nd what is a human being? There are so many answers to that question; I could write an entire book about them. But, come to think of it, I just did, and you are reading that very book now. Every section is a possible answer to the question. Human beings are animals, but not just one kind of animal. We are spiders, elephants, ravens, octopuses, butterflies … In writing about animals, people inevitably begin to merge human and bestial identities, anthropomorphically projecting our qualities, while simultaneously laying claim to theirs. That is why descriptions of animals, no matter what the aspiration of the author, begin to sound very dated after less than a century.
In most cases, one can learn at least as much about the writer and the culture of his era from such descriptions as one can about the animals. Literature about animals is relatively less self-conscious, and, for that reason, more revealing than writing directly about human beings. We are less defensive. Our egotism and paranoia, while present often enough, are less elaborately concealed. Animals always figure very prominently in the symbols that express human identity, from heraldic crests to the names of sports teams.
In the last half century or so, there has been an increased awareness of the mutual dependence between human beings and the natural environment. We poetically construct our identities as human beings largely through reciprocal relationships with animals. They provide us with essential points of reference, as well as illustrations of the qualities we may choose to emulate or avoid in ourselves. Any major change in our relationships with animals, individual or collective, reverberates profoundly in our character as human beings, in ways that go far beyond immediately pragmatic concerns. When a species becomes extinct, something perishes in the human soul as well.
This explains much about the cultural, religious, and philosophical diversity of human beings. Just about everyone loves animals, but people love different animals and in different ways. Almost all of us probably identify as individuals with some animals, but we have very different favorites. Pop sociology sometimes divides human beings into “dog people” and “cat people,” but there are also snake, wolf, bird, and ladybug people. It is tempting to call this a sort of contemporary “totemism” or “shamanism,” but such words sound much too glamorous and exotic. Our identification with animals is subsumed into our language and the mundane patterns of everyday life, occuring mostly on an unconscious level.
Is this necessarily an eternal part of the human condition? Perhaps not, since human identity is perpetually fluid. In time, perhaps machines could take over the role of animals in the construction of human identity, just as they have in many tasks such as guarding homes or plowing fields. In that case, we might not know what we had lost, but it would be a great deal indeed.