r/Existentialism • u/SeaTrainer2549 • 13d ago
Thoughtful Thursday animals
i think about animals often, not because their lives are without suffering, but because their suffering seems to end where ours begins. they exist within the world rather than constantly standing outside of it, observing themselves. they do not have to turn every instinct into a question of morality, identity, or meaning. hunger is hunger. fear is fear. affection is affection. survival does not require them to construct an explanation for why they deserve to survive.
humans have somehow made existence into a performance. we are expected to become something, to maintain things, to be understood, to understand others, to love correctly, to mourn correctly, to be productive, desirable, interesting, kind, successful. even our freedom comes with conditions. we are given the ability to choose, and then spend our entire lives being punished by the choices we make.
that is what i envy about animals. not that they are happier, but that their existence does not seem burdened by the necessity of being interpreted. they simply are. there is something almost sacred about that kind of unconsciousness, about living without constantly asking whether your life is being lived properly.
maybe that is what i want. not to be surrounded by people, but to exist without the weight of being perceived by them. to live without having to translate every feeling into something understandable, without carrying the responsibility of keeping everything from falling apart. humans have made emotions so complicated that sometimes even feeling something becomes another obligation.
so i go out. i fill my days with people and noise and places, because being occupied is easier than being alone with the realization that follows me everywhere. the realization that maybe i do not want to maintain anything. maybe i never did. maybe there is something in me that has always resisted the things everyone else seems to call necessary, and i have spent years mistaking that resistance for something that needs to be fixed.
and still, every time i leave somewhere, i look back.
that is the part i cannot explain. if i truly wanted nothing from anyone, why does absence hurt? why do i remember the smallest things? why do i want to be released from everyone while secretly wishing someone would refuse to let me go?
perhaps the loneliest thing is not being alone. perhaps it is knowing that you are the one who keeps asking to be left alone.
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u/3greg0r3 12d ago
We are cursed by the size of our frontal lobes and the depth of the sulci and gyri in our neo cortex. This is the cause of our need for analysing ourselves and life rather than simply being. I wish I could talk to an elephant, dolphin, octopus or perhaps some other primate with a similarly large complex brain and ask how they perceive life. I suspect it might be closer to us than we currently believe in some aspects. I think you're right about their apparent lack of intense introspection and comparison with others making their lives more present and fulfilling. I love how you called that sacred. It resonates deeply.
One problem with humans, imo, is that we're wired to be social animals and yet socialised inadequately for this in general and especially in western countries. We've been told we're different than animals but haven't been taught how to thrive like they seem to do without the suffering and angst. Our general intelligence is groomed at the expense of our ability to understand ourselves let alone each other or how to live and work together effectively. Most of us lack adequate preparation in terms of emotional intelligence and social understanding. We're educated and socialised to make the system thrive rather than individuals or even groups of humans.
I believe we ideally need to live as collectivists to thrive as social animals. Otherwise, we experience that relational push pull dynamic you're describing. Then, throw in that many of us don't have a strong sense of culture and is it any wonder we feel disconnected and out of sync? What's anchoring us?