Meditation 47: Happy to be an Animal

Humans are the only animals I know that are unhappy to be animals. All the dogs and cats, horses and mice, not to mention insects and reptiles, seem unfazed by their condition. A cow in the field, munching rich grass on a beautiful summer day, is quite happy to be a cow, not knowing, in fact, what, exactly, is involved in being a cow. Many animals have feelings and thoughts, and not all of these are pleasant, but without hunger or a cause for fear, these creatures see nothing wrong with just being animals. We see no evidence of existential angst on their part, no yearning for the infinite, no frustration about mortality. Animals are content with the satisfactions of their natural desires and do not ask about tomorrow, money in the bank, or remunerative work. Animals are not counted among the unemployed.

So, a big question is why human animals are not content to be animals, but want, almost universally, to be something better, higher, purer, and not mortal like ordinary animals. Ever since humans became aware of what made them different from the animals around them, they have been obsessed with creating and maintaining superiority over the "merely" natural or animal. Humans have language. Without that, I doubt they would ever have thought to distinguish themselves from other animals in the theoretical way they do. It is hard to see how an animal without language could have a very elaborate or self-reflective taxonomy of living things.

Language is the vehicle of thought and communication. Through it we can imagine a world, not of our own creation, but partly the work of generations of thinking humans, building, fighting, legislating, litigating, policing, educating, training, and existing in complex economic cycles, social institutions, political settings and historical periods. Human frustration with being an animal grows out of these very imaginings that language and thought make possible. We can think of all kinds of things that do not exist. We can imagine utopias where everyone lives in peace and harmony. We can imagine a benevolent God who created the universe with only the Good in view, and who even now guides our faltering steps in the ways of Providence. We can imagine Heaven and Hell, though Hell more vividly than Heaven. We can imagine possessing immortal Souls that can survive the disintegration of our animal bodies. We distinguish Higher and Lower, the Pure and the Impure, morality and mere fleeting animal satisfactions.

This yearning for something better, something meta-animal about human beings, is the cause of much human suffering. When the spirit and the flesh are separated, and the flesh is made base for glory of the spirit, the human animal becomes unhappy, contracts, and the person becomes more and more one-sided and fanatical. For to run away from flesh as though it were the devil is to create a deep division in the unity that is the full human animal, flesh and spirit, ego and heart, mind and body. The unhappy animal is one that is asked to be something that it is not, a pure angelic being, unaffected by the passage of time or events in the world. To think like that is to suffer the full effects of original sin, and to take on a burden that our animal frame was never meant to bear.