I frequently hear people tell me they love all animals, and I have also gotten use to the startling (to me) statement so many people make, especially online, that animals are better than people, that they love animals more than people. Many people also tell me they don’t trust people who don’t like dogs or other animals. This is all an amazing evolution in the way we perceive animals, although I believe this much more common in America than in other countries where we can afford these kind of indulgences. Here, it seems the less we love people, the more we are loving animals.

In fact, if you pay attention to the way people talk about animals –  I do – they worship them, they see them as pure, unconditionally loving and saintly creatures.

Plato and Aristotle wrote a great deal about the human view of animals, so did almost every great philosopher, this has always been an issue in the world. Until very recently, the idea that animals were superior to people or like children would have been stupefying, incomprehensible, now statements like these are made so frequently they are not even surprising. And they are made so passionately and often they are becoming reality for many.

Once again, I am a bit of freak, somewhat outside the tent, scratching my head and looking in. I don’t love all animals, I barely even know most species, and in my mind, that is just like saying I love all people. I would like to, but surely do not. Some animals are quite difficult to love. That kind of love is so indiscriminate to me as to be almost meaningless. I I love everything without reservation, then I love nothing.

For me, a dog is not like a field mouse, a cat is not a raccoon, a donkey is not a fisher. When people love animals, it is usually because the animals are appealing to them or know – as dogs and cats and donkeys have learned  – how to manipulate us and please us. The spider and raccoon cannot wag their tails when we come home, or snuggle with us on the sofa on cold winter nights.

We have gone from worshiping the best parts of the human being to worshiping animals, one rises and falls in juxtaposition to the other.  The less we like people, the more we like animals. We are disconnected from each other, we have little regard for politicians, our priests are revealed as all too human, our business leaders greedy and remote, technology intrusive and complex and dehumanizing. The more disappointed we are in what we see on the news, the more idealized is the animal, who lives free of guile and malice and betrayal.

I do not ever want to worship animals, certainly not at the expense of humans, or posit them as being superior, they are not, to me. Living on a farm with sheep, donkeys, dogs, cats, chickens, cows and sheep has made me love animals all the more, but idealize them quite a bit less. They have some truly awful characteristics, from rampant sexual intimidation and assault to greediness to dullness, vapidity, brute violence and indifference to suffering.

The human being is a miraculous if flawed creature. We can create, we can aspire, we can be and do better. I have to be honest, it seems to me that human beings are bent on destroying one another and the world, and they have gotten off to a good start, and this is not something any animal would set out to do. But that is not their choice. If they can’t do harm, they can’t decide to do good either. They have no conscience, no creative spark, no miracle of creation and invention.  They can’t change their minds, even have minds in the conventional sense.

The drama of the human being is how tormented and conflicted we are, how capable of wonder and mayhem. I don’t believe either animals or humans are served by pitting them against one another, or judging them in the context of one another. I am doing animals no favor by worshiping them, they might all end up over fed, on anti-depressants or locked in crates for the rest of their lives. The good news is that humans love you. The bad news is that humans love you.

Animals have taught me how to love humans, how to open up to them, how to be more patient, less frustrated, gentler.

This does not make them superior to people, it makes them important to people, and there is a great difference.  I do not wish to see my animals as inferior or superior to me. They are not human in any way, human concepts of rights and freedom are not in their consciousness in any way. I am with Plato. By loving them, learning from them, treating them well, we not only become more human, we become better humans. That is the power of animals to me.

What do I worship? The creative spark? The potential of the human conscience? The ability of humans to create and connect.