So I was thinking, which is scary enough in itself, but regardless. What if human beings are exactly like any other animal, except that we have this highly developed brain which causes morals, emotions, thought etc?
Do the popular lions always win Class President? Is there a class system of buzzards flying above us? Do lonley, bored seaturtles lay in their boxers shorts, sipping on a beer while channel flipping at 3am hoping to catch an exposed boob on cable tv?
My guess is not… We have invented these constructs using our all powerful minds, which leads me to believe that, yes, this is it. There is no magical purpose in life for a zebra. He trots along ’til a cheetah makes it dinner. This is the same for us. We are not here to unveil some mystical truth, we are here to trot along until cancer turns us into compost.
Some may view this as depressing. I view it as liberating. Once we stop thinking we are higher and mightier beings, we can start to notice the little things more. A friend of mine had as an MSN name “95% of species that have existed on this planet are no extinct, what makes you think your odds are so good?”
Forget about social constructs, stigmas and arbitrary rules that can change depending on which way the wind is blowing. Animals, plants and humans ([sic] see animals) are here for one reason: None. So enjoy it, this is it. That’s not a bad thing. And until we accept it, we’ll all just be like the seaturtles.
My findings on the topic …
while it’s pretty obvious that “human” is just a layer on top of the homo-sapiens animal, I’ll risk the following statements:
- that human layer in no way cancels the animal in us
- that human layer is NOT able (despite what most people say) to contain the animal in us
I actually think that 99% of what animates us is sheer animal instinct. What we see in any grouping of people (at work, the club) and what we’d like to think as stemming from millenia of human evolution is just plain low-grade animalism : social dynamics, hierarchy, courting favours, pecking order, getting laid etc, you can see all that around the water hole in the savanah and looking at who gets to de-louse who in the monkey pack.
What kills *me* is the vast amount of energy devoted to DENYING that this is what we are.
Back to scratching my balls.