The Selfish Gene
Life on planet Earth is beautiful. It is the only planet in the universe like it. Earth is home to numerous kingdoms, but the one we are part of is called ‘Animalia’. So, although we are separate from plants and fungi - all living, breathing, breeding creatures fit into the same category because we share the fore-mentioned characteristics (we live, breath, breed etc.) However, we are divided by class; these being mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Humans fit into the class ‘Mammalia’ along with other mammals like elephants, primates, cetaceans, canines, felines and so on.
What makes us different from these other mammals is that we have a larger number of neurons in our cerebral cortex. The reason we have more is because we learned how to cook food and keep it preserved. Because we could do this, we ate more and therefore developed more neurons. So, with more neurons we gained more ‘thinking-power’, and due to the advantage of having opposable thumbs, we were able to invent things. So, no, we’re no more superior to other animals; we just evolved a little differently.
Somewhere along our journey to an increased neuron count, we became a little less concerned with our emotions, our gut feelings, our instincts. We became more concerned (even worried) with convenience, technology and being the first to invent ‘this and that’ so that we could make money, which became one of the only ways we could be sure of getting food on the table conveniently. Other animals will spend a whole day hunting, whereas we spend a whole day working to make money to buy food. We just made a different choice.
So, now we take a look at what we’ve left behind and why we think we’re more superior to animals. We have technology. That’s about it. We lost most of our emotional abilities and replaced them with a need for technology and convenience. Other animals, not having opposable thumbs or ovens and stoves, never went in our direction; they just continued to survive with what they had. In doing so they kept their pure emotional, instinctual forms.
Now, we come to the human in 2015. We are trapped. Well; most are. We have to be at work at this time, pay those bills; some spend all their time on seeing to it that they have the best money can buy; some are up to their eyeballs in debt. Even if they aren’t, they’re too busy trying to earn a sustainable living so that they can buy food at the shop, pay off their home, car, go on holiday and whatever else requires money.
In being this trapped, we lost even more of our emotional ability just trying to survive in this technological world. The result of this is that we search everywhere we can, when we have time, to find things that will spur or bring back our emotions, that fleeting feeling; the ‘Aww, sweet’ videos, the enraging websites on war, the emotional Free Willy-type movies, cute majestic animals in zoos, buying puppies and feeling enriched on their cuteness then the novelty wears off when they grow older and are not ‘Aww, sweet’ candy anymore…
Because so many are trapped, they simply do not notice this entrapment in others. Entrapment is a given, nothing that stands out in this world. Seeing an animal in a cage or an orca in an aquarium, they can’t connect to the feeling of imprisonment because they are so in it themselves; why should life for the animals be any different? Suddenly they ‘conveniently’ become ‘not so different’ from us. On top of not noticing this, they continue to feed off the ‘Aww, sweet’' candy they devour when those animals walk or swim by at close range. There’s no connection to this imprisonment for some, because in order to connect to something you have to remove yourself from it first. In order to know what light is, you must first know darkness. In order to know imprisonment, you must know freedom.
The transition to caring about entrapped and imprisoned animals, and even noticing them as being imprisoned, can only happen when we humans begin to see that our selfish gene is far too dominant. This selfish gene is the one that tells us we are superior to other animals because we can drive cars and invent machines. But no one ever considers that it came with a price; the loss of emotional ability. So, we have become robots in a sense.
Animals and mammals, however, continued the way nature intended. But now, because we had the ability to build cages and tanks, and because these animals often can’t fend for themselves considering the tools we have to trap and cage them, we think they are ours; that we caught them, therefore we must be stronger and more superior.
Consider a day out in Africa with a pride of lions. Would you survive? Not unless the lions were full to burst on the meal they’d eaten that morning. They have their own intelligence which we undermine. This goes for all species, including cetaceans.
So here’s the formula:
~ Humans chose convenience; thanks to our opposable thumbs we were able to cook food and store it. Congratulations to the first human whoever thought of this, it’s quite nifty.
~ Because we could eat more often, we generated more neurons in the brain.
~ Because we had more neurons, we could think deeper and calculate conclusions better.
~ On that journey, we lost most of our instinctual behavior and emotional ability, due to our time being drained by work that brings in money that fulfills the need to buy stuff that makes life even more convenient.
~ Other mammals who don’t have opposable thumbs and couldn’t cook and store food in a fridge or freezer, stuck to what they knew and kept their instinctual and emotional abilities.
~ As humans lost their ability to feel for themselves, some recognized the responses in those who struggle with emotions, when it came to them being in the presence of something cute or awe-inspiring like a wild animal or dolphin, and realized they could charge money for this.
~ Hence, zoos and aquariums were born.
~ Those who visit for that upliftment don’t connect to the entrapment the animals feel, because it’s like the air around them; it’s nothing different because they’re imprisoned and entrapped by their lives, too; it’s all too familiar to stand out as being wrong.
Let’s say we have a zoo of spiders alongside an aquarium. Which would be visited more? Probably the aquarium because of our need to feel something wonderful, some upliftment that everyday life won’t present. Life is already full of challenge and fear, why be reminded of this by visiting a spider zoo (no offense to spider lovers)?
So, those humans who have not yet figured out that aquariums and zoos, and any other institution that exploits animals for profit, are cashing in on this human emotional disability (which is not a disorder, it’s a human condition) will hopefully have learned a little by reading this article, and will now understand that any institution that exploits animals for profit is, in fact, exploiting emotional weakness in humans. It’s not their fault they’re weak, though; they’ve just been spoon-fed by society through Disney movies, cuddly toys and so on… and animal shows, the circus or a zoo is no different.
How did the exploiters work this out? Easy; they put an orca in a tank, got a response and discovered that people were willing to pay just to have this fleeting feeling, to have their emotions heightened for a few hours so they can be reminded of what they've lost in trying to survive in a world based on convenience.
If this is not selfish, then I don’t know what is.
Fortunately, there are those on our planet who have tried to maintain their oneness with the animal, mammalian kingdom. Perhaps they experienced a life-changing moment with an animal that brought them into this closeness. Whatever it is, there are those who have noticed everything that has been said above, and for this reason they fight for animals.
They are known as activists. Also fortunately, there are many orgs out there who love animals enough to really care for them. By this I mean rescue, rehabilitate, release; and they live by that code. So, if there are those who can do this, why are there those making profit from exhibiting the animals they claim to have rescued? Simple, the word ‘profit’ is involved.
Consider this article the next time you want to go to a marine show or a zoo. Are you being driven by that selfish gene? Or, will you think about the facts above and begin to make a difference to the lives of your brothers and sisters in the animal mammalian kingdom by saying ‘no’. After all, you wouldn’t place your family members in a cage for the rest of their lives (regardless of how much you feel you want to sometimes)!
Life on planet Earth is beautiful. It is the only planet in the universe like it. Earth is home to numerous kingdoms, but the one we are part of is called ‘Animalia’. So, although we are separate from plants and fungi - all living, breathing, breeding creatures fit into the same category because we share the fore-mentioned characteristics (we live, breath, breed etc.) However, we are divided by class; these being mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Humans fit into the class ‘Mammalia’ along with other mammals like elephants, primates, cetaceans, canines, felines and so on.
What makes us different from these other mammals is that we have a larger number of neurons in our cerebral cortex. The reason we have more is because we learned how to cook food and keep it preserved. Because we could do this, we ate more and therefore developed more neurons. So, with more neurons we gained more ‘thinking-power’, and due to the advantage of having opposable thumbs, we were able to invent things. So, no, we’re no more superior to other animals; we just evolved a little differently.
Somewhere along our journey to an increased neuron count, we became a little less concerned with our emotions, our gut feelings, our instincts. We became more concerned (even worried) with convenience, technology and being the first to invent ‘this and that’ so that we could make money, which became one of the only ways we could be sure of getting food on the table conveniently. Other animals will spend a whole day hunting, whereas we spend a whole day working to make money to buy food. We just made a different choice.
So, now we take a look at what we’ve left behind and why we think we’re more superior to animals. We have technology. That’s about it. We lost most of our emotional abilities and replaced them with a need for technology and convenience. Other animals, not having opposable thumbs or ovens and stoves, never went in our direction; they just continued to survive with what they had. In doing so they kept their pure emotional, instinctual forms.
Now, we come to the human in 2015. We are trapped. Well; most are. We have to be at work at this time, pay those bills; some spend all their time on seeing to it that they have the best money can buy; some are up to their eyeballs in debt. Even if they aren’t, they’re too busy trying to earn a sustainable living so that they can buy food at the shop, pay off their home, car, go on holiday and whatever else requires money.
In being this trapped, we lost even more of our emotional ability just trying to survive in this technological world. The result of this is that we search everywhere we can, when we have time, to find things that will spur or bring back our emotions, that fleeting feeling; the ‘Aww, sweet’ videos, the enraging websites on war, the emotional Free Willy-type movies, cute majestic animals in zoos, buying puppies and feeling enriched on their cuteness then the novelty wears off when they grow older and are not ‘Aww, sweet’ candy anymore…
Because so many are trapped, they simply do not notice this entrapment in others. Entrapment is a given, nothing that stands out in this world. Seeing an animal in a cage or an orca in an aquarium, they can’t connect to the feeling of imprisonment because they are so in it themselves; why should life for the animals be any different? Suddenly they ‘conveniently’ become ‘not so different’ from us. On top of not noticing this, they continue to feed off the ‘Aww, sweet’' candy they devour when those animals walk or swim by at close range. There’s no connection to this imprisonment for some, because in order to connect to something you have to remove yourself from it first. In order to know what light is, you must first know darkness. In order to know imprisonment, you must know freedom.
The transition to caring about entrapped and imprisoned animals, and even noticing them as being imprisoned, can only happen when we humans begin to see that our selfish gene is far too dominant. This selfish gene is the one that tells us we are superior to other animals because we can drive cars and invent machines. But no one ever considers that it came with a price; the loss of emotional ability. So, we have become robots in a sense.
Animals and mammals, however, continued the way nature intended. But now, because we had the ability to build cages and tanks, and because these animals often can’t fend for themselves considering the tools we have to trap and cage them, we think they are ours; that we caught them, therefore we must be stronger and more superior.
Consider a day out in Africa with a pride of lions. Would you survive? Not unless the lions were full to burst on the meal they’d eaten that morning. They have their own intelligence which we undermine. This goes for all species, including cetaceans.
So here’s the formula:
~ Humans chose convenience; thanks to our opposable thumbs we were able to cook food and store it. Congratulations to the first human whoever thought of this, it’s quite nifty.
~ Because we could eat more often, we generated more neurons in the brain.
~ Because we had more neurons, we could think deeper and calculate conclusions better.
~ On that journey, we lost most of our instinctual behavior and emotional ability, due to our time being drained by work that brings in money that fulfills the need to buy stuff that makes life even more convenient.
~ Other mammals who don’t have opposable thumbs and couldn’t cook and store food in a fridge or freezer, stuck to what they knew and kept their instinctual and emotional abilities.
~ As humans lost their ability to feel for themselves, some recognized the responses in those who struggle with emotions, when it came to them being in the presence of something cute or awe-inspiring like a wild animal or dolphin, and realized they could charge money for this.
~ Hence, zoos and aquariums were born.
~ Those who visit for that upliftment don’t connect to the entrapment the animals feel, because it’s like the air around them; it’s nothing different because they’re imprisoned and entrapped by their lives, too; it’s all too familiar to stand out as being wrong.
Let’s say we have a zoo of spiders alongside an aquarium. Which would be visited more? Probably the aquarium because of our need to feel something wonderful, some upliftment that everyday life won’t present. Life is already full of challenge and fear, why be reminded of this by visiting a spider zoo (no offense to spider lovers)?
So, those humans who have not yet figured out that aquariums and zoos, and any other institution that exploits animals for profit, are cashing in on this human emotional disability (which is not a disorder, it’s a human condition) will hopefully have learned a little by reading this article, and will now understand that any institution that exploits animals for profit is, in fact, exploiting emotional weakness in humans. It’s not their fault they’re weak, though; they’ve just been spoon-fed by society through Disney movies, cuddly toys and so on… and animal shows, the circus or a zoo is no different.
How did the exploiters work this out? Easy; they put an orca in a tank, got a response and discovered that people were willing to pay just to have this fleeting feeling, to have their emotions heightened for a few hours so they can be reminded of what they've lost in trying to survive in a world based on convenience.
If this is not selfish, then I don’t know what is.
Fortunately, there are those on our planet who have tried to maintain their oneness with the animal, mammalian kingdom. Perhaps they experienced a life-changing moment with an animal that brought them into this closeness. Whatever it is, there are those who have noticed everything that has been said above, and for this reason they fight for animals.
They are known as activists. Also fortunately, there are many orgs out there who love animals enough to really care for them. By this I mean rescue, rehabilitate, release; and they live by that code. So, if there are those who can do this, why are there those making profit from exhibiting the animals they claim to have rescued? Simple, the word ‘profit’ is involved.
Consider this article the next time you want to go to a marine show or a zoo. Are you being driven by that selfish gene? Or, will you think about the facts above and begin to make a difference to the lives of your brothers and sisters in the animal mammalian kingdom by saying ‘no’. After all, you wouldn’t place your family members in a cage for the rest of their lives (regardless of how much you feel you want to sometimes)!