Pascal, Hunting over Poetry III

Pascal’s use of hunting in his argument will not convince those who still hunt. Few would confuse today's hunter with royalty. And while some hunters do run beagles after rabbits or retrieve birds with birddogs, many others do not. Those who hunt deer and turkey often sit in an enclosed ground-blind, or perhaps a tree-stand, for hours on end. That is, the hunter is now perhaps the only person in the modern world who will gladly "sit alone in their room." Hunters now pass Pascal’s test better than anyone else in our society. Who else sits for an entire day in one place just watching? Sitting on an uncomfortable platform with few comforts, without working on a computer, talking on a cell-phone, or -- name any of numerous technological wonders that truly do illistrate Pascal's analysis of diversion? Today's hunters may, by Pascal's own analysis, be happy, and not just be diverting themselves from unhappiness.

Two questions emerge: If hunting is not diversion from ourselves and our unhappiness, what is it? What might this revised account of hunting reveal about the human condition?