Skip to main content

Animals and Humans




Walt Whitman longed to be an animal.  “They are so placid and self-contain’d,” he argued.  He found a lot of qualities that make animals superior to human beings.  

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another…

Walt Whitman
Poetry is not to be taken literally.  Whitman was not glorifying animals really.  He was just using them to highlight our own pathetic condition.  Whitman’s original religion, Christianity, laid much emphasis on man’s sinfulness.  Christianity believes that man is an evil creature unless redeemed by Jesus Christ.  Christianity instils a terrible sense of sinfulness in the soul of the believers.  So ‘good’ Christians are condemned “to lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.”

But all that weeping has produced no visible effect on the human soul.  That’s the real problem.  If people really felt sorry for their sins, they would liberate themselves from the sins.  What’s the use if you beat your chest any number of times before your god and then come out and beat the hell out of other people?  Such religion is absolutely meaningless.  That’s why it made Whitman sick. 

Whitman lived in the 19th century.  The situation has only become worse after his death.  What people do in the name of religion today is far more disgusting than in Whitman’s time.  Any thinking man is left wondering why people still continue to put their trust in god(s) and yet remain worse than animals at heart.

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniJuly 10, 2017 at 9:31 PM

    Religion is essentially sugar cubes which are loved by donkeys so much. The fact that people in Christianity are considered as sinners makes me puke my iota of sensibility left inside after looking at such self derogatory tragedy. That's why people with some intelligence and courage are moving away from conventional religion gradually. Do you think people would eventually accept critical thinking as the alternative?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 11, 2017 at 5:57 AM

      No, I don't foresee critical thinking emerging as an alternative at all. As I wrote earlier majority of people are mediocre and critical thinking is out of their intellectual capacities. Religion is the right thing for them as far as intellectual potential is concerned.

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaJuly 10, 2017 at 10:33 PM

    Humans have used their brain too much for the 'supposed' betterment of 'others'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 11, 2017 at 5:58 AM

      Yes and they continue to do the same. See what's happening in India now.

      By the way, I'm happy to see you back here after a long time.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
9 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more