“Don’t Feed Animals” Sign Applies to Humans Too

A friend from Burlington, Vermont, is currently touring Rocky Mountain National Park with his wife.  He just emailed the above photo, adding a caption with a moral lesson about society that few people allow themselves to see: 

“Don’t Feed Animals” signs always attract us.  I feel we are compassionate people, but I feel this sign can relate to human beings too. Too much feeding makes for too much dependency. Burlington has a tremendous amount of dependent people.

     The tourist sign begins with “People love to feed animals.”  Do people have a parental instinct that is automatic?  Do we have a gene-level “memory” of our farming and ranching past that is part of our human make-up?  Or is such charity and altruism more about the giver than the beneficiary as such? In other words, do people love to feed animals to make themselves feel good, regardless of the harm being inflicted?

     Lessons from the natural world should be rock-solid truth for those who believe that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  Science continues to bolster our understanding of what this creation is all about, including crossover lessons from nature that apply to people.  However much well-intended, welfare is unnatural and harmful, as the sign implies.  I recall another sign in the same park that ends  with “Teach Bears to Keep Away, Not Come & Stay.”