A man must be conditioned to be strong and indifferent to survive in a competitive world. He owes his very life to the sacrifice of countless organisms that have become his food and shelter and he has to become hardened against feeling the real anguish of each of those sacrifices. Since his earliest childhood games, great emphasis has been placed on hardening him against having too much sympathy for his victims in his role as hunter, warrior and entrepreneur. For something to be born, something else dies. The species higher up the food chain are more aggressive.
More complex organisms feed on the less complex.
Over the centuries men were in touch with countless animals that died so that we might be here today. From all this killing there comes a sense of grief which can be overwhelming. But grief is one of the emotions for which men are not usually very well prepared. Bly teaches that such conditioned lack of compassion requires seeking out means to restore a proper sense of grief in men. He contends that men have squelched emotions so deeply within that they are at a loss for appropriate emotional responses to their circumstances, and have been left cut off from the more positive emotions as well, and may be out of touch with their own best instincts.