Within each of us lies seawater, the composition of which is millions of years old. As if we, humans, are insulated from nature. There is an adage that within each of us, there are two dogs. Which one will win? The one we feed, of course. It wins the war of attrition. But we are despite our protestations and our placards animals. We are in a Phila and an order. The scientist has placed us in a family. Our relatives often have more hair than we do (well at more than I do). But from we burst forth. The two dogs are wrestling for control. It’s funny because sometimes in moments of disillusion people will proclaim, “I am not an animal.” They are animal.
But humans come to change the meaning. Animal means you have no manners. Look at him, eat like an animal. Well, yes, thank you. I am an animal. The separation between me and the natural world was created by humans. I love inside a box. It is a climate-controlled box that has many ways of egress. There are places of comfort they sit and watch the world go by. The sun, rising in the east lights the back deck. To see the sunset you have to traverse the house to the other side. To the front, he screams as the sun dips below the horizon. Missed it, he says sadly; it will come again tomorrow! Different but the same, scientifically the only variance is what is between you and the sun.
We are animals. They are us. We live separate of animals. We hire pest control and spray for bugs. Is that a mouse? Put out traps quickly; we cannot have mice here. They are not the cousins of Mickey. Mickey can talk, and in talking, he would tell those pesky rodents to go home. Even though for most of them, the fields that were their homes are now houses. We live in the splendor of the natural world without being part of it. We sit in chairs on glass-bottom boats, and we watch the world go by. We are not animals we are humans. You can count on one hand, the animals that kill for sport. You don’t even need your thumb for this exercise. We are one of those animals.
I wonder. We live in nature until it is in our way, then we raise Cats to flatten what doesn’t fit our view.
I can relate to your last statement.
I just watched them bulldoze a beautiful green area only to have the county (too late) step in and say you can’t build there.