M..an..imal : Move over, Animals, Homo INsapien is here !

Earlier this month, I was reading the WhatsApp exchanges between few friends, who were discussing what happened in Nice. Around the same time last year, I had spent few days at Nice and the promenade was a favourite place where we could spend hours soaking in the warm sun, the breeze and the beauty of the blue coast of the French Riviera.  My memories were stirred and I realized that I would never be able to relate to Nice in the same way ever again.

What sort of person, was the truck driver, who mowed down, injured, hundreds, dozens of them young children. The final toll was 202 injured, 84 dead, dozens of them children. Mind you, he himself was a father of three young children. One wonders how he would have connected to his own children, what thoughts came to him, when he played with them or looked at them.  What sort of animal would be capable of such an act ?

Man has been called a social animal. What is it that differentiates “man” from “animal”? Is being human about having a certain physical structure, being a biped, about being an animal that stands on two legs, has two hands and a bigger brain? And where is the evidence of the workings of a bigger brain?   Because if that’s all you have to have and be, then I am ashamed of being a human. I’d take animals any time. They are way more civilized.

We always relate wild animals to violence. Actually, it is a well- documented fact that the aggression in animals of the same species is there only for resources like food and for mating.  Animals use ritualized aggression to intimidate intruders and defend their territories, but without engaging in fights which risk injury. If a fight does break out, it rarely results into death as matters cool down when one individual concedes defeat and backs out. Animals in the wild do not hold grudges.

Only humans are capable of revenge killings, intergroup violence to such an extent that we have a history of violence, killings and genocide. And we have institutions that support and shape human aggression and justify it in new ways.

I think that our society as a whole is in denial about the magnitude of the problem and challenge that violence represents for our future generations. We believe that we are inherently peace-loving, but our history and current events illustrate how easy it is for humans to respond with violence that is much worse than the animals.

Coming back to the man vs animal debate, even the most evolved men, the saints, the rishis, have to deal with this duality of man and animal within. In that department, however, for most ordinary humans, it is instincts, the remnants of our animal past, which are always dominating.

The true intelligence lies in connecting to oneself and understanding one’s true nature. The only thing that differentiates man from animal is Viveka, the faculty of the discriminating mind. What is important is knowing the difference, knowing whether you let the man dominate or you let the animal within you dominate. Life on this planet would be meaningful only if the discriminating mind is cultivated and conditioned in such a way that it has a free run and the animal is always kept locked within.