Horses And The Nature of Evil

I am not qualified to argue with Capt. Gilbert. He studied the matter from a much better vantage point than I ever will. 

 “In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. 

A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. 

 Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” -Captain G. M. Gilbert, U.S. Army psychologist.

Natural horsemanship is the most effective tool to enhance one's ability to empathize with one from another culture or walk of life that I have ever encountered. I now understand that it is the reason that our program's teenage participants behave in such a caring, mature manner.

The irony of it all--it is a worn out cliche to to cast aspersions on the behavior of another by sarcastically asking, "Were you raised in a barn?"

With a lot of my program participants the answer is, "Of course not. I was raised in a round pen."

More on empathy and natural horsemanship coming in future posts--but for now keep in mind a statement that came from a TV show on our program many years ago

"Natural horsemanship makes better horses, but what matters is that it makes better people."