‘We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation,’ wrote Dean Inge, ‘and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.’
A.C. Grayling • The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to life
Today, there is perhaps no animal we are more unmoored from than ourselves. ‘The world is now dominated by an animal that doesn’t think it’s an animal,’ writes the natural philosopher Melanie Challenger in How to Be Animal (2021) . ‘ And the future is being imagined by an animal that doesn’t want to be an animal.’
Erica Berry • ‘Playing animal’ reflects back our yearnings and repulsions | Aeon Essays
“Man's life cannot "be lived" by repeating the pattern of his species; he must live. Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can be discontented, that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of... See more
The Wisdom Letter #156
we need a worldview that acknowledges that humans, for the foreseeable future, will always be the powerful party, deciding what needs to be done. We need a narrative that brings together two seemingly contradictory facts. The first is that we are part of the animal kingdom: our evolutionary ancestors were nonhumans; we care about other animals; we ... See more