(Hu)Man & Beast: Soul Relationship

The human relationship with domestic animals has changed somewhat in the last 50 years.  In a family’s hierarchy (hierarchy in a family being imperative through the 1970s), family pets were loved but not always respected or revered.  They were a comfort-convenience for everyone on a higher rung of the family ladder-- for solace, play-pleasure and lesson learning.  In these intervening years, life has changed for the family pet.  Vegetarian-veganism is no longer a fad but a common lifestyle choice, often related to the raised auspices of animals.  There are more single people and more frequent divorce than fifty years ago.  Pets have become Family, sometimes the only family many people turn toward for companionship and love.  These phenomenon are reflected in the recession-proof pet market.  Climbing every year markedly, the US pet industry currently makes over $50 billion per annum ($17 billion in 1994) on not only essentials like food, but accessories, clothing, play things all meant for their owners to buy as a means to express their love and appreciation.


“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”  ― Mark Twain

Whereas, it appears people in relation to other people are becoming more and more clueless about what constitutes relationship, intimacy, human-understanding, as well as an ever decreasing impulse control (technology related?), animals for the most part remain an unconditional constant in their human’s existence.  Many animal lovers have given up on their human counterparts (or themselves), the repeated pain of disappointment too alienating.  Animals have become the elusive partner, the soul mate many people miss in their relationships with others in their lifetime.

“If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.” 
― Woodrow Wilson

Animals like humans are pure energy. Animal’s energy capacity is more simple; their totality, unlike humans doesn’t stray into complex cerebral function. What they miss in reasoning skills they make up in sensory superiority. Auditory function in dogs is two to three times more powerful than humans.  They hear 40-60 kHz; the very best humans are able to hear is up to 20 kHz (possibly why active listening is a challenge for many of us?).  Marine mammals have an impressive 75-150,000  kHz capacity.  Animals are able to sense the world in a way that humans cannot, with some species able to sense electrical and magnetic fields, detect water pressure and currents, electroreception and detection of polarized light. Their sensory mechanisms could be said to be awesome, something we humans are becoming more and more dependent (upon them) as we suffer today’s daily desensitizing sensory overload.  It is little wonder these beings provide so much comfort and satisfaction to us in our lack.  In them, we often return to ourselves.

“I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”   ― Abraham Lincoln

Our pets have become our personal in-house energy seers; responsive, aware beings to our human need.  It's incredible to think Descartes believed animals feel no pain because of their cognitive/conscious deficits (but then again, he was so wrong about so many things that still hang on as truth today after hundreds of years).  It is a credit to modern man that the birds and beasts of today have more basic rights than yesteryear and especially an acknowledgement of their importance of place within the culture.  In our spotty global consciousness we have at least started to become willing to protect their basic interests, which in turn protects our basic mental/spirit health.