What separates a human being from an animal? We are, as Aristotle succinctly defined, a “rational animal”…which means that we are different from plants or the beasts. We can use our intellect to reason, and our will to decide all of our own actions. We may receive an outside stimulation, but we ultimately choose how we will respond.
For example, a ravenous dog will devour a bowl of food put in front of him. Even though he can be trained to sit and stay before being fed, he can not decide within himself, “Hmmm…I’ll wait a few minutes before eating.”
A ravenous human being, on the other hand, can see a plate of food and choose to wait a few moments before eating. They may choose to wait for others to sit down, say grace, then wait for the head of the table to pick up their fork before the ravenous person dives in.
So then why would a ‘rational’ human being choose to do something like pretend to be an irrational beast in a London Zoo?
“In London this weekend, zoo-goers will see the most unexpected animals — human beings.
…
Presented to the public with only ‘fig leaves’ to protect their modesty, the humans will be an important feature, blending into zoo life as they are cared for by the zoo’s experienced keepers and kept entertained in a variety of ways.
…
The exhibit will be displayed for four days, from Aug. 26 to Aug. 29, and aims to demonstrate the basic nature of man as an animal. Zoo organizers intend to examine the impact that Homo sapiens have on the rest of the animal kingdom.”
Update: A reader sent me this article from Fox News, and this quote shows what the exhibit is really all about:
“Why are there people in there?” children could be heard asking their parents in front of a sign reading “Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment.”
Zoo spokeswoman Polly Wills had a ready answer.
“Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals … teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate,” she told the Associated Press.
What!? This is nuts. Can a primate write and/or perform music? Make a choice to stifle his passions for the greater common good? Or even cook eggs for breakfast?! No.
Absurd.
UPDATE #2: Outstanding commentary on the situation. A MUST READ. Here’s a bit:
It is a war over the question: “What is Man?”
Until this question is answered and answered well, men like Princeton professor Peter Singer will continue to insist on such apparently heinous propositions as the right of a mother or father to kill their child up until the arbitrary number of thirty
days after birth. And no matter how much we insist that Terri Schiavo ought to have been allowed to live, if she is just another primate, a monkey whose only distinction is an affinity for clothing, then what’s to stop us “putting her out of her misery?”G.K. Chesterton’s Everlasting Man
But the unfortunate fact is that “evolution really is mistaken for explanation”, which G.K. Chesterton points in Everlasting Man, which is by far one of the best books on the question of Man, and which everybody ought to read immediately if they haven’t already. “It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else; just as many of them live under a sort of illusion that they have read Origin of Species.”
Much like the Big Bang theory, the theory of Darwinian evolution creates the dangerous aura of The Answer, when it isn’t anything of the sort. It’s exactly the same monstrous fallacy so many made of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, making the ludicrous leap from the relativity of space and time to the relativity of morality, all to the absolute horror of Einstein.
Oh, but where to begin…where to begin.
I know. Go, right now, and buy, borrow or otherwise obtain a copy of Everlasting Man. And then read it. I guarantee you will be much the better for it.
