Horse Breaking

Horse-breaking

Once upon a time not very long ago in the sweep of history, there was a method of horse-training called "breaking". The name lays out exactly what the purpose is if not the method. Horse breaking was intended to break the will of the horse to make it obediently do what we wanted it to do. It is only now that horses are no longer our main form of transportation and farm equipment and have become more like pets that this practice has faded almost into obscurity.



The practice wasn't limited to horses. It was used on dogs and people and elephants too. The trick is to make them believe that they are powerless, that you are bigger and stronger. It's the art of convincing them that you can hurt them and there's nothing they can do about it. "Might makes right". It's brutal and the end result is an animal or a person which is broken.

The Call of the Wild

There's a passage in Jack London's Call of the Wild in which the dog Buck who has been stolen to pull a dogsled for prospectors in the Alaska gold rush is taken to the "man in the red sweater". The man in the red sweater is a dog-breaker. He comes at Buck with a hatchet and a club, and he is faster than Buck. Every time Buck tries to fight him or escape, the man in the red sweater hits him with the club until Buck eventually gives up in defeat. The resentment at this brutal treatment still seethes deep within him, and he has lost all of his trust in mankind, but he will pull a sled. He submits because all of the fight was beaten out of him. 

 Philip R. Goodwin and Charles Livingston Bull - Call of the Wild on Internet Archive

Illustration of Buck from Jack London's Call of the Wild

"Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.

"Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.

And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his bloodshot eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In mid-air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was the club, but His madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.

After a particularly fierce blow he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured was nothing compared with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lion-like in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the club from right to left, cooly caught him by the under jaw, at the same time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete circle in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the ground on his head and chest.
For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterly senseless.

"He's no slouch at dog-breaking, that's what I say," one of the men on the wall cried with enthusiasm.

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his afterlife he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery."

Jack London - Call of the Wild, 1903

The Elephant In the Room

Elephants are subjected to the same treatment to make them accept being put to work. It starts when they are young and still small enough for a human to dominate them. They're taken from their mothers and chained to a post. Eventually they internalize the idea that they are not strong enough to break free and thereafter a simple piece of twine is enough to keep them bound to a post. They won't even try to break it because they believe that they can't. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Elephants and Stakes

Breaking the Spirit

The same methods are used on children, most often in families with a religious bent. In America this was reinforced by the commandment to "honor thy father and mother" and the verse "Spare the rod and spoil the child". The people who practice this have taken the authoritarian part of the bible to heart and that's the only part of the bible that counts. The part that tells them that there's nothing wrong with what they're doing. After all, it worked for their father and his father, etc. 

What they demand is total obedience. Any hint of rebellion or even a face expressing resentment is swiftly punished. Talking back? That's a beating. Not moving fast enough? Prepare to feel a work boot slamming into your backside. Maybe you'll go down. Standing still? That's a belting. They want their children cowering in submission. Add to that the belief that treating children with compassion or kindness would make them soft and weak and you've got a very cold, harsh childhood in which you don't learn how to love. They believed that you had to be cold and hard to survive in the world and that was what they taught their children by being the first to introduce them to just how cold and hard things were. Most of the children brought up that way turned mean along the way and decided to get even by doing the same to their own children when the time came. What else could they do? How can you show love when you don't even know what it looks like? 

To Train Up A Child

In fact, in America there are "how-to" books on how to more effectively beat your children (without leaving marks, because you don't want child services catching on and getting nosy.) in order to break their independent spirit. Fundamentalist Christianity believes that if a parent picks up a baby when it cries, the child has gotten the upper hand. It's all about dominance and obedience. It's sadism for the sake of sadism really. So many phrases come to mind. "Showing them their place", "Showing them who's boss". That's what it's about. According to the authors of the book, corporal punishment was necessary to raise children right. If you didn't beat them, you were a negligent parent. God forbid a child should be allowed to grow up before finding out what life was like. Locke's words "nasty, brutish and short" come to mind. With girls it's especially important to make them know their place, or in the terms used by fundamentalists, "break their Jezebel spirit". With boys it's to turn them into little soldiers, Spartans who come home with their shield or on it. With girls it's to make sure they don't get too big for their britches and think they can assert their own will. It's messed up on all levels, not least of which because it doesn't allow for any independent decision-making. It teaches kids to follow orders with blind obedience. It teaches them that you can't trust anyone. A great many of them end up with lifelong cases of PTSD from their upbringing. It teaches them that you are either the one doing the beating or you are the one who is beaten. It's a toxic culture, and it explains how so many of us turned out the way we did. 

In part, it is based on the protestant idea that God needs us to be broken in order to save us. That we are clay vessels that need to be broken down in order to make us open to God's grace. They use this thinking to justify it and rationalize it away. Other times they use the same reasoning to absolve themselves of their sins, because Protestantism doesn't allow for penance and absolution like Catholicism does. They tell themselves that God wants us to fail morally so that we can reach bottom and accept God as the only power that can save us. It's a twisted line of reasoning, but it explains a little of the way they think. Don't expect it to make sense to a person with a conscience. The Baptist church was founded on the principle of making slaves accept their condition. There are some very selective interpretations of the bible out there is all I can say. 

Personally I'd like to see a world where people who treat their children this way are held accountable for their abuse instead of the authorities treating it as a hands-off religious matter or a question of domestic sovereignty. It's not an alternative parenting style, as valid as parenting styles which involve actually loving children or teaching with kindness and patience. There is no need to dominate a child's will or a horse's will or a dog's will with brutality. All it does is leave them broken. It is the best guarantee of an unhappy life that a parent could give a child. We're starting to realize this and pass laws, but the problem lies in enforcement. Most of the parents doing this go to great lengths to hide what they're doing, whatever they might say about it being God's will and perfectly normal. The authorities are reluctant to get involved if the family is outwardly respectable. If nobody talks and the kids are well-behaved, why upset the apple-cart? 

I know plenty of people who went through this and say they "ended up fine". Except that they didn't. They drink too much for someone who "ended up fine". They have trouble with relationships and domestic violence and the law. They have problems with authority. They're not happy people, and unhappy people do unhappy things. I think they tell themselves they turned out fine because the alternative would be to admit that they're not, and that would reopen some very old wounds and show them for what they are. They'd have to admit to themselves that their parents were cruel to them and claimed it was because they loved them. It would be too confusing and upsetting to face. I don't know how to heal the damage in people who are broken. It seems as if the ones who put themselves back together are the exceptionally strong ones who were never completely broken. 

A thought that keeps occurring to me is the thought that we don't owe our abusers shit. We have no obligation, moral or otherwise toward them. Why keep it a secret if there's nothing wrong with it? Why protect them and cover for them? Are we all still elephants tied to a stake, believing that they're still bigger and stronger than we are? It seems that an awful lot of social control is based on the same principles of intimidation and bullying people into submission. We don't realize we're elephants, and we're stronger than they are.