The same people who designed zoos designed cities, warehouses and factories. Efficient storage, minimizing maintenance and cost were prioritized. They gave us enrichment activities and mental chew toys, so we wouldn't sink our minds into chewing something more natural. They store people in efficient grey rectangles, transport them along durable grey linear pathways and ask them to remove themselves from the elements 5/7 of their days into an even more artificial environment so that while they recover on the other two, it doesn't seem so bad.
The bear pacing back-and-forth in its concrete enclosure is not a sign of something being wrong with bears. It is a sign that someone decided that profiting off of their majesty was more important than their wellbeing. They extracted from the bear until it broke. That's no different than homeless veterans or the broader mental health crisis this country is in.
The systems are designed for maximal extraction of wealth to the 0.1% of people who in 1776 were referred to as white male property owners, aka "all men."
We live in zoos. We are creatures from another environment who were collected here to produce more capital for the wealthiest. Cities are rigid in design and made far closer to the antiquated model of cement cages with viewing platforms. Politicians discuss equity in park access like novel zoos with attempts to mimic a natural setting, despite the dramatically reduced freedom to roam and inherent unnaturalness of being captive against your will. They plant stand alone orphan trees in parkways and parks and strip them up to look like telephone poles so no birds or Brads can find a place to rest. As technology and free trade displaces rural work, cities become more dense and the effects of their poor design amplified. until people at the margins of sensitivity drop out of the system.
Those with resources and support may have the privilege to redesign their lives into a niche blend of inside/outside or simply remove themselves from the zoo. A lot of Californians with significant home equity are leveraging it to do just that, going out of state and out of country. Those without support and resources are laying themselves flat on the ground, fully in the elements, refusing to participate. Like the coyote, these people are pushed to the margins, where they can't be seen, or their freedom is taken away if they steal or hurt someone out of desperation.
Inevitably the sensitive bear in the small enclosure cracks and the survivors with just enough "enrichment activities" kill off a part of themselves to survive, as the long-term bureaucratic office worker must do. Some of us feel the cracks forming, and escape just in time, and after years wondering what our problem was, realize we are, in the end, just nature and not meant to be separated from it by screens and concrete.
In don't feel optimistic for the future of cities. At some point there will be very few birds in these enclosures unless they net the tops. When people put away their phones, VR goggles, alcohol, drugs, TV, scrolling, trolling and status symbols they will realize their wings were never clipped.
The Monarch Butterfly doesn't search Google Maps for directions, their path is borne in their DNA, just as it is in ours. Old Souls are awakening. People know that they are meant to move freely and that the conveniences and safety of a long miserable unnatural grey life are like a misaligned zipper on a jacket, yet today all they know for sure is they feel cold.
I write this from a place of tremendous privilege to be able to both see and have resources to redesign my life, even if through baby steps over the course of two decades. I have suffered through the patterning of neurosis driven into me by an unnatural life. But that same suffering has been my beacon calling me to be true to my heart and escape from the zoo. So I just keep wedging myself into the crack in the wall, peering over it and planning my escape when my resources stack tall enough.
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