Animals and humans a part of evolutionary process

And God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.
~ GENESIS 1:26

At least for believers, man was chosen to "rule over all the creatures that move" and not just his fellow brethren. However, intelligent man had chosen only to rule over man instead. It is not only a reflection on his intelligence, but also upon his avarice.

The basic requirement of a just ruler is, a sense of justice; but it is also a trait not inherent to humans, who from birth are, motivated by greed. Therefore, to rule justly is an inconvenience. That is why, most often, I have found that the traits and dispositions of animals, when contrasted with that of human traits and dispositions, to be humiliatingly superior.

Let us examine some of the attributes, mannerisms, and temperament of both. Animals are just pure, uncomplicated entities of evolution. Humans, by contrast, are the embodiment of complications.

Each day is forever to animals; and unlike humans, they always live in the present. It is decidedly a better way to live; unlike humans who, without insufficient cause, keep worrying of the morrow and sorrowing about the yesterday.

Animals are excited by, the same emotions as human beings. Fear, acts on them in the same way as it does on humans. Suspicion, that offspring of fear, is a notable characteristic of most wild animals as it is with humans - savage or sophisticated. Courage, timidity, ill temper: all found in animals and humans in varying degrees, are inherited qualities in both species. Animals can also sulk and rage, just like human beings.

These facts have been scientifically so well established, that it will not be necessary to weary the reader by many details. What is more important is that animals are, like us, endangered species living on an endangered planet; and humans are the ones who are endangering them, the planet, and themselves. The animals in fact are innocent sufferers in a hell of human making.

Purified

Animals, when tamed, are such agreeable friends that unlike humans, they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms, nor judgments', and they remain faithful to their master.

Therefore, it will not be wrong to say that until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains un-awakened.

What is more, wild animals never kill for sport.

Humans are the only ones to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself, a base quality which even animals do not possess.

Man, who is but an animal, be he refined and purified or coarse and vulgar, and born like every other mammal on earth, thinks of other animals as lower; but thinks nothing of leading his whole life around disguised animal thoughts.

If men were to aspire towards a righteous life, their first act of abstinence would be from injury to animals.

Animals are so placid and self-contained, one cannot think of causing harm to them unless one is a vile creature.

Take pets, the domesticated animals: when one get aggravated with pets and yell at them, in a matter of minutes, they are licking our hand again in love.

Can man ever aspire to be so noble? Animals can never be, humans with reduced capacities; but they have their own capacities, their own spectrum of aptitudes and behaviour.

When organisms that are able to share an interpersonal relationship inflict harm on each other, it can be termed: cruelty.

However, cruelty must be viewed as distinct from responses to hunger, such as in a generalised predator prey relationship between a frog and a fly or a lion and a deer.

Animals are never cruel. Only man is, for he alone can harm those with whom he does not identify, and at times, even with whom he does.

All animals are equal; but some more equal than the others, just as it is in human society. For a moment imagine that, either by chance or by the act of human folly, all the beasts were gone; then man would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man.

All life and things animate or inanimate, as I have always said, are irreversibly, connected by the fact of our single origin at the beginning of time. What happens to one, affects all, for we are all born of the same source.

Qualities

However, in spite of some selectively superior qualities, animals are less sensitive than, human beings; because by living only in the present, they lack the reflection on the past and future that plays so great a role in the subjective lives of humans. Because of this lack of reason, we humans cause untold pain to animals - not that we are above causing such pain to other humans. Yet where physical pain is involved, we ought to take the greatest care not to cause needless anguish to animals.

This is what Charles Darwin said about animals in his Metaphysics, Materialism, and the Evolution of Mind: "Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal." Equal or not, causing causeless pain is cruelty.Animals are also a part of evolution, just as we are. It is just that they have taken a different route in the process of evolution.

Humankind has always compared other life forms with themselves and thought of themselves as superior beings. Rene Descartes (pronounced Deck Art), a French philosopher and mathematician whose articulate reasoning about the nature of animals, still widely held by many people to the detriment of animals, was one among many philosophers such as Aristotle and Darwin, to name a few, who thought similarly: that animals, lacking mind, act and interact through passions only. They are, in short, organic "automata" (machines), "much more splendid than artificial ones," but machines nonetheless.

There is some truth in saying animals lack the rationality of humans even if it is a moot question in the light of evolving evidence to the contrary, and the absence of an accepted norm for qualifying as a rational mind.

Also, what do we call humans who do not make use of the faculties inherent to their kind: the powers of intelligence, reason, senses, and sensibilities. In the absence of it, there is very little to distinguish between the two, except to say that in many other ways, animals stand above humans. The greatest of all the prejudices we have retained from infancy is that of believing that brutes think.

I have used the term 'brutes' not to denote animals, but to imply the unthinking human who: lacking in mind, act and interact through passion only. He is no better than the animal, which is supposed to relay merely instinctive desires, and demonstrate involuntary reactions. In other words, animals are conscious, but not self-conscious. However, Milan Kundera, the Czech Republic's most recognised living writer, living as an exile in France; chose to write in his famous work The Unbearable Lightness of Being, "Only animals were, not expelled from Paradise." I wonder where he meant by Paradise?

See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities.

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