Cage, enclosure, who is correct?

Matt Pearl

I traveled with my wife and eldest son Friday down to Kansas City: it was zoo day, and I had no intention of missing the outing.

While I was there, I overheard someone referring to the animal sanctuaries as enclosures. That is for many years now what they have called the spaces where the zoo animals are kept: you don’t hear the word cages anymore.

Short of identifying myself as obsessive, I will freely admit that at times small details of my surrounding seed themselves in my mind, causing disproportionately big ideas to germinate from them.

The reason I have trouble lining up wholly with either liberals or conservatives can be explained using the image of a zoo enclosure, and its rhetorical significance.

The conservative side of me rolls its eyes when I hear the word enclosure in reference to zoo animal’s habitat. It’s a cage. You can use all the sensitive, touchy-feely language your heart desires, but if I threw you into an inescapable nature-filled prison, I doubt you would accuse me of enclosing you.

Then the liberal voice makes itself heard. What’s the harm in calling it an enclosure? By definition, is that not what this particular type of habitat is? Besides, the word enclosure more accurately denotes the function of the area: to enclose animals from escaping and meeting with peril, and to protect those who come to pay their tribute to nature’s creatures from the potentially harmful ones.

When everyone is simultaneously right and wrong, where do we derive our answers? Where is truth? And for feeling this way and expressing it in writing, the most common criticism I receive is that I’m a moderate, as if being equally ready to praise and criticize two opposing groups somehow demonstrates a horrible character defect on my part.

The fact that liberals want to call a cage an enclosure makes me crazy. If you can’t escape an area through your own power, you’re in a cage.

The fact that conservatives think using the word enclosure is compromising some kind of core ethical value draws the same reaction.

It’s no different than America’s polarized view of its president, or guns, or tax cuts. Half of us approve of each because of the power and freedom they can provide in the hands of a responsible citizen. Half of us disapprove of each because of the threat each one represents to certain groups of Americans.

Have I put this nation into a nutshell and overgeneralized a bit? Sure. But aren’t I relatively close to the truth?

The worst part: I do not possess a single idea on how these two groups should be reconciled in their thinking and decision making.

What do you do when a group of folks can all look at the same animal habitat, but half call it a cage, the other half an enclosure?

Perhaps our current dividedness is typical of the human race. I am certain many of you are reading my words and thinking, ‘We’re divided because half of us are right, and the rest of you are wrong.’ If that’s your response, then perhaps I’m not the one doing the over-simplifying.

Are your political antagonists your foes because they are wrong, or wrong because they are your foes?

If it’s the latter, I’m going to say that you are part of the problem. If you’re interested in solutions, perhaps it would be more beneficial to all for you to reserve judgment on a public servant until he or she has put policies and ideas into effect.

But if you and I spend our lives bickering over whether each policy is a cage or an enclosure, then the chances are pretty good that we find ourselves arguing from inside of a philosophical prison.

Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City, Albany, and Grant City.