Friday, June 20, 2008

If The Animals Disappeared . . . .

Alert Reader "Cuban in London" asked me what I thought would happen to our dreams if all animals (vertebrates, at least) disappeared from the planet.

First of all, let's remember that we too are vertebrate animals. We evolved from animal ancestors and still carry traces of them in our bodies, our minds, our fantasies, our emotions and our dreams. There is some question whether humans themselves could survive in a world without animals, though we act as if we could.

If the animals were to disappear from the world, they would still appear to us in our dreams, since they form an integral part of our psychic constitution. Their disappearance from the world, however, would amount to an unparalleled catastrophe.

But to stay with your hypothetical situation a moment longer, if the animals disappeared and we humans remained, the animals who still came to us in our dreams would haunt us to the point of despair. I don't mean "haunting' as in a horror movie. What I mean is that they would come to us as reminders that what we once found so cheap, actually turned out to be sacred -- animals as virtual faces of God. We would be crushed by remorse, and those who weren't would be crazy.

Thanks for the interesting question.

Paco

1 comment:

buffalo_ken said...

yeah, agenbite of inwyt....

(the "again biting" of inner awareness...)

Nice Post.

Ken