3.30.2009

A Great Notion

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

From this, which I know nothing about.

2 comments:

Dan said...

Very interesting. Written like Steinbeck. A great concept, and one I have often tried to put into words myself. i.g. Stop treating dogs like they're nice, dumb humans; and cats like they're stand-offish dumb humans. They both make perfect sense the way they are, which is not really on the same continuum as us

Mighty Tom said...

if we hear the pitter patter of mouse feet in a wall - we let it be - the mouse will die - we complain about the odor - spray the spot, perhaps, and suddenly the smell is gone - and the shriveled mouse corpse will stay, until there is an electrical or water issue - or until the owner decides to tear down and rebuild, annoyed when he sees the dead mouse, at the memory of the bad smell

if it was a human child, we would claw at the sheet rock, saving the child, immediately, and without hesitation

I urge you all, then, considering this post, the next time you hear the pitter patter, do not hesitate, use what you can to tear through the wall and rescue the mouse

and yourselves from the awful smells