One of the intriguing insights I have received from Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is the psychology of animals. My myth was that the animals are ‘happy’, ‘casual’ because they are fully ‘free’ not bound to one place, one pattern like us - human beings. How foolish I have been! Late have i known that the philosophy of animals is water, food and security. They are stuck to any place that could provide these necessities, mark their territories and defend it. There is no question of freedom; they stick to the same paths season after season. They are conservatives; they perform the same ritual day in and day out. Any thing new around them makes them restless. The smallest change can upset them. They want things to be just so day after day, month after month. Surprises are highly disagreeable.
Imagine it is 10,000 CE and they are discussing about human beings a species that has become extinct. In a science exhibition the people of the time juxtapose the images of human beings with a note about their specific difference from other animals. But for some exceptions, I am afraid most of us would literally fall into the category of rational animals (in the rigid sense). The description below might carry the note: “Homo sapiens. They have a capacity to justify being conservative and territorial; and are efficient and highly skilled in ensuring the basic necessities: big malls, mighty houses with compound walls, boundaries of nations, religious fundamentalism, powerful destructive weapons, captions ‘strictly private’, high-tech transportation and communication etc.” (You may call this over-generalization, but it is science. This is how we study about other animals.) The nobility of being human however is our potency to be altruistic, to love, to hope, to be free, to loose ego, to embrace surprises, to welcome strangers, to be grateful, to be creative, to take the road less traveled, to listen to others and to be open to changes. How sad it is that we still find human beings more conservative, violent and urinating than animals turning the wild into a zoo! Dare to thing outside the box, to be different, to walk the extra mile we are no mere animals.
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