Human Beings as Animals

I find the image of a man and a woman nuzzling up to each another quite interesting from anthropological standpoint because it reminds me of how penguins huddle together to keep warm, or how lions sleep on top of each other to create “safety in numbers”. Well okay, I won’t lie; I really only think it’s cute. It’s just that...Well, without preluding anything specific that’s going to appear later on in this pointless dalliance, I feel that whenever humans experience love, those previously suppressed (or even hitherto unnoticed) primitive instincts kick in. I guess you could say the same is true when humans experience intense rage, fear or jealousy, but there’s a particularly sublime beauty about the former that doesn’t often manifest itself anywhere else.

It kinda makes me wonder where it all comes from. Somewhere along the evolutionary line we’ve gone from ‘mating purely for procreation’ to ‘developing monogamous commitments (“ha!” you snort, laughing wildly from your king size bed while cohorts of underdressed women rub your chest hair lovingly) and unexplainable – logically speaking, irrational even – attachments to other human beings. I’m not trying to portray it in a negative light, but it is amusing to ponder the whys and hows of something that might possibly have no answer.

I wonder about the connection between humans and animals, because it’s often hard for me to see the difference between the two.

Now, as far as taxonomy goes, I’m very much aware that human beings do fall under the Animalia kingdom and are thus classified as “animals”. But I’m also aware of the fact that there’s something idiosyncratic about humans that makes us somewhat deviant to other forms of life – and, inadvertently or not, most of us view the differences with an air of hauteur.

Allow me to be bold and start my first real point by way of the Bible (don’t worry, I’m not religious and I won’t start preaching to you about how not going to church on a Sunday will cause baby Jesus to lacrimate a flood or something). According to the annals of Christianity, humans apparently preside over all other living things and animals are just here to be eaten and used by us; the crux of this declaration being that we mere mortals apparently have “souls” where the rest of the animal kingdom having brute instinct.

While it may be true that we’re significantly more intelligent than other forms of (known!) life, I find the whole “soul/lacking a soul” business quite redundant. Our determining differences, i.e. the collective knowledge to build aeroplanes and skyscrapers, our absurd cultural customs that give us an extra dimension of being and the supposed “free will”, are hardly hyper-advanced features of the divine work of God. They’re just qualities that come from having a greater sense of self-awareness. And intelligence.

Those people who bold-facedly claim that we are much more civilized than the animals are usually mollycoddled suburb-dwellers who have been shielded most of their lives from the more depraved side of human behaviour. To their credit, yes, they have may have formed a society based on morality and goodwill and other huggy-wuggy things, but if they ever happen to peer over the walls of their garden fences sometime, they’ll soon find that the majority of the human population lives a remarkably different life.

For example, the rapidly declining numbers of the Inuit and Amazonian tribesmen (two non-conventional groups of people from either ends of the Earth) live a very simple life which revolves around finding food, finding shelter and looking after each other – not unlike many species of animals. They have the potential to live a life like us, but doing so wouldn’t transcend them into some higher form of being; we are what we are.

Moreover, go into any major city and see the way people live their lives. Competing for the best jobs, competing for the best partners, trying to push themselves above one another, trying to have more than the next person, striving for stimulation – these are all animalistic qualities, just operating on a different level. We’re all propelled by a sense of self-preservation and act upon our impulses, but that’s not something to be ashamed about, it’s just how nature works. No living creature can afford to be complacent, because the moment they do is the moment they risk getting eaten or becoming subservient to someone who hasn’t.

I’m not trying to say that’s ALL we are, but rather, it’s the basis for what we are. We’re like flowers in the sense that no matter how high we bloom, how beautiful and extravagant our buds may become, and for all our colours and scents and varieties, we’re still rooted in the same soils that everything else has to grow in.

We may have the arts and sciences that have inspired us to create works of almost incomprehensible philosophy and technologies that allow us to communicate with people halfway across the globe. We may have complex and untameable emotions that have caused us to commit everything from the most appalling atrocities to the most philanthropic of good deeds. We may build upon what we are because...well, that’s human nature.

But what we are is undefined. If you choose to call yourself a chicken, I could ignore that, refute it, form an inappropriate pick-up line about how I want to “lay you”, but at the end of the day, if you remain utterly convinced of your existence as poultry, then that’s what you are. It’s just a shame I’m still legally restricted from killing you, dicing you and up and using the meat for a nice Tikka Masala.

Next week on Mr. Amazing’s blog – are aliens classified as animals?

[P.S. Here are my favourite Animals].