to feed on summer insects. If they kept quiet, they might have seen badgers, foxes and deer and if they knelt down and carefully searched low amongst the blades of grass they found beetles, grasshoppers and, at night, glow-worms that shone like tiny stars. Can you imagine that?"

  The younger man stood still, closed his eyes, tried to imagine but couldn't. "What were buttercups?"

  "And before the meadow this was a world unseen by human eyes, a world of untamed, natural forest, the home of wild boar, wolves and bears.

  He had heard about wolves. They were, like vampires, mythical creatures of the night, unreal but fearsome creations from vivid imaginations.

  "As far north as the eye could see, to a much higher hill that seemed to touch the sky, were more green fields and a clump of high trees where, when their branches were still bare and frosty, before the first leaves of spring had arrived, rooks would build nests that would sway in the March winds that followed. People followed the seasons by watching such events."

  He looked at his grandfather. "What were rooks?"

  The old man did not answer but pointed again, this time to the east.

  "Beyond the prison boundary there was once, not so long ago, a wild wood of beech, oak, sycamore and ash where wild garlic and bluebells flourished in the fresh wetness of springtime and fallow deer would hide until venturing into the meadows at dusk. Behind us, to the south, beyond what is now the prison's administration block, was where, hundreds of years ago, they first cut down mature trees to build ships for the King to go to war. They used thousands of acres of forest for these ships, for houses, for weapons, for bows and arrows to fight their enemies and to kill the deer and the wild boar for meat. And what was left of the wood, the scraps, they used for fires to cook the meat and to warm themselves during the snows of winter.

  "Driven by the need for shelter from the snow, rain and wind they cut stone from the hillside to build walls of stronger houses and because the trees were now gone they created fields for crops and built borders - walls of stone or hedges. Now shut your eyes to imagine that cluster of houses, the small hamlet, the beginnings of the village which grew and grew and gave its name to the city that it now is. That small hamlet of perhaps thirty people has now grown into a city of one million people that is now your home over there. But can you imagine that original small hamlet of wood and stone houses and the people that lived there?"

  His grandson had shut his eyes, trying to imagine ancient people as they huddled in the dark of night around wood fires, holding the bones and raw flesh of animals to the flames to cook and then to eat.

  "Now open them again and tell me what you see."

  "It is what I cannot see, grandfather. I cannot see the hill that touched the sky. There is no green meadow. There are no trees. There is no small village. I see only dark shapes, concrete buildings, glass that reflects the sky. I see tall blocks of apartments silhouetted against the cloud. I see more and more of the same, as far as my eye can see."

  "Do you not see small houses like the ones in the hamlet? Homes for families - the parents, the children, the grandparents? Do you not see their animals in the fields, the cows, the sheep, the chickens who lay eggs? Do you see how they coped with the seasons, the heat and dryness of summer, the cold frosts and snows of winter? Do you see the ancient church that was their focus for understanding, valuing and celebrating the natural cycles of their lives - birth, marriage, death - and for showing thanks and appreciation for the harvesting of their crops? Do you not see how they lived alongside nature and so better understood biology and the meaning of life with all its joy, heartbreak and hardship?"

  "I only see the apartments because they are so high. I know there are many houses between and below them but they are invisible from here because they are in the shadows. I know because that is where I live with my mother and my younger brother."

  "Is it not dark down there? Can you see the sky, the sun, the moon and stars?

  "The apartments can see the sun and the sky but we cannot unless we stand in the street and look up. We use electricity for light but there are many power cuts now. The power utility says it cannot meet the demand. But we have a tree, grandfather."

  "One tree? Are there no longer open spaces with parks and gardens?"

  "No. We don't have any spare space and we do not have a garden. There is a play area for children - swings, roundabouts, climbing frames for their exercise."

  "But parks and gardens enable you to breath fresh air, to smell the grass, the flowers They provide uncluttered areas in which to think. They offer time as well as space. Gardens fulfil a human need to better understand nature, the world and your place in it. They help to alleviate hardship by offering a clearer perspective on life."

  The two men stood still, not speaking. The younger man was still staring at the view of the city, the old man watching the thickening grey clouds in the sky above. It was the younger man who spoke.

  "Are you content, grandfather? Do you feel fulfilled? Despite being held behind this fence, do you have a clear perspective, a clear conscience? Do you still feel that you did, said and wrote the right things? Are you angry?
Were you wrong?"

  The old man thought about it for a moment. They were good questions but ones he had asked himself for many years.

  "No, I am not angry. Whether my perspective is clear and right is for others to judge, but it explains things that satisfy my desire for plain common sense to prevail. In that respect it helps me feel fulfilled. In fact I am experiencing fulfilment just by talking to you and by trying to explain. But I will probably not know whether I have lived a totally fulfilling life until the moments before I lose consciousness and die. I still have things I want to do so perhaps I will die feeling as if I only partly fulfilled my ambitions."

  His grandson shook his head. "That is sad."

  "No, not at all. It is not sad to me. I am still a professional biologist. I read a lot. I live my life by trying to understand life. I aim to arrive at indisputable facts about what it means to be alive and then use what I learn to form my opinions and make clear cut decisions. That is why I differ from politicians and religious leaders who are, in the main, scientifically illiterate. They ignore science for their own selfish reasons. Unlike them, I cannot live by only telling people what I think they want to hear. I cannot hide the obvious. To hide the truth, as politicians do, is fraudulent. And I cannot just dream up impossible explanations