Monday, July 02, 2007

Lesser Beings

Unalienable feelings tell me that right at this moment I should have been hanging upside down from a tree or licking myself clean or sleeping standing up or guarding eggs, instead of wasting my time wording this rant. God made a eleventh-hour decision to make me "civilized" and so here I am - inadept at climbing a tree, cringing at the thought of my own saliva on my own skin, able to day-dream but unable to sleep standing, unqualified to lay eggs..... but totally appreciative of our incessant use of grey cells for mindless inventions of unnecessary mechanisms to help us do even more pointless things. But once in a while, like now, lightning strikes and for a brief moment as I stand semi-dazed, I look at myself and think "This was not what was meant to be".

Ironically, this time the lightning strike was induced by a creation by a few saner ones of the civilized kind: a movie called 'Animals are Beautiful People' (a fantabulastic movie for an animal lover, but still makes for a good watch just by virtue of being hillarious). A flurry of feelings convince me that we are plumetting headlong down the evolution trench instead of moving up the ladder, as we claim it to be. While I wont deny that it is partly because I should have been born in a zoo, it sounds pretty rational to my constantly tornado-ing human mind too. I noodle over thoughts ...

  • Isnt it all wrong that we need to be taught 'right' and 'wrong' all our lives, and right is not just instinctive like it is for every other creature?
  • Why do we have the need to seek meaning in things that are just intrinsically beautiful like love and life and happiness?
  • Which of God's beings but us are so tired of work that our ultimate dream is 'retirement'?
  • When you sit beside someone of your kind and dont have anything to say (and there is no idiot box around), so often the silence is "uncomfortable".
  • Being disloyal comes naturally, while no other creature can even be taught disloyality.
  • Suicide?
  • Every-day life is so bad that we all feel the need for regular vacations to "escape" from every-day life? We are one of the few creatures that can actually see the zillion bright and happy colors around us, but still are one of the unhappiest.
.... even if only briefly, before I go back to my potato-couching.

21 comments:

LifeIsAGame said...

Finding an anchor point within yourself helps in finding the peace :).

LifeIsAGame said...

Whenever I get into this state.. I do two things : (1) just get out of the house and work out(bring your energy level up), and (2) read some good self help books(reorient yourself and set your priorities clearly). Its good to look at the big picture and decide what you want to have accomplished before your end arrives.

Harini Sridharan said...

Point is exactly that: we humans have the need to specially exert ourselves to find a purpose in life to be content. We need self help books to help us out of various 'states'. We need to be 'taught' OUR priorities - every other creature on the other hand is born knowing what it will do with its life.

But then I guess I belong to a different league - I can't support humans when pitted against God's other creatures. (In fact, I have always found kittens and puppies more adorable than human kids. There, I said it out loud! :-) )

LifeIsAGame said...

:))... its not being "taught".. its being reminded of one's priorities.. helping you to recollect when you are lost in myriad of emotions. Yeah.. you are right.. we have something called "social construct" that influences us. In non human animal kingdom, there's no social/moral code that is enforced on top of survival instinct nor does an animal seem to be influenced by the opinion of its kith and kin. Once the bird or animal is fully grown up, it doesnt continue to maintain parental and sibling relationships like the way human beings do. All it has to do is just take care or think for itself ... isnt that simpler definition of life that animals have compared to human beings??. Grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence.. dont u think ;)

Harini Sridharan said...

I concur: human lives have become so uncontrolably complicated that simple seems more meaningful.
Yes, grass is greener on the other side :).

sandeep said...

very well written ! it is zimply ... fantawhatbulistic...


Its summer and soon the grass will
be brown every where..
but then when it will rain,
with no offence, this side or the other..
green would be, and be the color.

And we can all graze happily ...hehe

Harini Sridharan said...

Wah Wah! and tankoo, Sandeep :).

it rained... and the rains washed away the momentary sanity and all around is green-he-green and I am happy to be on either side as long as I can graze tasty greens :p :D

LifeIsAGame said...

Oh my God.. I am in the midst of poets :)

Badrinath.V.S said...

you got beautiful english and this is a good blog (but for the pink color eeks!!!)

loved the line "our incessant use of grey cells for mindless inventions of unnecessary mechanisms to help us do even more pointless things."

Anonymous said...

coming home from work she greets me with all the love in this world

just when i set the table i could sense her urgency to share that dinner with me

on my couch this is when she likes to cuddle

all through the night she is comforted just by the thought i lay next to her

next day when ileave she holds on to me as if iam never coming back

if this is all love everybody needs iam happy to say that i belong to their kind (lesser being).

Harini Sridharan said...

thanks for the comments, badrinath, black rose.

Anonymous said...

Hey!

no new posts? buy with harry potter stuff?

Anonymous said...

Ooops, I meant to say "busy*" in my previous comment :D

Anonymous said...

"every other creature on the other hand is born knowing what it will do with its life"

Not true - there are many other creatures that are "taught" priorities. There are 100s of shows on Discover Channel / Animal kingdo on how animals "teach" their young skills to survive on this planet.

Regardless of whether they are "taught" or not, almost all animals "learn" on a continuous basis. Everything is not bases on instinct. Most actions are the result of learning (see theory of Classical conditioning for a detailed explanation). With time the learning gets ingrained in the animal (or person) and actually becomes part of its instincts. This is the reason domesticated animals are different from wild animals of the same species.

All the things you mentioned are primarily the result of the environment you grew up in and what you chose to learn from the sorroundings.

For the record, the only person stopping you from "telling the person next door that you like him/her is YOU" :)

Anonymous said...

One more thing...
Despite your stated desire to be more like them, you still refer to them as "lesser" beings! Seems a bit ironic, doesn't it?

Harini Sridharan said...

The "lesser beings" refers to us, humans :-)

Harini Sridharan said...

Hi Anand, thanks for stopping by and thanks for the comments.

>> "telling the person next door that you like him/her is YOU :)"

Absolutely! My point is that many of us just dont do it for "what if" reasons - humans have made "what if" a too much of a problem for themselves. If you did look around, many of us need "self-help" books and counselors to make us realize such obvious facts.

I disagree with nothing that you say since it is actually not contradictory to what I've written - if you read carefully, the blog entry does not imply "I think humans are worse than animals" it just says "sometimes somthings make 'me' wonder if we are lesser beings than them in many ways rather than the other way around." The write-up is about an occasional feeling 'I' have, and not a statement of belief. The tone of the writing is that of an incident-narration.

Anonymous said...

"The "lesser beings" refers to us, humans :-)"

I actually wanted to re-read the blog a second time to make sure that you did not imply this before posting my comment, but was too lazy to do that. Guess thats what happens as a result of not thinking - "WHAT IF" she had actually meant it that way? :) There are pros and cons to everything :)

bubbles said...

ennathithu?

but yeah...I agree. we are defnitely the crudest end of evolution... the very fact that we would be the ones with least survival skills in a disaster proves it!

PS: Any baby is good as long as its not yours :-D

Sugavan said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

*A flurry of feelings convince me that we are plumetting headlong down the evolution trench instead of moving up the ladder, as we claim it to be. While I wont deny that it is partly because I should have been born in a zoo, it sounds pretty rational to my constantly tornado-ing human mind too. I noodle over thoughts ...
>>Interesting that you want to be born in a Zoo, which in turn is a creation of humans who according to you, are going down the evolution ladder. If ever there was contradiction wrapped in irony covered by the fog of confusion! By the way if there is no Zoo, would you want to be born as a Prey or a Predator?
* Isnt it all wrong that we need to be taught 'right' and 'wrong' all our lives, and right is not just instinctive like it is for every other creature?
>> Somebody here talked about "social construct". Its also called "social contract". It is this social contract that has allowed humans to grow and multiply to more than 6 billion people. Every species has the inherent desire to survive and procreate. It is just that humans have gotten way better at this.
* Why do we have the need to seek meaning in things that are just intrinsically beautiful like love and life and happiness?
>>This is alien territory to me. But I think most people just seek these things according to their own ideas about Love, Life & Happiness.
* Which of God's beings but us are so tired of work that our ultimate dream is 'retirement'?
>>We are the only ones who have the luxury of being tired of work. Other species are tired/worried of more basic things like food and water. Although to be sure this is true of humans too in most of the Third World.
* When you sit beside someone of your kind and dont have anything to say (and there is no idiot box around), so often the silence is "uncomfortable".
>> Have to agree with this one.
* Being disloyal comes naturally, while no other creature can even be taught disloyality.
>>You obviously are unaware that killing of and eating the newborn for nutrition by the mother is a common occurence in many species including cats and chimps. Its called disloyality, selfishness etc in humans, in animals its just called animal instinct period.