Dreaded analysis: the one things the animals don't have over us (allegedly). Well, we have the worst of both worlds. We're the victims of their awkward simplicities and our own evolution. We try to reject our complexity, but we can't, because we're always going to wonder, to analyze, to guess, and it gets us into trouble, if not with others then with ourselves.
We have the competition of animals in us, but what we're competing for is more complex, because we're human. And our patterns are not as cyclical as nature would have it; we do inexplicable things to each other that no great mind can explain. Animals calculate in order to survive, and arguably we do the same, but "survival," for us, has such different terms. Some think survival means cooperation; others think it means domination; others think it means isolation.
Throw love, that troublesome thing, into the equation, and the rules are smeared beyond legibility. Survival? Or whatever incarnation of it humans now operate under? PSHA! Yet there is a glimmer of that instinct in everything we do, and perhaps rampant divorce is only a knee-jerk safeguard against some kind of "death" in our individuality, which we have evolved to put the most focus on. Pride is the most common survival instinct, though rumor has it we're weaned off that crutch as we age. And even if we were to abolish pride in one fell swoop, our fellow men would not necessarily do so along with us, which is where the risk comes in. Pride is caution; is fear; is diffidence; is a blockade against openness, sure, but is also a blockade against animal instincts, which we have learned to suppress in so many varied ways. Societal norms stifle us, and love is only tumultuous because it wants to break "the rules" without perishing; those animal instincts don't, in fact, care about "the rules,"nor if love kills them (theoretically), but societal instincts now supersede them.
But what are the animal instincts? They can't be understood in isolation anymore, because our minds are so sophisticated as to find, develop, and evolve more directives than simply to procreate. And yet––and yet––even the ballsiest heterosexual women's first thoughts of a prospective mate is whether they'd make a good father. In my romantic idiocy this hypothesizing doesn't go much farther than a mental image of the adored strolling down the streets of Park Slope with a dog, in a rain slicker, and with a baby strapped to his chest. Again, a norm that has been etched into my brain since living in this baby boomer neck of the woods. And what is the desire to remain friends with an ex all about? Is it a hidden, unspoken pact to store the failed relationships away, as if we have the prescience to know those guys are going to be much more, shall we say, "settled," if not actually married to someone else, in 10 years? Is this method of "staying friends" just a thinly cloaked safeguard against becoming an old maid/perpetual bachelor? Sometimes, certainly, "survival" simply means keeping one's friends close. If an ex was also a wonderful friend, then it's not such a calculated tactic after all.
So maybe the animal instincts run pretty deep. If I step outside the bounds of society's rules, somehow making a fool of myself, how is that different from my cat walking away with her ears back after falling off a chair in front of the other cat and several other onlookers? Her skulk is also instinctive, but she's skulking away in shame, aware that she has displayed weakness but unwilling to stand up and make herself look scary in order to "survive." Is this embarrassed reaction a calculated move? Is it a survival method? How can it be? When I say humans do things to each other that can't be explained, I should also include animals in that category. A definition of all animals should, on occasion, include "senseless."
As in love, things become difficult for humans when the animal and human instincts collide. How do we prevent such collisions, or lessen the damage they cause? We have to nurture those instincts without spoiling or indulging them, and without wallowing in one type or the other. The media focuses so much now on nutrition, which is great, but what about nutrition of the mind? And I don't mean therapy, or at least, not therapy you pay for. Is there a way for us to feed our minds that's healthy and profitable? Nutrition is all about survival, after all, and we are past the point of denying survival's role in our actions.
Feed your imagination, people say. Feed your brain––with books, with good film, with PBS, with education, with wisdom from your elders, with travel and other fruitful experiences. But I would argue that those "foods" only indulge the intellectual part of our existence––maybe even overindulge it, because we are the center of all those "foods." We create them, or at the very least implement them, and so much of what we create is homocentric. And suppose you're in love. A book, especially one that isn't true, is only going to heighten your disinterest in reality and "the rules." So in effect it's only going to turn you back into an animal, because books are hinged on fantasy and justify impractical (senseless? or is it oversensitive?) behavior. They justify lust and love and nostalgia and throwing caution to the wind. How far am I really going to get in life if I value those things more highly than "the rules"?
There's a time/place for fantasy and reality, for animalia and intellegentsia, which turn out to be interchangeable pairs. "Channel" is the operative word here, and it's been used many times in the past. Channel your emotions (inner animal?) through art, everyone says, but play by the rules. Art, indeed, is only the work of very sophisticated animals, and moral/ethical guidelines, the work of very boring animals who happened to have a point. One's life is not a work of fiction, nor a painting, nor is it the life of a lion or a gazelle or a beetle. We have aspects of the ancient, the unreal, and the refined in our makeup, and the trick is to keep all balls, so to speak, in the air.
It was, in the end, who was the better player
When President Bush speaks, the hungry ears of haters and supporters alike listen. So when the president comes up with something to say about Cheney's little kerfuffle in the woods of Texas, it's worth quoting, and here's why: if he's not going to speak up about the real grit, we're going to have to take what we can get, and what we're going to get is, as usual, a lot of ad libbing:
