Thursday, August 20, 2009
The animal
Sometimes I feel man and his higher forms are over-rated. There is this aspirational value attached to feelings of contentment, self-restraint, loyalty, patriotism in various cultures. Over the years, I have started appreciating other emotions of humans too greed, jealousy, temptation, selfishness. The latter emotions that come naturally to us by virtue of our evolutionary characteristics - need to be the fittest for survival. The former are conditioned. We are conditioned to believe that the former is good. It is believed that they make us more humane than an animal. And I wonder, what's wrong in being a little bit animal sometimes ?
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3 comments:
Because, in long run, it all comes back. For your own selfish interests, it is good for a society or a nation state or a set of laws to emerge and flourish.
If everyone starts stealing from others, there would be only counter-productivity and everyone will suffer.
It is not a zero sum game afterall. :)
Well then what will be the difference between man and animal? Human form of life is meant to be for some higher purpose. Rather than wasting it in selfishness and greediness one should use it to know the purpose of life.
The animals kill other animals to full fill their hunger but they don't go on hunting them unncessarily. So a bit of animal instinct is needed for survival, but the problem arises when we over-do it beyond the certain degree of fairness, which is for individuals to decide :).
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