Cub-Eaters
There’s a fantastic series playing right now on National Geographic called Savage Kingdom in which the actor Charles Dance (known to the general public as Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones) narrates the various power struggles, daily hunting, and deprivations of the carnivorous predators of a southern African savanna. The narration is over-the-top, but it does a good job of getting you invested emotionally in the animals and their lives through anthropomorphic projection. There are lions, hyenas, wild dogs, and leopards, each pursuing the propagation of their genetic line through the gifts Mother Nature has given them.
Between 1/3 to ½ of every episode shows the incredibly cute and emotionally engaging lives of the cubs and pups of these animals. Around half that time, in turn, deals with the fact that every species, clan, and pride is trying to murder and eat its rivals’ cubs. The predators consistently target the calves of prey species for many of the same reasons: they are small and defenseless, and if they are the cubs of a rival predator, killing them does much more damage than killing an adult does, all other things being equal. The rewards are high, and the cost is low.
In the animal kingdom, the primary motivation for cub killing is food, with mating rights and the success of one’s own children coming in fairly close behind. Humans are much more complex creatures with more complex needs than other animals, and hence their motivation for child predation will reflect that. Human predators are not so much motivated to eat the flesh of children so much as to exploit them for labor, emotional gratification, and even for sex either as children or in the future as adult slaves. Furthermore, things other than brute force and stealth come into play as the means by which cub predation is achieved. Social and emotional manipulation will be a primary means, equal to the use of force. They will need to finagle their way into positions where they have ready and trusted access to children for this purpose.
It’s worth it to go and watch some videos from this channel that feature child sexual predators or to go and watch some Libs of TikTok videos and see what sort of characters these people are. The ones that are born and not made by childhood sexual abuse have a most peculiar and unsettling emotional affect: that is to say, hardly any at all. When they describe their crimes, there is no passion or joy, only the satisfaction of an instinct. No amount of therapy will ever change that type. The only thing that can be done about predators like this is either a jail cell that never opens up or a gallows.
In Savage Kingdom, the theme comes up again and again that mothers and other caregivers in the animal kingdom respond by imposing extreme costs for cub predation. Mother Nature has favored those who are willing to kill and injure attempted child predators at the cost of their own lives simply to dissuade future attempts. If humans followed this logic for their own genetic and general flourishing, the consequences for even half-hearted attempts at child predation would be swift and severe: execution, maiming, and social ostracism on the spot. This is not because it is an unheard-of monstrosity but because child predation is common and such consequences are the only means to keep it from destroying a people’s future.
In what is now ancient Germany, a grave was once dug up by a large group of warriors, buried with their full weapons and armor.[1] We know that these were likely slave raiders who sold their chattel to the Roman Empire. Without a doubt, young children who could walk and were toilet-trained would have been especially valuable. Some tribes whom they had raided had apparently turned the tables on them and had taken the chance to send a message. All the slave raiders had been executed, and their weapons and armor broken and buried with them, effectively throwing away equipment that would have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in today’s money. The only thing predators understand or respect is a greater capacity for violence and coercion.
Thank you for coming to my lesson today. Class is dismissed.
PS: They ARE coming for your children, and are increasingly unafraid to say so.
[1] Peter Heather, Empires and Barbarians.