From a poem by American poet, Walt Whitman:
I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania
of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
(See Song of Myself).
While I suspect that most of us would agree that being human has many advantages, we may fail to recognize the price we pay for giving up the advantages other animals enjoy. Humans may have the advantages that come with having big brains, but we also have a slew of disadvantages that are part of the “package.”
Animals tend to live in the present moment. Humans use much of their “brain power” to fret about things that happened in the past and to worry about things that might happen in the future. Humans have, of course, been seeking a way out of this conundrum for a long time. It is the impetus for both religion and philosophy. Religions provide us with rules designed to limit our fears, primarily by giving us alternative things to fear, and philosophy provides us with guidelines for living with a modicum of peace and happiness.
The history of humanity is primarily a chronicle of wars fought for one group’s ideas to prevail over those of other groups. The idea seems to be that if your army defeats other armies, your God must be the right one.
The eighteenth-century satirist, Jonathan Swift, satirized the differences between Protestants and Catholics, for example, as having a war about the correct way to open a soft-boiled egg. One group insisted that the Big End needed to be opened first. The other insisted that it must be the Little End.
It is hard to tell, of course, whether wars are really fought over differences in religious beliefs or whether they are fought over more material objectives, with religious (or philosophical) differences being used as an excuse: “We want to steal your stuff (land, gold, other valuables), so we will say your religion is bad.” It’s hard to imagine a lion saying that the reason it kills sheep is because sheep worship the wrong god….
I understand Walt Whitman’s desire to turn and live with animals. Ever since I was a child, I have considered dogs and cats among my best friends. They ask little and provide a great deal of affection and companionship in return. While it’s not possible to have a philosophical discussion with dogs, cats, or any of the other animals with which we share our lives, they illustrate perfectly what is required for living with what is readily available. Can you imagine dogs and cats, for example, going to war in an effort to convince each other that a particular religious belief was correct? As long as they are well-fed and comfortable, they will live in peace.
A long time ago (1959), Eugene Ionesco, a French playwright, used the metaphor of humans becoming rhinoceroses to satirize the way malicious ideas spread from individual to individual. It has happened to humans numerous times over the course of history. The irony is that, with our big brains, humans come up with ideas with which to make each other miserable in what is essentially a “I can’t feel good unless you feel bad” scenario.
I think that Walt Whitman is essentially correct in identifying the problem. I cannot, however, see a readily available and universally acceptable solution. Humans tend to have a My way or the highway approach to life. I definitely understand Walt Whitman’s desire. I am not sure, however, how we can get from “here” to “there.” We need to move beyond (above) the roles we usually play and begin to see things from a transrational perspective. (For more on this concept, see Healing with Language: Your Key to Effective Mind-Body Communication, by Joel P. Bowman and Debra Basham.)
The song, Let there be peace on earth, captures the essence of the required change with the verse, “let it begin with me.” Each of us needs to be willing, and, the more of us who are willing, the more likely the change is to occur.