Animals

This morning, Mike from Chicago suggested that I've underestimated the intelligence and capacity of animals in Thursday night's post.

He may have been right. We often overstate things to make our case - sometimes it's a simplifying assumption (to itemize every exception would be exhausting and counter-productive), sometimes we go too far in an effort to be "right." I hope that my overstatement was motivated by the former and not the latter.

Yes, dogs and cats have evolved a survival strategy that includes fulfilling some sort of emotional need for humans, but anybody who owns a dog or cat knows that these animals do have emotional states of their own, and experience happiness and contentment, anxiety and distress, joy and anger. I saw a documentary on PBS once where a herd of elephants approached the body of one of its fallen members, and each individual elephant approached the corpse, placed a trunk on it for a few moments, and then moved aside to allow another one the opportunity. If that's not "ritual," I don't know what is.

Wild animals especially have to constantly struggle to survive, from finding the next meal before its eaten by another to avoid being eaten itself, all while trying to find a mate and pass on its DNA for the survival of the species. One extreme view is to imagine that's all there is to life - a constant struggle to replicate itself by hunting, eating, mating and, when necessary, hiding. And according to this extreme view, we humans are no different, we just have more elaborate methods for survival that include creating societies, education and art, but when it comes down to it, it's all still about survival and mating, passing on our DNA out of whatever mad impulse it is that makes all life want to replicate itself in its own form.

Another extreme view is that all of this hustle and bustle is just to stay alive so that we can go on to achieve our higher purpose, whatever that is - spirituality, love, mindfulness or helping others. In this extreme view, some of the more successful animals - cats and dogs, elephants, the so-called "higher apes," certainly whales and dolphins - have so adequately insured their food sources, mating strategies, and protection that they can then turn what varying intelligence they have to some of the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy.

The Buddha taught the Middle Way, and I will argue that it applies here as well. The life of animal can be nasty, brutish and short, but there can also be refuges, both in the wild and in human civilization.

But that's not to say that we have canine philosopher kings, self-actualized belugas or pachydermal Buddhas.

No, the capacity for enlightenment is strictly a human feature, but then so is suffering from the existential concerns of our minds. Our big brains got us into this mess, but the Buddha showed that our big brains also have the capability of getting us out of it as well.