Indiana War Memorial: Use of Lions in Architecture and Art

For thousands of years humans have been fascinated with this creature we call a lion. This beast can be seen in sculpture, on the logos of world class institutions such as schools and banks, and also in various other forms such as architecture and countless other mediums. the male lion is seen as a create that embodies strength, character, nobility, courage, justice, protection, the lest infinitely goes on. I have a big problem with this. I wonder if any of the artist who use the male lion as an embodiment of the above characteristics has ever studied lions in their natural habitat! The male lion is one of the most vicious, sexist, selfish, and diabolical animals known to man! Male lions sit around all day and sleep, wake up and intimidate the females of the pride into doing all the hunting and child rearing and have the nerve to delegate who gets what portion or the gazelle that he most likely had no part in capturing! Male lions have been known to eat and/or kill the young of other lions for reasons ranging from the conquest of another pride or simply because they are hungry! In my opinion male lions are very despicable creatures when you look at how they treat those around them! I think that the real protector and prideful one is the female lion! She gathers, she hunts, she takes care of the children, and for what? So that she can come home to some over sized jerk who has nothing else better to do with his time but intimidate the people who help him the most? The Disney channel is no help either. They paint this picture of these noble creatures that are so vested in the interest of the entire pride land and the hyenas are the bad guys. When in reality the male lion is the worst enemy of the majority of the creatures in his habitat including other lions! So I urge all designers to thoroughly research that which they wish to use as a symbol of hope and pride. We can not afford to simply deceive ourselves artistically and philosophically and just take something and give it the attributes that we want it to have just because! In my opinion art should be rooted in some sort of truth in its use of symbols seeing as the the use of symbols is usually an attempt to shed light on a truth that otherwise would go unexplored.