Prisons exist to remind us that all of architecture, all of society in fact, is a prison. Look at this guy – bummed behind bars. It made me feel a little better after I read that all the animals in the Bear Mountain trailside zoo were rescued from poor domestic situations or were handicapped. The problem is they were almost all injured as the result of human actions, even if it was accidental.
Our species-specific arrogance dooms us to be dicks, at least to the non human inhabitants of this world, not to mention how we treat each other. Welcome to the human condition, bald eagle dude. What’s up with that?
Wrong Way Gang 
Ohhh, how right on. I feel you. Hard to gain that insight when you’re immersed in societal norms though such as consumerism, egotism, and materialism. Maybe it’s just a coincidence but I came to the same perspective as I went through the Bear Mt Zoo on my AT thru-hike. I would have been fortunate to have been able to share it so eloquently and succinctly as you currently have at that time. I experienced a sense of remorse, sadness, disappointment, and anger at myself and humanity in general when I went through the zoo – Not because there aren’t humans who understand and amend their human centric behavior but because in the face of the entire global human population so few humans do.
I decided from that day forward I would live as Gandhi suggested “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Yeah – it’s weird that the price of a free room is that you become part of the floor show. It’s not the instinct to help animals hurt by human behaviors that’s weird to me, but the idea that we are entitled to use them for entertainment. But you’re right – as humans we gotta move forward individually and collectively.